Gods, Myths, and Religion in a Secular Age Final

Culture

All societies have culture, the full corpus of the collectively shared beliefs and activities of any social group.

o   Transmitted through generations

o   Usually so deeply rooted that members assume it’s the way things are

· Religion is a subset of culture

Discourse

Which claims a transcendental warrant (can recode any content as sacred)

o   Bruce Lincoln

Animism

The idea that all things have a spirit or essence that connects them to each other.

o   Edward B. Tylor

o   Transmitted through generations Proposed it as earliest form of religious thinking

Apologetics

Reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.

Casuistry

Engaging in ethical analysis but extrapolating from individual cases.

o   Method of resolving specific cases of conscience through interpretation of ethical principles.

Teleological (consequentialist)

Focuses on the consequences of action, arguing morality of an action is determined by its result.

o   Elmwood

o   Hill describes it as a subset to utilitarian

Deontological

Ethical theory based on duty, asserting that actions are inherently right or wrong, regardless of consequence.

o Linked to Divine Command Theory

o   Also linked to “Natural Law”

→ Doesn’t mean you can’t use reason to figure out the principle

Aretological

Focuses on the intention or motive behind actions, rather than consequences or rules

→ Virtue ethics

→ ex) patience, honesty, courage, etc.

Utilitarianism

The greatest good for the greatest number

→ Actions are good if it benefits the majority.

→ Problem: How do we know what is “good” much less the greatest good?

Maximalist

Permeates every aspect of someone’s life and others (public)

→ Bruce Lincoln

Minimalist

Religion is a private affair and to each their own.

→ Bruce Lincoln

Mimeticism

Explains how people desire anything when others seem to desire it as well.

→ Rene Girard

→ This can lead to people to want to be different and be the cause for violence.

Secular

Relating to the physical world and not the spiritual

Secularism

Knowledge, values, and action that is independent of religious authority but doesn’t exclude religious authority in political and social matters.

Secularization

The process whereby religious thinking loses significance

→ Bryan Wilson

Denominationalism

Refers to the division of one religion into separate groups, sects., or denominations, each following different doctrines, practices, and organizational structures, while still having common core beliefs.

→ secularizing tendency (Wilson)

Sectarianism

Excessive attachment to or identification with a particular religious group

→ can be evidence of secularization (wilson)

Ecumenicalism

Promoting or tending toward worldwide Christian unity or cooperation

→ some scholars saw ecumenicalism as a sign of a vigorous Church ready to engage with doctrines and practices.

Exclusivism

Asserts that one’s own religion alone holds the truth and no other religion does.

Inclusivism

Situated between the two, maintains the truth of one’s own faith but recognizes the spiritual merit of other religions.

Pluralism

Acknowledges multiple valid paths to the ultimate reality.

Relativism

Religion can be true for one person or culture, yet not for another.

Disenchantment

Cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society

→ Max Weber

→ “in disenchanted times people’s identities became buffered

Enchantment

The world revolving around religion and faith

→ Weber

→ “in enchanted times”, people’s identities are more porous

Edward B. Tylor (1832 - 1917)

·        Proposed Animism as the earliest form of religious thinking.

·        The separation of spirits apart from the people and things they inhabited led to the development of polytheism.

·        Eventually coalesced into one overarching power, leading to monotheism

·        Evolution from savage to barbarous to civilized (monotheism as the animism of civilized societies)

·        Thus, advocated the study of “primitive” people. Why?

·        Later critiqued by theorists like lang and Schmidt (saw monotheism as original form).

Anthropological Mathod

James Frazer (1854-1941)

·        Strove to find patterns in beliefs, practices, and institutions across cultures.

·        Categorized “magical” practices

o   Homeopathic/initiative (like drums imitating thunder)

o   Contagious (like burning something of someone’s to make them suffer)

o   Sympathetic (combination of two)

·        Magic…Religion…Science (in evolutionary sequence)

Anthropological Approach

E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973)

·        Structural functionalism

·        Studied the Nuer (an East African tribal society)

o   They comply with an internal logic not so different from “civilized” societies

o   They are aware of scientific/natural explanations, but still use oracles and witchcraft for things that their society can’t explain

o   Thus, religion provides meaning

·        One of the first to draw attention to the insider/outsider problem

Social-functionalist Approach

Clifford Geertz (1926-2006)

·        The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)

·        “Religion as a Cultural System” offered a formative definition of religion:

o   A system of symbols which acts to

o   Establish powerful, persuasive, and long lasting moods and motivations in people byx

o   Formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and

o   Clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factualist that

o   The moods and motivations seems uniquely realistic

·        Understand the symbols that comprise a cultural system. We are creatures suspended in webs of significance of our own creation

·        Strive for thick description.

o   Example: puja in Hindu vs. Jain context

·        Also defines culture

o   A historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.

·        Symbols generate emotional states conducive to certain behaviors.

·        Religions step in to make the world meaningful. They don’t deny the problematic aspects of reality; they construct a world in which there are rendered tolerable.

·        The religions worldview comes to be regarded as more real than other perspectives because the sentiments and actions induced by religious reality are more powerful and meaningful then those provided by non-religious perspectives.

Social functionalist Approach

Emilie Durkheim (1858-1917)

o   There’s nothing intrinsically sacred about what a society holds to be sacred.

o   Earliest form of religion was totemism: the god of the clan is ultimately the clan itself.

o   A society’s god is the social group personified-a symbol of their collective selves.

o   The emotional glue is called “collective effervescence”

·        Criticism?

→ Derived form a narrow group (Australian Aboriginal group)

→ The profane isn’t well explored-just isn’t scared

→ He’s so centered on social unity as a function of religion; he ignores the capacity of division.

Sociological Approach

Religion is essential to keep people bonded and unified.

Max Weber (1846-1920)

o   Ideal types are used in religion

→ Types of prophets: emissary and exemplary

o   The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)

→ The values of Protestant Christianity have meshed with capitalist economics structures.

Traditional life was “enchanted.” Now we are disenchanted.

Impact of Protestantism

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

o   Describes religion as the opium of the people

o   Critiques?

→ Overly reductive and focused on the negative consequences of religion

→ Ignores the integrative and stabilizing functions of religion

Peter Berger (1929-2017)

Contemporary Sociological Approach

o   The Sacred Canopy: religious symbols and their meanings construct a reality that envelopes ordinary reality, forming a canopy of sadness and order.

o   Rituals are a mean of forging the two  realities into one.

o   Secularization has begun to erode the fabric of the sacred canopy.

o   The fragmentation of overarching worldviews has led to a privatization of religious realities, which leaves the mind feeling “homeless”

Bryan Wilson

Secularization: the process whereby religious thinking loses significance.

o   With Protestantism, religious understanding shifted from universally axiomatic to being a matter of private faith. For him, this signals a decline.

o   As we become more “rational,” we become less “religious.”

o   Sectarianism is evidence of secularization. Why?

o   The situation in Britain vs. the United States

o   Secularization is related to increasingly mobile, impersonal, urban society

o   Two other secularizing tendencies

→ Denominationalism

→Ecumenicalism

o   What to make of new religious movements that emerge?

o   Keep in mind Wilson is concerned with public life more than private consciousness

o   So he is more Durkheimian

David Martin

Critic of Bryan Wilson

→ Implies a unified definition of religion

→ Implies a golden age of religion

→ There is still a lot of superstitions in the world

Andrew Greeley

Critic of Bryan Wilson

→ Statistics are not good indicators of religious practice

→ Ecumenism is a strong religious response to pluralism

→ Unduly dismissive of sectarianism

Rodney Stark (and William Bainbridge)

Radical choice theory?

→ School of thought based on the assumption that individuals choose a course of action that is most in line with their personal preferences.

Secularization theory?

→ As society becomes more and more secular so does religion. As people assimilate to culture around them the religious intensity decreases.

“Religious Economies” Model

→ Religions arise through social exchanges

→ People seek to gain rewards and avoid costs

→ So, what does religion provide?

· Agree with Wilson on secularization trend, but what makes them more Durkheimian than Weberian?

· How to read “cults” (movements from outside the dominant religion and “sects”)

Laurence Iannaccone

“Rational Choice” Model (Stark and Iannaccone)

· Similar to the prior economic model but shift to supply rather than demand.

· Free market vs. monopolies and religion?

· So, it is all about the choice available to people (more so than the idea of secularization)

· Most critiques of this theory point to the problems

Sharon Hanson

Critique of economic models

o   They use shifting definitions of key terms

o   Problematic to compare historical and contemporary data (use the data to set up the argument).

o   Very Christian-centric focus (and Western-centric)

Gracie Davie

Critique of economic models (and Peter Berger)

o   Instead of focusing on things like decline or persistence of religion, shift the focus to things like pluralism, diversity, and fragmentation rather than “secularization.”

o   While more people may “believe they belong”

Charles Taylor

A secular age, 2007

o   Shift focus to changing “conditions of belief”

→ We have moved from premodern God as a given to modern God as an option

→ We all have a common religious capacity

→ Human consciousness and social structures are interrelated

→ We can access different kinds of lived experience to make meaning.

· As per Weber: in disenchanted times, people’s identities become buffered; in enchanted times, people’s identities are more porous.

· As per Durkheim, re-enchantment is happening in new religious forms.

Talal Asad

Foundations of the Secular, 2003

o   The forerunner theorist hasn’t problematized categories like “religion” and “sacred” as homogenous and universal.

→ Durkheim’s school complicit in positing the “sacred” as homogenous and universal

→ Weber’s “disenchantment” is a product of 19^th century romanticism.

o   Builds on Foucault to shift the discussion to the politics of the nation-states, which he sees as inherently coercive

Bruce Lincoln

Attend to four domains

o   Discourse – which claims a transcendental warrant (can recode any content as sacred)

o   Community – whose members construct identity in relation to the above (who then distinguish themselves from outsider)

o   Practice – which give expression to and from values (can then be interpreted as expressions of fidelity or violations)

o   Institution – constructed to “police” the above

· What makes a legitimation religious?

→ Needs to have a supernatural or outside of the human realm authority.

→ Not just because the pope, Ghani, etc. said it.

Rival versions of myths

Charles Kimball

· Violence in religion stems from exclusivist, rigid, narrow, inflexible interpretations.

· Five factors lead to religiously sponsored violence

o   Absolute truth claims

o   violence Blind obedience to authority

o   Establishment of an “ideal time”

o   The notion that the end justifies the means

o   Declaration of a “holy war”

· What does Kimball offer as a solution?

→ Authentic vs. unauthentic religion

Hector Avalos

· Most violence is due to scarce resources

· When religion causes violence, it is because it has created new scarce, such as?

o Salvation

o Places

o Authority

o Texts/canon

· These are nor necessarily “real.” They exist based on belief. In that regard, they are wholly manufactured and not verifiable.

· “Because we cannot prove one side is right and the other wrong, one interpretation is correct and the other false; because we cannot prove things like salvation are even real, it may seem better, even necessary, to settle our conflict through evidence.”

· Why, for Avalos, is religious violence never justifiable?

o The scarcity is imagined because

· What is his critique of Kimball?

o By saying theirs an authentic religion it will just offend more people.

· What does Avalos offer as a solution?

o He suggests just to get rid of religion.

Rene Girard

· Begins with a discussion of human desire, which he describes through a triangle (me, you, object) and as mimetic.

o Mimetic – to mimic or imitate someone or something

· He mentions even though we desire to mimic others it can also be the cause for violence because they also want to be different

· Mimeticism leads to desire for differentiation which leads to rivalries, which accumulate in social life.

· To defuse the threat of annihilation, the community finds a scapegoat to sacrifice (a sacrificial victim).

→ The paradox of sacrificial religion is that in order to prevent violence, it resorts to substitute violence

· Religion is thus both an effect of mimetic violence and a means to control that violence.

· It isn’t so much “gods” who need to be appeased in sacrificial religions, but rather people’s own anger/jealousy.

· What is Girard’s solution?

o   Refers back to Christianity

David Kertzer

People are both slaves and molders of rituals.

Kertzer notes that we do not usually invent these sorts of cultural tools. On the contrary, for the most part we inherit them.

More of a hindrance

Anthropological Method

Field work

Participant observation

Developing ethnographies

Craig Martin’s element of a cultural toolbox

1. Concepts, Norms, and Values (Anthem)

2. Traditions, Rituals, and Practices (4th of July)

3. Figures/Icon (President/ Statue of Liberty)

4. Myth and Stories (Paul Revere)

5. Ideologies (common sense)

6. Texts (Declaration of Independence)

Martin’s type of authority

1. Things (sacred text, symbol, religious law)

2. Figures/positions (Pope, Rabbi)

3. Absent authority figures

Martin’s form of projection

1. Return to origins narrative

2. False universalism

Selective Privileging Function

· When a practitioner encounters aspects of the authoritative text or figure that they don’t like (or doesn’t fit in their conception of what religion is about), they find ways around it.

o Prioritize some texts over others or simply ignore the problem text.

o Mixed messages exist in ALL sacred texts

→ Exegesis tries to recapture original meaning in context (academic approach)

→ Can lead to an endless game of “proof texting”

→ Apologetics as a way of smoothing over the contradictions

Challenging Authority

Point to competing authorities

Internal critique

→ Try to find contradictions within the text, proof texting

External critique

All of the above can come from insiders or outsiders

Responding to challenges

1. Most will simply ignore it and assert their view as a matter of faith

2. Wishful thinking

3. Partial rejection

4. Refusal to extrapolate

5. In all cases, the authority of the text is (mostly) maintained

Three elements of ethical analysis

1. Where are the facts of the situation (including the social context)?

2. What is the worldview of the individuals involved?

3. What are the relevant moral values of standards that apply?

Various modes of ethical analysis

1. Teleological (focuses on consequence)

2. Deontological (focuses on rule)

3. Relational (situational)

4. Aretological (focuses on intention)

5. Contextual

Four sources for religious ethics

Sacred Claims:

→ Sacred texts

→ Tradition of the Community

Rational Claims:

→ Normatively Human (reason)

→ Human Experience

Concerns about religious authenticity

· The problem lies in finding some hidden essence in something that is

o Plural

o Evolving

· Better questions to ask:

o Who is making an authenticity claim?

o What do they stand to win if their claim is perceived as persuasive?

o What could they lose if it is not?

o What competing authenticity claims are in place?