Intro Concepts (Theory - Kripal)

invention of religious studies

19th-century European roots; creation of categories, institutionalization in America

• key figure → Friedrich Max Müller (19th century early religious studies scholar)

  • “science of religion”

theoretical approaches (Kripal)

1. essentialist → shared defining practices

2. functional → function of religion

3. relational → relationships and social practice

essentialist approach to religion

looks for shared, necessary qualities like ‘belief in a god’ or ‘holy scripture’

• shared defining features

  • ex: Mircea Eliade; William James

Mircea Eliade

had essentialist approach to religion

• “religion is an encounter w/ the sacred”

William James

had essentialist approach to religion

• “religion is a personal experience”

functional approach to religion

looks to the purposes religions serve both for the individual and communities

• what religion does

• ex: Karl Marx and Freud

Karl Marx

had functional approach to religion

• “religion is an outgrowth of the alienated worker’s desire for comfort and safety”

Freud

had functional approach to religion

• “religion is an illusion resulting from deep psychological strife”

relational approach to religion

looks to the social aspects of religions as practiced

• relationships and social practices

• ex: E.E. Evans-Pritchard; Clifford Geertz

E. E. Evans-Pritchard

had relational approach to religion

• “religion is a wide-ranging system that must be described as it is lived”

Clifford Geertz

had relational approach to religion

• “religion is a ‘cultural system’ combining a worldview and ethos”

3 themes of religion

1. belief v. practice

2. religious v. secular

3. primitive/archaic v. modern

linear view of progress

primitive (magic, superstition, religious oppression) ←-→ modern (science, secularism, freedom)

family resemblances

Ludwig Wittgenstein

• different religions have similarities w/ each other

religion

any set of established stories, ritual performances, mind disciplines, bodily practices, and social institutions that have been built up over time around extreme encounters w/ some anomalous presence, energy, hidden order, or power that is experienced as radically Other or More

myth

a sacred story that founds and grounds a particular world

ritual

the re-enactment of the myth (that makes the world come into being)

myth and ritual

constitute a single performance aimed at the creative construction of a world to live in and experience as stable, secure, and real

• interconnected parts of a performance

reflexivity

the ability to recognize that our background, assumptions, beliefs, categories, and perspective influence how we understand religion and other cultures

• thinking a/b how your own perspective shapes what you see

types of rituals

1. life-cycle

2. civic religion

3. sacrifice

4. divination

life-cycle ritual

rituals that tend to occur within different religious systems during marked biological events

• mark important traditions (birth, puberty, marriage, death)

• help communities recognize changes in social status and restore order after disruptive events

civil religious ritual

often imply a connection, or even an identity, between the political order and the sacred order

• use national symbols and public ceremonies to create collective identity and loyalty

  • ex: national memorials, flag ceremonies, patriotic traditions

sacrifice ritual

involve giving up or offering something for a sacred purpose

• two types

  • 1. gift / exchange model → sacrifice often functions as a “gift” to the deity or the ancestors… that sets up a reciprocal relationship

  • 2. scapegoat model → sacrifice is meant as appeasement

divination ritual

involve interpreting signs, events, or objects to discover hidden knowledge or understand future

• attempt to intuit, predict, or fathom the future, usually to some practical end or decision

  • sign becomes meaningful through human interpretation of it within particular cultural or religious framework

chaos

complete disorder and non-meaning

cosmos

an ordered system of meaning, structure, and purpose

Kripal’s twist

“If you are outside a myth, it is just a myth. If you are inside, it is “the way things really are””

• has to do w/ skill of reflexivity