Religous studies study guide 2

Eliade’s 2 axioms

Anti-reductionist stance

method in studying religion must combine: History of religions, phenomenology

Phenomenology

Study religions in the form or appearance they present; compare religions to find general patterns of phenomena.

Utopian sect

Seeks to create perfect society on earth, does not want violent revolution, total social reform according to divine plan, wants communal society with no evil presence.

Characteristics of Sects according to Wilson

1. Tends to be exclusive

2. Claims to have a monopoly on the religious truth

3. Tends to be lay organized, rejects or downplays a religious division of labor.

4. Voluntarism

5. Demands total allegiance of members in all areas of

Types of religious communities

Natural religious communities, Voluntary religious communities

Natural Religious Communities

• Born/marries into the community

• Procreation sustains community, not evangelistic

• Rites of passage are important

• Ancestor veneration joins family, clan, or nation in kinship

• The largest natural religious community is the nation or nationality people believe they share common ancestry, history, and tradition. National religions trace nation and p

Founded religion

• Founded by a religious leader (prophet, reformer, teacher, master, etc) who has received new revelation or spiritual wisdom, usually reforms an existing religion to the point that something new is established.

• Founder enlists disciples.

• Founder has charisma and possesses authority over disciples.

• Disciples commitment to the founder frequently causes disciples to break with their natural community, family, civil authority, etc.

• Disciples/Apostles of founder spread new teaching; faced with crisis at death of founder

• Many voluntary religious movements do not survive death of founder. In order to survive, voluntary religions must: form sacred canon of teachings, establish rule of faith, defend faith to larger society, standardize worship, and establish formal lines of authority.

Different uses of scripture

• Education and instruction

• Public worship and ritual

• Meditation and devotion

• Object of religious devotions

  • Magical function

Functions of rituals

• Mark transitions in life, establish identity.

• Routinize behavior, reduce uneasiness, resolve social tension.

• Dramatize, articulate, and strengthen a community’s important pattern of beliefs and behavior.

  • Circular pattern of legitimation.

Ritual

A significant action

Types of religious rituals

Type 1: Non-periodic life cycle rites and life crisis rites

Type 2: Calendar or seasonal rituals

Religious ritual

An agreed on and formalized pattern of ceremonial movements and verbal expression carried out in a sacred context. Can be condensed symbols of a particular religious tradition, and they can express several levels of meaning. On the individual level, rituals bring together mind, body, and emotions. In a community of shared values, rituals bind individual members together.

Type 1: Non periodic life cycle

Common pattern of 3 distinct elements: Acts of separation, Transition, Reincorporation into the community.

Examples: Social puberty rites, vocational initiation rites, marriage and funeral rites

Type 1: Life Crisis Rites

Aims to address a specific crisis in the life of an individual or a community.

1.      In primal societies that equate illness with the supernatural:

a)      Rituals of healing

b)      Exorcism of evil spirits/demons

1.      Exorcism was historically practiced in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

2.      Certain Pentecostal versions of Christianity still practice exorcism. Presently rare in older Christian denominations; not practices in later Judaism.

3.      Rituals of Healing- Anointing of the sick in Catholic and some Protestant versions of Christianity today.

Type 2 Calendar or Seasonal Rituals

1.      Could be connected with nature, especially in agricultural societies.

2.      Could commemorate and represent archetypal historical events. (Examples in Judaism and Christianity)

3.      Purpose is always to secure the well being of both community and individual.

·         Pattern of four principal movements:

1.      Rites of Mortification

2.      Rites of Purification

3.      Rites of Invigoration

4.      Rites of Jubilation

Calendar or Seasonal Type: Ritual Acts of Sacrifice

·         Three Dominant Purposes of ritual sacrifice:

Ø  Propitiation: to cause to become favorably inclined, to appease or conciliate another.

Ø  Securing of a social bond- a) meal to establish covenant or mystical union with the divinity; b) also sacrifice establishes the community.

Ø  Expiation- Atonement for defilement or sinful transgression.

Calendar or Seasonal Type: Rituals as Sacraments

·         All religious rituals are sacramental in that they concern the presence of the sacred or holy.

·         Characteristics of rituals as sacraments:

1.      Uses temporal things (words, gestures, objects) to make manifest the sacred.

2.      Effective action and performative sacraments have an accomplished function.

3.      Psychological function- catharsis

4.      Repetitive; must be done periodically.

5.      Must be done meticulously, accurately; can become empty ritual; subject to anti-ritual protests by religious prophets.

6.      Authentic ritual can create a structure of meaning that binds individual and group into genuine communitas.

·         Conclusion- Ritual as sacrament has spiritual, psychological, and social functions.

Sacred scripture

Sacred writings of all religions

Role of sacred scripture

·         Several religions believe their sacred texts should only be read in the original language.

·         Variety of literary genres in some scriptures.

·         Canon from Greek- rule, standard, measuring

·         Sometimes there are differences between the official level of authority attributed to some texts and the actual practice of the followers. Fluid nature of some canons.

Distinctive features of sacred significance

1.      Possesses quality of sacred power; object of reverence and veneration.

2.      Transformative effect; viewed as representative of its divine origin

a)      Understood as possessing miraculous/healing power.

b)      Power exhibited when studied, read, or recited.

3.      Normative authority and canonicity in matters of belief and practice.

Cosmic Dualism

Enduring conflict between opposites- light and dark, good and evil

Spenta Mainyu

good, holy spirit

Angra Mainyu

Evil, bad spirit

Pantheism

Everythins (all)

Incarnation

·         Deity/ultimate reality in human form. Christianity is a religion that views deity/ultimate reality in terms of incarnation. The word incarnate literally means flesh.

Exclusivists

Universalism

Atheism

Agnosticism

·         It is impossible to know whether or not there is a Deity/ultimate reality.

Humanism

Cosmology

The study o

How Eliade used myth

·         Myths are symbols put in narrative form, a sequence of symbols put in the form of a story.

·         Myths can narrate a sacred history; tell events that took place in primordial time.

·         Intended to tell about the sacred orders or patterns that the society presupposes.

·         Reestablish contact with the sacred time of beginnings in order to ensure the renewal of nature, human life, or social institutions.

What purpose did cosmogonic/etiological myths serve in society?

1)      Models for later creative acts. Many etiological myths describe the origin of the cosmos in order to explain the reason or cause of other things in society.

Themes in cosmogonic myths

·         Fertility, generation, procreation

·         Conflict and conquest

·         Ordering of chaos

·         Craftsmanship

·         Divine thought and will

Examples of origin by conflict

Babylonian: Epic of Enuma Elish (When on high or When Above) Is perfect example of origin by conflict; struggle between Ti’amat and another god, Marduk. Marduk kills Ti’amat and becomes the king god. Ti’amat is depicted as water/chaos. Myth relates to the flooding of the rivers in the Spring. Chaos/flooding has to be contained. Gods also create humans to do the work. Most important for explaining the social order of society.

Examples of origin by a divine craftsman

·         Greek writer Anazagoras- Idea that a divine mind (nous) sets in motion matter that already existed. Plato in Timaeus: Divine Demiurge (reason) created order from disorder; not a creator god; victory of Reason over Necessity. Reason triumphs over resistant imperfection of Necessity. Don’t have to deal with the problem of explaining evil because you don’t have an all knowing, all righteous creator god.

Example of creation by word/creation from nothing

·         Hebrew creation story: Creation by the word of the deity. Some hold to Creatio ex nihilo.

·         No account of the creation of gods. For Judaism and later Christianity, God was pre-existent; God created universe and all that is in it from nothing or created order of the cosmos.

·         No struggle for cosmic order.

·         Humanity has a unique status over all other creations. Definitely different than Enuma Elish- humans are not created to bear the burdens. For Hebrews, humans were created in the image of God.

·         Creation is all good; sin of humanity creates disorder and evil.

Why are cosmogonic myths not important in some religions

Ex: Jainism- developed from Hinduism. Origin of the world is not important. The goal is to free human soul from imprisonment in cosmic matter, Karma and samsara (cycle of life and rebirth). Attachment to the world is the problem; attaches Karma (cosmic matter) to people; people need liberation.

·         Ex: Buddhism- Gautama wanted to free people from suffering caused by craving. Don’t ask questions about cosmogony; deal with the problem of escaping human suffering.

What is the Human Problem

·         Why are people unfulfilled?

·         Why are people alienated from others?

·         One’s understanding of Deity, ultimate reality or Cosmogony usually relates to one’s view of the human problem.

·         Different world religions propose different solutions based on various understandings of the nature of human character/ the human problem.

Marx

1)      People are alienated and unhappy because within a capitalist society they do not obtain satisfaction from productive work. Solution: Return to primitive communism of joint ownership. Work would then have meaning. Get rid of private property; dissolve class struggle.

Freud

1)      Human problem: Repression. People are unhappy or neurotic because of the conflict between natural desires and the constraints of society. Repressed thoughts must be brought to consciousness through psychoanalysis so the thoughts can be handled. Solution: Psychoanalysis

Plato

1)      Human problem is ignorance. Happiness is the result of true knowledge. The highly educated should be in control of society. Plato’s theory is called Rationalism. Knowledge and virtue are acquired through reason. People can understand true virtue through education. Positive view of human capacity for virtuous life. People are capable of acting virtuously through reason. Reason is redemptive.

Stoicism

Anthropic Principle

·         Was the world by chance or was there a process of fine tuning that could not have occurred by chance? Some type of design has to be in place; criticizes Darwin, but does not demand a creator god.

·         John A Wheeler at the Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Texas at Austin, said in 1986: “It is not only that man is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the other? Man could never come into being in such a universe. That is the central point of the anthropic principle. According to this principle, a life giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.

Intelligent Design

What century did Eliade

1949-1957

What century did Geertz

1973-1983

What century did Pritchard

1937-1965

Associated with Eliade

The element of the sacred

Associated with Geertz

Most influential American anthropologists

Associated with Pritchard

“in the field” “if i were a horse”

Anti-reductionist stance

A thing that belongs to its own kind; cannot be studied as byproduct of some other factor, religion is an active agent.

Ethnography

Nation, people, culture

Interpretation anthropology

Seeking out the system of meanings and values through which people live their lives.

Functional Theory of Society

Complete, interconnected, working organism

Magic

The belief that certain aspects of life can be controlled by mystical forces or supernatural powers.

Eliade academic disciplines

Sacred is the supernatural not the society.

comparative religionist

“history of religions”

Geertz academic disciplines

American anthropologist who also made use of the disciplines of French and American Sociology

Pritchard academic disciplines

Victorian anthropology, French sociology, British Empirical anthropology

Eliade religion

An encounter with the sacred was an encounter with the wholly other

Geertz religion

: 1. A system of symbols which acts to 2. Establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by 3. 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

Pritchard religion

Nuer religion- God is the spirit of the sky, god controls nature

Eliades strengths and weaknesses

Eliade’s prior assumptions determined his results. Influenced by mystical traditions.

Geertz strengths and weaknesses

) Rejects reductionism, describe religion of a cultural system, Geertz system is scientific, concentrates on ethos.

Pritchard strengths and weaknesses

Rejects reductionism, rejects social evolution, sympathetic towards religion

Eliade influenced by own religious history

Possibly

Geertz influenced by own religious history

No