The Anthropology of Religion Part I: Definitions

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

I would say that the spiritual continuum is not purely organizational or institutional. Nor is it purely doctrinal.

I've had a chance to be around some fairly powerful religious personalities. What impressed me most was not their bookish learning or their ability to represent the meaning of scriptures. It was who they were. By who they were, they taught me more about G-d and what it is to be human than any advanced studies in theology or psychology.

This raises the basic question: does religion reside in a text or in a church building? Or does it live in the Becoming?

As far as I can tell, social forms of religion --like ritual and education --provide some basic guideliness. What the individual does with them can -- and often does --transcend them

Hi Netti!

I understand what you're saying. What I'm trying to emphasize in my conversation here with you and Kim is that an overall definition of religion can't be just about philosophical ephemerality. Here's another area where language has become sloppy and inadequate. There should be a different word for the "becoming", personal quest part of religion to distinguish it from the institutional part of the definition.

Chris

[path_of_one]

That's very enlightening, Netti, and I have similar experience. I think part of the question is how much we wish to separate religion from spirituality- or if we can really make such a distinction between social and individual. Is religion the stuff that is on the social surface: the ideas, the practices, the community... or is religion the transformation of individuals and community? I think anthropology generally argues the former, and comparative religion often argues the latter. I don't know that there is necessarily always a difference- for example, there is the social practice of taking Eucharist, but this is supposed to be a transformative practice (the belief) and I (among others) have felt that transformation...

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

I understand what you're saying. What I'm trying to emphasize in my conversation here with you and Kim is that an overall definition of religion can't be just about philosophical ephemerality. Here's another area where language has become sloppy and inadequate. There should be a different word for the "becoming", personal quest part of religion to distinguish it from the institutional part of the definition.

*Raises hand* Ummm, ummm, ummm.

Didn't William James already address this about a hundred years ago?

I mean, I thought I was being profound when I made the distinction between personal and institutional religion...only to have one of my profs point to James, and deflate my bubble.

Religious genius (experience) should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than religious institutions—since institutions are merely the social descendant of genius.

William James - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James's "radical empiricism" is distinct from his "pure experience" metaphysics. It is never precisely defined in the Essays, and is best explicated by a passage from The Meaning of Truth where James states that radical empiricism consists of a postulate, a statement of fact, and a conclusion. The postulate is that "the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience," the fact is that relations are just as directly experienced as the things they relate, and the conclusion is that "the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience"

William James (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
William James - Biography, Chronology, and Photographs

Since for James it was the consequences of believing that matter, he argued in "The Will to Believe" (1897) that belief must remain an individual process and that we may rationally choose to believe some crucial propositions even though they lie beyond the reach of reason and evidence. This position has important implications for religious convictions in particular, which James explored in detail in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

James
William James Society

[path_of_one]

I figured we'd get to James at some point... LOL. You guys are too good at bringing up the future topics!

James is one of the best resources we have on the topic, and I am not sure if it is more telling of the validity of his work or the lack of good work in the last 100 years that has resulted in his Varieties of Religious Experience being regarded as one of the best authorities on the subject.

That said, I am not entirely sure I buy into James' statement that institutions are the result of experience. As I'll bring up in this weekend's topic #2, ideas shape experiences and vice versa. We have a constant dialogue of individual and society, and of institution and experience. Our culture does shape our perceptions- even the types of experiences that we recognize and allow to happen. While there are certainly exceptions, it doesn't negate that social institutions do shape individual experience- for some more than others.

Individual religious experience gets complicated indeed- not only by social impacts but also arguably by personality type and learning style, both of which appear to be at least partially genetic.

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

Individual religious experience gets complicated indeed- not only by social impacts but also arguably by personality type and learning style, both of which appear to be at least partially genetic.

There has been some research comparing the religiosity of twins.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

I figured we'd get to James at some point... LOL. You guys are too good at bringing up the future topics!

James is one of the best resources we have on the topic, and I am not sure if it is more telling of the validity of his work or the lack of good work in the last 100 years that has resulted in his Varieties of Religious Experience being regarded as one of the best authorities on the subject.

That said, I am not entirely sure I buy into James' statement that institutions are the result of experience. As I'll bring up in this weekend's topic #2, ideas shape experiences and vice versa. We have a constant dialogue of individual and society, and of institution and experience. Our culture does shape our perceptions- even the types of experiences that we recognize and allow to happen. While there are certainly exceptions, it doesn't negate that social institutions do shape individual experience- for some more than others.

Individual religious experience gets complicated indeed- not only by social impacts but also arguably by personality type and learning style, both of which appear to be at least partially genetic.

How about relating this to coffee or tea? Consciousness is the water, ideas are the coffee beans or tea leaves, (influenced or dictated by culture,) philosophers are the roasters/grinders who process the ideas, institutions are the coffee makers and coffee filters, the hearts of individuals are the coffee cups, and God is the barista.
Drinking the coffee is the religious experience. (Why do so many people insist on decaf coffee or caffeine pills these days? )

[juantoo3]

OY! Only in the land of Starbucks could coffee substitute for culture...

Luv ya, Seattlegal!

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

OY! Only in the land of Starbucks could coffee substitute for culture...

Luv ya, Seattlegal!

{Hmm, upon further reflection, I don't think it is appropriate to limit God only to the roll of the barista. Perhaps the barista represents your relationship with God...}
Have you hugged your barista lately?

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

(Why do so many people insist on decaf coffee or caffeine pills these days? )

Yeah, they're pretty worrisome, but it's those darned chickory drinkers that have my knickers in a twist.

[path_of_one]

LOL! That's just awesome- religion as coffee!

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

James is one of the best resources we have on the topic, and I am not sure if it is more telling of the validity of his work or the lack of good work in the last 100 years that has resulted in his Varieties of Religious Experience being regarded as one of the best authorities on the subject.

Didn't Carl Jung have a bit to say about religion? Or is that getting a bit ahead of ourselves too?

I'm trying to remember the name of the French Jesuit...it'll come to me...but his ideas were really out there.

Teilhard de Chardin, that's it. Thank goodness for Google. Of course, he was peripherally implicated with the Peking man fraud too. OK, found it:

In his posthumously published book, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard writes of the unfolding of the material cosmos, from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere, and finally to his vision of the Omega Point in the future, which is "pulling" all creation towards it. He was a leading proponent of orthogenesis, the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal driven way. To Teilhard, evolution unfolded from cell to organism to planet to solar system and whole-universe (see Gaia theory). Such theories are generally termed teleological views of evolution.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's this "noosphere" stuff that lost me...but explained like this quote, Tao Equus ought to have a good time with it, with the reference to Gaia theory.

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

Drinking the coffee is the religious experience. (Why do so many people insist on decaf coffee or caffeine pills these days? )

Knocking back an espresso may be described as "...a blissful realization where a person's inner nature, the originally pure mind, is directly known as an illuminating emptiness, a thusness which is dynamic and immanent in the world." The Japanese word for this is "kensho."

s.

PS What is the point of decaf?

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

Pure Land has been the single most popular kind of Buddhism - even today - so maybe a broad sweep is warranted by the numbers involved.

McDonalds may be the single most popular kind of food, but I wouldn't want to extrapolate its, er, features to all food.

s.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

McDonalds may be the single most popular kind of food, but I wouldn't want to extrapolate its, er, features to all food.

Oh! There goes the knicker twist again. Ouch!

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Oh! There goes the knicker twist again. Ouch!

Might I suggest you go commando then?

s.