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MANY PEOPLES, MANY FAITHS
WOMEN AND MEN IN THE WORLD RELIGIONS
Robert S. Ellwood
University of Southern California
Barbara A. McGraw
Saint Mary’s College of California
2
First published 2014, 2009, 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Cover Printer: Lehigh-Phoenix Color/Hagerstown
ISBN-13: 9780205797110 (pbk)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellwood, Robert S.,
Many peoples, many faiths: women and men in the world religions/Robert S. Ellwood, Barbara A. McGraw.
— 10th ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-205-79711-0 (alk. paper)
1. Religions. 2. Religion. I. McGraw, Barbara A. II. Title.
BL80.3.E44 2013
200—dc23
2012033344
Cover Images:
Top row, left: © Stuart Black / Robert Harding Images
Top row, right: Karen Trist/Rough Guides/Dorling Kindersley, Ltd.
Second row: © Patrick Foto / Shutterstock
Third row, left:©Getty Images / Santiago Urquijo
Third row, right: Chuongy/Fotolia
Bottom row: © Idris Ahmed / Alamy Stock Photo
3
A very good book, best on the market.
—Helena Gourko, Merrimack College
There is no competition for this book. It is a
nearly perfect introductory textbook in my considered
estimation.
—Dell deChant, University of South Florida
4
For Richard Scott Lancelot Ellwood
May your faith be always adventurous.
For Erin Eklund Roddy and Echo Anne McCollum,
Daughters not of my body, but of my heart,
May the world greet you with a door wide open
to the fulfillment of all your potential.
5
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1
UNDERSTANDING
THE
WORLD’S
RELIGIOUS
HERITAGE
Chapter Objectives
A New Day of Religious Encounter
Visiting a Strange Land
Conditioned and Unconditioned Reality
Doors and Windows to the Ultimate
Forms of Religious Expression
Theoretical Expression: What Is Said in Religion
Practical Expression: What Is Done in Religion
Sociological Expression: Groups and Leadership in Religion
Ethics, Religious Experience, and Art
The Interrelationship of the Forms of Expression
Descriptive and Critical Approaches
Religion Through Time
Looking Forward
Religion, Governance, and Political Life
Women in the World Religions
Fundamental Features of Religions
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on the Study of World Religions
Chapter 2
THE SACRED IN NATURE
Indigenous Peoples and Religion
Chapter Objectives
Encountering Indigenous Peoples’ Religion
The First Faiths
The Natural World is the Realm of the Sacred
Gods, Spirits, and the World
Initiation Rites of Men and Women
Shamans
Tracing Survivals of Archaic Indigenous Peoples’ Religions
6
Indigenous Hunter-Gathers and Agriculturalists
Indigenous Hunters
Indigenous Gatherers
Indigenous Farmers
The Social Impact of Agriculture, the Role of Women, and the
Patriarchal Revolution
Progress and Return
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on Indigenous Peoples’ Religions
Chapter 3
LIFE AGAINST TIME
The Spiritual Paths of India
Chapter Objectives
The Face of India
Understanding Hinduism
Ancient Indus Valley Religion
The Vedas
The Upanishads
Spiritual Ferment and the Rise of Buddhism
The Laws of Manu
The Yoga Sutras
The Bhagavad-Gita
Advaita Vedanta
Tantrism
Devotional Hinduism
The Vishnu Family of Devotional Gods
The Shiva-Shakti Family of Devotional Gods
The Mixing of the Families of Gods and Goddesses, and the
“Holy Trinity.”
Devotionalism in the Meeting of Hinduism and Islam
Devotionalism in the Meeting of East and West
The Practice of Hinduism Today
Temples
Home Rites
Weddings
Funerals
Caste
Water
Sadhus
Festivals
Cows
Vegetarianism
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Ashrams and Swamis
Hinduism, Governance, and Political Life
Classical Concepts: Dharma and the Holy Kingship
The Hindu Nationalist Movement
Mohandas K. Gandhi and Indian Independence
India Today: Tension, Change, and Promise
Women in Hinduism
Sources of Classical Hindu Ideals of Womanhood
The Subordination of the Ideal Hindu Wife
Places of Power and Participation
Women and Reform in India
Today’s Hindu Women
Jainism
Sikhism
India in America
Hinduism Comes to America
Other Indian Influences in America
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on the Religions of India
Chapter 4
WISDOM EMBARKED FOR THE FARTHER SHORE
The Journey of Buddhism
Chapter Objectives
A Religion of Transformation of Consciousness
The Life of the Buddha
Basic Buddhist Teaching
The Middle Way
The Four Noble Truths and “No Self”
Nirvana
Theravada Buddhism
Mahayana Buddhism
Nagarjuna’s Two Basic Principles
The Bodhisattva
“Mind Only” (Yogacara)
The Three Forms of Buddhic Expression (The Three “Buddha
Bodies”)
Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism
Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet
Chan or Zen Buddhism
Pure Land Buddhism
Buddhism, Governance, and Political Life
The Tradition of the Dharma King
8
Colonial Rule and Recent Developments
Implications of Buddhism for Politics Today
Women in Buddhism
The Dharma: Opening the Door to Women’s Enlightenment
Women in Early Indian Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism
Women in Mahayana Buddhism
Women in Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism
Women in Chan (Zen) and Pure Land Buddhism
Women in Contemporary Buddhism East and West
Buddhism in America
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on Buddhism
Chapter 5
DRAGON AND SUN
Religions of East Asia
Chapter Objectives
The East Asian Spiritual World
Religion in China
Ancient China
The Dao—Foundational to Confucianism and Daoism
Confucianism
Confucius (Kong Fuzi) and the Confucian Classics
Fundamentals of the Confucian Tradition
The Han Synthesis and Yin–Yang
Mandarins (Ru)
Rituals of the Mandarins (Ru)
Neo-Confucianism
Confucian Moral and Social Values
Daoism
Fundamentals of Daoism
Laozi and the Dao De Jing
The Development of Philosophical Daoism
Religious Daoism
Buddhism in China
Religion in Traditional China—A Syncretistic Practice
Religion in China, Governance, and Political Life
Confucianism as a Holistic Sociopolitical Vision
The Sage King and the Mandate of Heaven
Religion and Politics after the Fall of the Empire
Religion and Politics in China Today
Women in Chinese Religion
Women in Classical Confucianism
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Women in Daoism (Taoism)
The “Golden Lotuses”—Footbinding in China
Chinese Women in Buddhism
Women in the People’s Republic of China
The Influence of Daoism and Confucianism in America
Religion in Japan
Shinto
Four Affirmations
Shinto Worship
The Kami and Their Myths
Buddhism in Japan
Tendai and Shingon
The Kamakura Reformation: Pure Land, Nichiren, and Zen
Confucianism in Japan
The Japanese “New Religions”
Religion in Japan, Governance, and Political Life
Women in Japanese Religion
Religion in Korea
Religion in Vietnam
Religion in Mongolia
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on East Asian Religion
Chapter 6
ONE GOD, MANY WORDS AND WONDERS
The Family of the Three Great Monotheistic Religions and
Zoroastrianism
Chapter Objectives
The Nature of Monotheistic Religion
The Abrahamic Faiths
Zoroastrianism
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on Monotheism and Zoroastrianism
Chapter 7
KEEPING COVENANT WITH GOD IN HISTORY
The Unique Perspective of Judaism
Chapter Objectives
Jewish Uniqueness
The Ancient Story of Judaism
From the Second Temple to the Talmud
Medieval and Modern Judaism
Judaism in America
Jewish Beliefs
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Jewish Life
Festivals and Practices
Judaism, Governance, and Political Life
Foundational Concepts
Structure of the Jewish Polity
Theology of the Land and Current Tensions
Israel and Governance
Diaspora Today
Looking Back to Look Forward
Women in Judaism
Women in Traditional Judaism
Jewish Women Today—Modernity and Feminism
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on the Hebrew Scriptures and Judaism
Chapter 8
SPREADING THE WORD OF GOD IN THE WORLD
The Growth of Christianity
Chapter Objectives
Encountering Christianity
The Scope of Christianity
Jesus
The Early Jesus Movement
Paul
Varieties of Early Christianity
The Emergence of Normative Christianity
The Christian Triumph
The Foundations of Medieval Christianity
Medieval Christendom
The Reformation and Martin Luther
Calvin
The English Reformation
Radical Reform
The Catholic Reformation
Christian Mysticism and Devotion
Eastern Orthodoxy
Roman Catholicism
Protestantism
Independent Christianities
Varieties of Independent Christianities around the World
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons)
Christianity, Governance, and Political Life
Apolitical Christianity Becomes Political: Christianity and
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Politics in Historical Context
Roman Catholicism
Eastern Orthodoxy
Protestant Churches
Christianity in America: A Wellspring of Denominationalism
Missionaries and the Modern Expansion of Christianity
Women in Christianity
Women in the Early Jesus Movement
Christian Dualism, the Medieval Vision, and their Impact on
Attitudes toward Women
Christian Women in Europe during the Middle Ages: Wives,
Nuns, Charismatics, and Heretics
Women and Reform
Christianity and Women in America before the Twentieth Century
The “Woman Question” in American Christianity in the Twentieth
Century and Beyond
Christianity in the World Today
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on Christianity
Chapter 9
SUBMITTING TO THE WILL OF GOD
Building the House of Islam
Chapter Objectives
The Meaning of Islam
Muhammad
The Qur’an
The Five Pillars of Islam
Prayers and Mosques
Jihad
Historic Islam
Features of Classic Islamic Civilization
Urban Settings and Family Life
The Development of Islamic Culture
The Role of Nonrepresentational Art, Calligraphy, and Literature
in Islamic Culture
Philosophy, Science, and the Intellectual Life of Islam
Rationalism and Mysticism in the Development of Islamic
Thought
Sunni Islam
Shi’a Islam
Islamic Mysticism
Islam, Governance, and Political Life
12
Islam’s Community Ideal and Authority
Tension with the West
Islamicism
Governments in the Islamic World
Islam in Europe
Islam in America
Women in Islam
Islam and the Question of Women’s Role
Early Islam after Muhammad: The Continuation of Patriarchal
Patterns
Muslim Women: Leaders, Saints, and Practitioners
Muslim Women and the Winds of Change
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on Islam
Chapter 10
SPIRITS RISING
New Religious Movements
Chapter Objectives
The World of New Religions
Types of New Religions
Reactive Movements
Accommodationist Movements
Spirit Movements
New Revelation Sects
Import Religions
Golden Age Movements
Hybrid Religions
Other Ways to Categorize New Religions
New Religions Around the World
Features of New Religious Movements
Summary
Questions for Review
Suggested Readings on New Religious Movements
A FINAL WORD
We have surveyed the religions of the world. What have we
learned?
What then of the future?
Appendix Studying the World’s Religions
I. Writing a Term Paper
II. Writing a Religious Visit Paper
13
III. Internet Research Guide
Glossary
Endnotes
Credits
Index
14
PREFACE
For more than three and a half decades, this introduction to the world’s religions,
has combined factual information with empathic writing that seeks to instill in
readers a sense of the richness of the religious lives of the peoples of the world.
While striving for accuracy and depth, Many Peoples, Many Faiths is neither an
encyclopedic compilation of data nor a survey of alternative philosophies. Instead,
the goal is to present a sense and feeling of the total human experience of religious
life from past to present, made up as it is in an inseparable mingling of concepts,
worship and other practices, and social factors. Also, the hope is that readers will
become curious about the areas of scholarship that lie behind this introductory
presentation of the world’s religions and will be inspired to explore these areas
more deeply.
15
NEW MATERIAL AND SPECIAL FEATURES OF
THIS EDITION
The tenth edition has been fully updated throughout with material reflecting new
scholarship and general interest and, where appropriate, addressing rapidly
developing and shifting areas, taking account of the dynamic, changing quality of
religion. The authors call the readers’ attention to special features of this book and
a few examples of new material that are especially significant:
• This book places the world’s religions in historical context, illustrating the
complex dynamic of each religion over time, while also presenting current
beliefs, practices, and group formations.
• The chapters include substantial sections on women in religion; religion
governance and political life; and religion in America, which have been
revised and updated and many of these sections include new narrative
accounts.
• MyReligionLab, an online resource produced by Pearson Education, is
available with this book and includes “Suggested Websites” and other helpful
electronic tools for this book.
• Chapter Two on indigenous peoples has been fully revised, including a
revised map and additional accounts of indigenous religions to enhance
readers’ understanding of these foundational faiths and their importance for
understanding other religions.
• In Chapter Three, the discussion of the religions of India has been
substantially revised to reflect new scholarship on the development of
Hinduism from prehistory to the present, and the chapter now has more
developed sections on “the Practice of Hinduism Today,” “Sikhism,” and
“Jainism.”
• Chapter Eight includes a new section on “Independent Christianities”,
including a new section on the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(the Mormons),” and the sections on “Missionaries and the Modern Expansion
of Christianity” and on “Christian Mysticism and Devotion” have been
substantially revised.
• Chapter Nine reflects new developments in Islam and includes a new section
on Islam in Europe.
16
• Throughout the book, some descriptive writing has been replaced by profiles
of individuals who exemplify the same point in personal terms, and additional
narratives of the authors’ experiences have been included.
• Many new photographs and other art have been added to increase the
attractiveness and accessibility of the book.
• The Glossary is a helpful tool for students, as are the bibliographies at the end
of each chapter, which have been updated to reflect new scholarship, and the
maps, timelines, and summary information tables.
• The Appendix gives practical suggestions on how to write papers for courses
using this text and makes suggestions about how to do research in the library
and on the Internet.
As always, true understanding of the many faiths of the many peoples of Earth
requires a mixture of knowledge and empathy. While reading this book, keep the
necessary facts in mind, but read it also with compassion, which alone can furnish
an understanding of what those facts mean to human beings for whom they are
gateways to ultimate meaning.
The Authors
Robert S. Ellwood is emeritus of the Religious Studies Department,
University of Southern California. Generous in sharing with other scholars, whether
young or old, his clear understanding of the deeper goals of education and
scholarship, his breadth of knowledge and insight have resulted in numerous
impressive works. Dr. Ellwood has a legacy with a long trajectory—Many
Peoples, Many Faiths being one of his many significant contributions over the past
more than four decades.
Barbara A. McGraw, Professor and Director of the Center for Engaged
Religious Pluralism, Saint Mary’s College of California, has been coauthor of
Many Peoples, Many Faiths for half of all editions of this book, having joined Dr.
Ellwood from the sixth edition forward in the rewriting, editing, updating, and
additions to all sections of the book. Among other things, she contributed most of
the material on women in the world religions, on religion, governance, and
political life, and on the religions in America.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are indebted to many people who have helped to make this tenth edition
possible. First, we would like to thank everyone at Prentice Hall who has worked
on this book. Unfortunately, we cannot name them all here, but we would like to
thank Sarah Touborg, the Editor in chief for Religion; Nicole Conforti, the Editorial
Project Manager, whose perseverance and steady hand during a complicated
production process was greatly appreciated; and Anandakrishnan Natarajan,
Project Manager, whose swift and clear communications and attention to detail
were invaluable to the success and timeliness of this edition.
We also wish to acknowledge the reviewers who offered suggestions for the
improvement of this tenth edition. Our thanks and appreciation to: James Findlay,
California State University Northridge; Theresa Gilbertson, University of South
Florida Sarasota-Manatee; Tim Harrison, McKendree University; Cristobal
Serran-Pagan, Valdosta State University; Curtis Smith, Penn State University; and
Brandy Stark, St. Petersburg College.
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C HAPTE R
1
Understanding the World’s Religious
Heritage
19
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to
■ Talk about what you mean by religion, and what a religion includes.
■ Discuss religion in terms of the human experience of a split-level universe—as
conditioned and unconditioned reality.
■ Cite and interpret Joachim Wach’s Three Forms of Religious Expression, plus
expression in ethics, religious experience, and art.
■ Discuss other methods for approaching the study of religion: descriptive,
critical, and historical.
■ Begin the study of religion, governance, and political life and the role of
religion in the lives of women.
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A NEW DAY OF RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER
The world’s many religious pathways are no longer far away.
Think of your friends, neighbors, classmates, or workmates. The chances are
many of them are of a different religious background than yourself. Think of the
products you buy in today’s global economy: electronics from Malaysia, household
items from China, chocolate from Africa. The chances are the hands that prepared
them for your use belonged to persons of diverse religions, or no religion at all.
The religions of the world—the words themselves may evoke a panorama of
colorful images, perhaps drawn from a host of stories, movies, TV documentaries,
the Internet, travel, or family background. Incense and temple gongs, yogis in
contorted postures, ancient and mysterious chants, joyous shouts of praise, the
slowness of ancient rituals—all these and more sweep past our inner eyes and ears.
Sometimes, what most fascinates us is that which is far away or long ago. But the
study of the religions of the world is no longer a matter of reading about what may
seem strange or is faraway. In today’s world of pluralism* and rapid travel, almost
any faith anywhere is a presence and an option throughout the world. The temples
of Hindu Americans and the mosques of Muslim Americans embellish larger
American cities. American Zen centers, quiet with the great peace of the Buddha,
teach Eastern meditation. Christianity and Judaism in all their manifold forms have
long existed here side by side, just as Christianity has been carried by American
and other missionaries to the homelands of Hinduism and Buddhism.
All of this makes “now” an exciting time to study religion. We who come to
the study of religion today bring with us expectations shaped by these times. The
presence of many options, and the ferment within most of them, is something we
sense inside ourselves as well as in the outside world.
A glance at virtually any morning paper or evening TV news reminds us that
now is also an important time to study religion for grimmer reasons. In the post–
Cold War world, religion, often linked to passionate nationalism, appears as a
major factor in many of the planet’s tragic conflicts. Reports from India, the Middle
East, the Balkans and, after September 11, 2001, New York and Washington,
remind us of this terrible reality over and over. While the religions invoked in these
often-bloody disputes cannot usually be solely blamed for them, no full
comprehension of the Earth’s current crises is possible without an in-depth
understanding of the faiths involved. In assessing our own attitudes toward
religious belief, we are forced to deal with the fact that religion is not always a
good thing by ordinary human values.
Our increasingly global world and economy mean that the adult careers of
many American students will bring them in close contact with, perhaps even
residence in, societies like those in India, China, Japan, or the Middle East, while
many of Americans’ counterparts in those countries will come to the United States.
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Whether one’s primary interests are in law, business, diplomacy, or academic
study, the greatest success in these endeavors will be achieved by those with a deep
understanding of how a society works, including sensitivity to its religious heritage.
In this book we will see, for example, how a sense of enduring Confucian values
helps one to grasp how both Japanese corporations and the Chinese People’s
Republic really function.
These examples indicate how complex religion is. It is now time to sort out
this complexity by introducing some categories through which religion can be
understood. Our task will now be to answer these questions:
• What do we look for when we look at the religion of another culture and try to
understand what it means in that culture and to the people for whom it is
important?
• What are different ways in which religion expresses itself? (For example, as
beliefs, as ways of worship, as social institutions like churches and temples,
through ethical values, in art and literature.)
• What kind of terms do we use when we are just trying to describe a religion?
• How do we look at religion critically, that is, when it may not be a good thing,
in ways that are fair, that try to accept cultures different from our own, yet in
ways that are also true to what we consider to be the highest human values?
• What have been the basic stages of religious history on planet Earth?
• Can religion be defined? or is it always just a fairly elusive word used to
cover a variety of things?
22
VISITING A STRANGE LAND
What is religion, then?
Suppose you are taking a trip to a country whose culture is completely foreign
to you, and you want to determine the religion of that culture. Suppose, further, that
because you cannot speak the language of the country well enough to ask anyone
about it, you have to look for clues in what you see around you and in what people
do. What would you look for?
Most of what you see has obvious explanations—basic human needs for
shelter, food, drink, security, and pleasure in this world. Most buildings up and
down the streets are houses where people live or shops where craftspeople work
or merchants sell goods to meet everyday needs. Most of the people scurrying about
are out on business or seeking recreation.
Once in a while, though, you may see something that has no such “ordinary”
interpretation. A structure may be neither a home nor a shop, yet it is obviously set
apart and perhaps elaborately ornamented. A human activity may be neither work
nor play; it may not produce food, exercise the body, or challenge one’s skill in any
ordinary way. Yet it is clearly of great importance. It may be marked by a solemn or
festive air. Both the building and the activity may be associated with symbols and
gestures that make no sense to an outsider; yet they seem to be of deep significance
to people.
You suspect these are places and practices connected to the religion of the
land. You know you could be wrong. The special building might be a court instead
of a temple; the activity, a game or dance instead of a rite. The rites of state and of
religion are often intermingled. Often games and dances combine pleasure with
celebrating a religious festival or occasion: think Carnival in Rio or Thanksgiving
football games in America.
Even ordinary activities like planting or harvest may come with religious
“extras” to relate them to the people’s beliefs, like the American harvest-time
Thanksgiving festival. These “extras,” like the mysterious buildings and practices,
go beyond what it takes to meet everyday needs or ordinary fun and games. They
may therefore point to the society’s awareness of more-than-ordinary reality. The
rhetoric of preaching and the quiet of meditation, the ornate garb and stylized
motions of elaborate ritual, and the gladsome tones of gospel music—all say reality
has more to it than the everyday. These “signs” also say that this extraordinary
reality, this “something more,” touches human life and can be felt, channeled, and
made manifest by special means. Rites and symbols, preaching and meditation, are
ways of connecting to that “something more.”
23
CONDITIONED AND UNCONDITIONED REALITY
What is that “something more”? One thing many religions tell us is that we live in a
split-level universe. Or, to use the expression of the historian of religion Mircea
Eliade, that reality is “nonhomogeneous.” In homogenized milk, the milk and the
cream are thoroughly mixed together. When it is not homogenized, the cream is at
the top and the milk at the bottom, making two layers. However, some religions,
like Hinduism and many indigenous religions, tell us that reality is actually one
homogeneous whole and that we just need to be enlightened to this truth.
Most religious people see two kinds of reality. As we have seen, there is
ordinary, everyday reality, and there is also the special reality of the temple, the
festival, the “extras” pointing quietly to “something more” mixed in with everyday
life. Certain visible places, people, and events are more in touch with that
“something more” than others. They are sacred places, persons, and activities.
We may think of the layers of this split-level, “nonhomogeneous” universe—
the ordinary and the “something more”—as conditioned and unconditioned reality.
(These relatively neutral terms are borrowed from Buddhist thought.)
Let’s start by talking about conditioned reality, because that’s what most of us
are living in most of the time. To say something is conditioned simply means it is
limited or restricted. We are all conditioned in time and space. If we are living in
the twenty-first century, we are not also in the ninth century with Charlemagne or in
the twenty-third century with Star Trek. If we are living in Ohio or Oklahoma, we
are not also in Hong Kong or on the planet Neptune.
Furthermore, we are conditioned by the limitations and habits of our minds.
We can think about only one thing at a time, and we forget far more than we
remember. Even the greatest genius can know only the tiniest fragment of what there
is to know or to think more than the minutest fraction of what there is to think.
Moreover, we continually put limits around ourselves when we say, “I’m a person
who does this but not that,” “I believe this but not that,” or “I like this but not that.”
Consider now what unconditioned reality, the opposite of all the above,
would be like. It would be equally present to all times and all places. Its
knowledge, wisdom, and mental power would be unlimited, and would include all
that could possibly be known or thought. If it (or he or she) had preferences as to
doing, believing, or liking, they would be based on omniscient (all-knowing)
wisdom, not the bundle of ill-informed fears and prejudices by which we too often
act—and react.
Unconditioned reality would, in fact, be no different from the Divine, or
Ultimate, Reality of religion and philosophy. It goes by different names and has
varying degrees of personality, but in most religions, it is believed that some
unconditioned pole of reality stands over our very-much-conditioned everyday
lives. (Even the legions of secondary entities that inhabit the religious world—the
24
many gods, buddhas, bodhisattvas, angels, spirits—have their significance because
of ultimate unconditioned reality. They are in a special relationship to it and send
out its light or energy in some special way.)
We can illustrate conditioned and unconditioned reality and its names in
various religions like this:
Unconditioned Reality
Brahman (philosophical Hinduism)
Nirvana (Buddhism)
The Dao (Daoism)
Heaven (Confucianism)
God (Judaism, Christianity, Islam [called Allah in Islam])
Awareness of Presence of Spirits (Shamanism)
Conditioned_Reality*
Maya (philosophical Hinduism)
Samsara (Buddhism)
Under Heaven (Daoism, Confucianism)
Choice of Death (Judaism)
The “World” (Christianity)
Realm of War (Islam)
Evil Spirits (Shamanism)
25
DOORS AND WINDOWS TO THE ULTIMATE
One point remains—a very important one. When religion is seen as split between
conditioned and unconditioned reality, the wall between them nevertheless is not
hard and solid. It is not as though the two realms are hermetically sealed off from
each other. Instead, the main idea behind any religion is that the wall is full of
doors and windows.
Gods and people can look through from one side to the other. Revelations,
gods, angels, saviors, and spirits can walk through the doors from the other side to
visit us; our prayers and good thoughts can go through from this side to the other;
and a few favored people—and perhaps the souls of many of us after death—may
pass through those doors to join that other level of reality.
This porous borderline, where the action is, is the sphere of religion. All
religions believe that certain teachings, practices (such as prayer or meditation,
rites, and services), and modes of ethical behavior best express or fit in with the
nature of ultimate reality. Those things are therefore like doors and windows.
Through prayer, mystical experience, or worship, we can open them and pass
through them in spirit. Certain persons or institutions are also in especially close
touch with unconditioned reality and are also like those portals. So also are works
of religious art, music, and literature. By all these means, religious people may
enable themselves to move through the windows or doors.
Some will object that not all of what is ordinarily called religious, or that has
to do with gods and the like, is really concerned with unconditioned reality. They
might point out that people go to church or temple or conduct rituals for social
reasons or merely because they like the music. Yet understanding religion should
not always be limited by the conscious intention of the religionist, often hard to
judge in any event.
Even if a person goes to church only to meet someone, or if a particular
hunting chant is a tradition that bonds the tribe, something more is implied. In the
church or temple, God will be spoken of and things done that make no sense if there
is no God. The hunting chant tells us that there is more to the hunt than just human
beings hunting. Both chant and church open up in back, so to speak, to that invisible
realm beyond ordinary existence. In the end, they imply doors and windows to
ultimate reality.
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FORMS OF RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION
What then is this religion with its doors and windows all about? What is it made up
of? To start with, it is made up of what people say, do, and form organizations
around. The essence of religion may be unconditioned reality, and teaching about
that may vary. But the outer forms of these doors and windows have much in
common throughout the world. When we look carefully at religion all over the
world, we find that certain basic patterns, like old friends, keep reappearing
despite all the variety.
The sociologist of religion Joachim Wach (1898–1955) gave us one useful set
of pegs for those patterns.1 While the essence of religion may be beyond words, he
tells us, religion expresses itself in human life in three ways. He called these three
ways the theoretical (meaning what is said: for example, beliefs and stories); the
practical (meaning what is done: for example, worship, prayer, meditation,
pilgrimage); and the sociological (meaning the kinds of groups: for example, social
institutions and other groups; leadership; and a group’s relationship to society).
These will be referred to from time to time. Let’s now consider more specifically
what is meant by each.
Theoretical Expression: What Is Said in Religion
Here we consider the query, “What do they say?”
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People say things in religion. They talk about God, angels, salvation,
answered prayers, and much more. They tell stories about what God or Gods did in
times past and about great religious saints or heroes, and they say what their
doctrines or beliefs are. Religions say things about certain basic, ultimate issues—
how the spiritual universe is set up, what unconditioned reality is, where the world
came from and where it is going, and where humans came from and where we are
going. Religions talk about how we know ultimate truth and how we are helped to
get from here to the ultimate. This is what Joachim Wach refers to as the
theoretical form of religious expression.
The theoretical is expressed in two fundamental ways: myth,
or_narrative_story, and doctrine. In the history of religion, the term myth is used in
a special way to mean stories that express in narrative form the central values of
the society and the way it views what the world means. This is different from the
popular meaning of the word: a fable or story that is not true, as when we say,
“That’s just a myth.” In the history of religion, the use of this word is only a
statement of its function, and its use does not imply passing judgment on whether or
not the narrative story is true.
What about myth?
A storyteller of the Australian aboriginal Arrernte tribes, an elder man or
woman recognized as a lore keeper among these people who for some forty
thousand years have inhabited the vast desertlike central areas of the island
continent, is speaking to a group of young boys or girls, perhaps preparing them for
tribal initiation. He is telling a story of how, according to wisdom now passed on
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to the latest generation, this immense and seemingly barren world came into being.
For those whose lives have been so intimately a part of that rough terrain for so
long, the immense emptiness is far from barren; rather, it is full of secrets and
hidden wellsprings of life, and the storyteller knows how to crack its code. He
recites in a reverent, chanting voice appropriate to ancient mysteries.
The Three Forms of Religious Expression
At first, he tells the young, all was a dark empty plain, containing neither life
nor death. Then something stirred beneath the earth, as primal beings sleeping there
moved from sleep without dreams to dreaming, then arose into what is called the
Dreamtime. In this state they wandered the earth, calling to life plants, animals, and
birds; as they wandered and worked, they sang. Their pathways are now called
“songlines,” and even now, by singing their songs, dwellers on Earth can follow
their trails and renew their labors. In time, the Eternal Ones of the Dreamtime found
deposits of plant and animal material for the making of human beings, usually near
water holes or lakes; these they carved into final form. Labors done, the Eternal
Ones then went back to sleep, but they left as marks of their presence sacred rocks
and trees, often enhanced by rock paintings to show their presence. Today Arrernte
can leave their harsh world to reenter the Dreamtime anew through dance and
initiation and by following the songlines.2
Here we see, up close and in action, the theoretical form of religious
expression as myth, or narratives that express the fundamental worldview and
values of a society. Of these, none is more important than the story of creation, or
how our world came into being, for we humans tend to assume that if we know
where something came from, we know important things about its meaning and
purpose.
What do you think is the basic message about our life as human beings in the
Australian myth? Here creation is not an act of divine fiat or sacrifice; rather, it is
more like acting out a dream, and the power of those primal times, the Dreamtime,
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can be accessed through dance and song, and storytelling.
Take another example, the Judeo-Christian creation account. The beginning of
the Bible tells us that God created the universe from chaos and that God stood
outside it as its maker and master, pronouncing it originally very good. This
creation account tells us that God is not to be identified with the creation or with
ourselves but that he is above it as its Lord and is One with whom we can have a
deep relationship of faith and love, though not one of absolute identity.
A Hindu myth, in contrast, implies a very different kind of relationship
between the Divine and the world. That myth tells us that God made the world out
of himself by dividing up his body in a primal sacrifice. Thus, the world is, so to
speak, God in disguise; in our innermost nature we are one with that same God.
What about doctrine?
Consider an assembly of bishops, teachers, or leading monks in one of the
historical religions, like Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam. They are
reflecting on what general statements about religious truth can be deduced from the
stories that have long been told about divine beings and their activities. It as though
they are saying, “If the stories tell us that God, or Gods, at different times did this,
and this, and this, what can we say about them that is true all the time?”
So they may say that stories and teachings like those of the Bible, the Qur’an,
the Hindu Vedas and other sacred texts tell us that God is omnipotent or allpowerful, omniscient or all-knowing, or loving, and that he treasures those who
believe and trust in him. They may say that the world was created at one definite
point and will end at a later point in time with divine judgment. Or they may say
that the universe is cyclical and eternal. Such statements give people something
clear and definite to believe in that is relevant to all times and places and to all
situations in which they find themselves.
Religions can present still other answers to “What do they say?”: sermons,
testimonials, lives of saints and heroes, folklore, poetry, novels. The list goes on
and on.
Practical Expression: What Is Done in Religion
This form of religious expression answers the question, “What do they do?”
“Practical” here does not mean practical in the sense of something that works;
it means “practices,” what is done. It covers such aspects of religion as worship,
rites, ways of prayer and meditation, pilgrimages—everything actually done for the
sake of the religion from the most public to the most private. This is what Joachim
Wach refers to as the practical form of religious expression.
All real religion has some kind of practice. If people were involved only in
the realm of theoretical ideas, they would be involved in philosophy and not
religion. But religious practices vary immensely, from an ornate ancient ritual to a
simple Protestant-type service, from speaking in tongues to Zen meditation, from
30
devotion to Gods in a Hindu temple to prayers in a Muslim mosque without images.
Many years ago, I* had an opportunity to see one of the noro, or priestesses, of
Okinawa, a now-Japanese island in the Ryukyu chain, south of the main islands.
The religion of these islands, though related to the Japanese religion known as
Shinto, is often considered the only traditional religion in the world definitely
under the full leadership of women, who are its clergy and spokespersons. The
woman I saw, pointed out to me as a noro, was tall, dressed entirely in long white
garments, and impressively dignified.
Four times a year, in one of their many rituals, a small group of noro gather at
a shrine to the local kami, or local god, in the central square of the village. They
light incense, pour sake (rice wine) from a cup over three sacred stones; then each
takes a sip of the sake as a sort of communion, first offering it toward the altar and
praying in a low voice.
They then proceed to the outer steps of the shrine, where they bedeck
themselves in a five-piece white robe and a crown decorated with leaves and
straw. This means the women are now, in effect, kami, or local gods, themselves. A
male attendant hands each woman a small cup of sake anew; each woman lifts it
and prays. The women then join the other villagers by taking assigned seats in the
square and receive more offerings, and the occasion gradually becomes one of
general festivity.3
Or, by way of contrast, consider the great variety of forms of worship within
the Christian tradition. At one pole, there is the traditional Quaker meeting, in
which persons sit in rows, or more often today, a circle, waiting in silence for the
guidance of the Inner Light. From time to time individuals may feel moved to rise
and say a few words or a prayer. At the end of the meeting, usually an hour,
everyone stands to shake hands. A traditional Protestant service emphasizes the
singing of hymns by the congregation, the reading of scripture, and the offering of
prayers by the minister or other leaders, and it centers most of all on the sermon
delivered by the minister, giving admonishment, advice, and support to those
present who are endeavoring to lead a Christian life in this difficult world.
At another pole, the traditional liturgies of the Roman Catholic or Eastern
Orthodox churches, while different, have in common a feeling of richness and
timelessness. There are colorful vestments, offerings of incense, soaring music, and
choreographed movements as the priests and others celebrate the offering and
distribution of bread and wine by Christ at the Last Supper, now a festive banquet
which is the central rite of a large part of Christianity.
What do these and all other “practical” forms of religious expression have in
common? First, however different, one knows that these words and actions are
“something extra” which cannot be explained solely in terms of ordinary everyday
life, but have a special meaning outside it or pointing to something outside it. They
construct a special “sacred time” in which, ideally, life is lived on another plane
from the ordinary. Very often, this “sacred time” makes the place of worship
31
different, too—a “sacred space”—perhaps a place in which one instinctively acts
differently than one does on the street or in the shop. At the same time, worship is
supposed to have meaning connected to everyday life, as “doors and windows”
transmitting pardon and power for life’s living.
The important thing for understanding is to look behind the form of the practice
and see what the “message behind the message” is. How do the “doors and
windows” of religious practices help people best get in touch with God or
unconditioned reality? If it is an ancient rite, then it says we best get in touch with
ultimate reality by getting out of the one-dimensionality of the present and entering
something that has deep roots in the past, perhaps getting us in touch with family
and ethnic heritage. The rite probably has a strong aesthetic component—the sight
of gorgeous altars and vestments, the smell of incense, the sound of wonderful
music—to make us feel lifted up into another realm. If, on the other hand, the rite is
a simple service with emphasis on hearing scripture and sermon, then it says we
best get in touch with ultimate reality through hearing and the feelings that hearing
truth can evoke. If the rite is inner prayer or meditation, then it says we best get in
touch by releasing our inner self, or by letting the Spirit speak freely within us.
Of course, remember that all worship has some kind of set form and in some
way comes to us out of the past in a form that is traditional in a particular religion.
This aspect of a rite, together with the sacred words used, is what makes it clear it
is religious and not just entertainment or a lecture.
Sociological Expression: Groups and Leadership in Religion
This form of religious expression, dealing with the social organization of the
religion, must encompass three questions instead of just one like the other two
forms: What kind of groups do they form? What kind of leadership does the religion
have? What is the religion’s relation to the rest of society?
The main idea is that religion, as it appears in actual history and society, is
generally social: followed by families, communities, and voluntary groups together.
This means that, like any society, it has structure, that is, ways in which decisions
are made and tasks assigned, as well as leadership and ways the group defines the
boundaries between it and the outside.
From here on one finds countless variations. A moment’s reflection should
remind one of religious groups that are very democratic and of others that are very
authoritarian in structure. Leaders may find their place in “institutional” ways,
going through the established schools and ordination procedures of their group or
denomination, or a religious group may be “charismatic,” claiming a special
inward call that manifests itself through the particular power of their preaching and
perhaps miracles. Or a religious group may be a combination of each. So also there
is considerable variation in the relation of religion to the outside. All of this is
what Joachim Wach refers to as the sociological form of religious expression.
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Religious groups are of many different kinds. Some religions are so dominant
in a particular society as to be almost identified with it, as is, at least nominally,
Roman Catholicism in Spain or Lutheranism in_Sweden_or Hinduism in much of
India. Sometimes the predominant religion is divided into different, often
competing groups or denominations with their own subsets of beliefs and
practices, like Christianity in the United States or Buddhism in Japan. Some
religious groups may be small and at odds with the larger society; these may be
called sects or cults, though those words should be used with caution since they
have become pejorative and stereotyping.
Like the practical expression, each kind of religious group has its own
“message behind the message” about the “doors and windows” that help people to
get in touch with ultimate reality. If it is a broad-based religion, having national
churches or larger denominations, it will have an important role in that country’s
history and heritage; its leaders will be recognized as major spiritual figures, and it
will doubtless have imposing churches or temples. At the same time, whatever its
theoretical stance, because it includes so many people at all levels of spiritual
development, in practice it will have to be fairly accommodating and tolerant. For
those who sincerely adhere to this kind of religion, the message behind the message
is, “It is better to go with a large religious group, even if there are imperfect people
in it, than to set oneself apart; one can find everything one needs in that religion and
help others in it, and in so doing one is identifying with a rich heritage.”
On the other hand, those who join a small, probably more devoted, group are
saying, “Large religions are inevitably corrupt and lukewarm; I have to be with a
close-knit, intense group of people who are as serious as I am, who practice
without compromise and who will give me the kind of support I need in my faith.”
Or those who join a small group may be saying, “I listen to a different drummer;
what resonates with me seems to be a religion of a different kind from that of the
majority; I have to seek it out and follow it whether it’s popular or not.” Without
denying the validity of anyone’s religious experience, one can probably imagine the
kind of childhood and personality type that might go with each of the responses.
Take as an example the Prophet Muhammad and the beginnings of Islam with
one man. It became the religion of a whole region, and eventually a major world
religion. As we will see in more detail later on, Muhammad started as a purely
charismatic leader, first receiving the revelations that became the Qur’an, the
sacred book of Islam, from an archangel while alone in a mountain cave. Soon
enough, though, his religion was not purely private. The first convert was his wife
Khadijah, who believed in his message. Today Islam is the second largest religion
in the world with many sects, each with their own particular theoretical, practical,
and sociological expressions of the revelation originally received by Muhammad.
Ethics, Religious Experience, and Art
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Three more forms of religious expression, not mentioned by Joachim Wach as
separate, ought to be cited: ethics, religious experience, and art. Although these
forms could be included in either the theoretical or practical forms of religious
expression—or both—each is so important that it ought to be discussed separately.
We will look at ethics first.
One has to deal with ethical issues all the time. Suppose someone shows
you a way—or you figure out a way yourself—that you could cheat on an exam or
plagiarize a paper in school, with very low risk of getting caught. How do you
respond?
Or when you get home or get together with friends, you get into a hot and
heavy argument about sexual morality. Is abortion ever justified? Is sex before—or
outside of—marriage ever right? What about homosexuality?
Suppose a homeless person approaches you on the street wanting money.
Should you give it to him or her or try to help in some other way, or should you say
that just giving money doesn’t really help?
Questions like these confront us almost every day. They are closely related to
religion, because many people say that their religious teachings, or values, help
them decide or actually provide the answers.
ETHICS
Another important vehicle is religious experience,
sometimes called mystical experience. (Some authorities would define mystical
experience as a sense of oneness with God or infinite reality, while saying a
nonmystical religious experience simply offers a sense of divine presence, of deep
prayer, or of being profoundly moved by a religious service or music.)4
For many people, the most important thing about religion is the experiences it
provides: of closeness to or oneness with God, of conversion and inner
purification, of prayers answered, of love for all beings. These feelings may be
imaged and described in the language of various religions. But they are found in
nearly all faiths, and appear to have some points in common everywhere. The
recipient reports being inwardly moved, perhaps to sense a new start in life, and to
know spiritual truth directly.
At the same time, characteristics of religious experience can vary, too.
Shamans and others feel contact with, or possession by, individual deities rather
than universal oneness, though these can be very powerful experiences. Sometimes
the experience may be of what Rudolf Otto called the numinous—the sacred as
fearsome as well as compelling.5 More common today, though, are religious
experiences described as warm and joyous.
Religious experience is not always intensely related to a particular religion.
Roger Bannister, the first man to run the four-minute mile, tells of his first
experiences running on the beach. After taking in the wonder of the nature all
around him (though he says that he “could not absorb so much beauty”), he then
started running virtually out of sheer joy: “No longer conscious of my movement I
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
34
discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty,
a source I never dreamt existed.” Bannister added that it was from moments like
this that his love of running grew.6 Bannister’s experience is what others might have
termed a union with God.
Let us use the term “art” broadly to include painting, sculpture, architecture,
music, and literature—anything made by human craftsmanship for the sake of its
beauty or truth-bearing capacity. Clearly, all these can serve as “doors and
windows” to the Divine. The best analogy is a stained glass window in which the
white light of the sun is colored and shaped to take on the form of haloed saints and
conventional symbols of faith.
Art has always been important to religion. Indeed, it may well be that the
earliest known art, the Paleolithic cave paintings, had religious meaning. The art of
the earliest civilizations, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and ancient India, was heavily
religious—obviously because religion deals in beings that are ordinarily invisible
—Gods, angels—or in beings from out of the past—saviors, saints, buddhas,
prophets, sages. They must be portrayed to make them real. So also must basic
religious symbols, or foci for meditation like the mandalas of the East, be made
real.
Art can also tell us quite a bit about a religion’s view of human nature and
human society in the way it represents persons through art in all sorts of ways: as
devout, as sinners, as wise and foolish, as turning to God or showing the nature of a
life without religion. This last is especially the province of great novelists who
have dealt with religious themes, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky or Graham Greene.
ART
The Interrelationship of the Forms of Expression
In any religion, the forms of expression—three or six—work together to form a
unified experience. It is usually a mistake to think that one comes first and the
others follow after. Children learn about religion more or less through all forms of
expression at once: they hear the stories and feel the special atmosphere of a
church, a temple, or a religious rite when they are taken there by their parents, and
they pick up the tone of its social life as they play with friends and relatives who
share the same faith.
Even an adult convert will probably be drawn by all forms and will
participate in all simultaneously. So the forms of religious expression unite to
become a single unified experience, which points to the ultimate nature of the
sacred and becomes a part of the inner life of each person touched by it.
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DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL APPROACHES
You may ask, is it enough just to talk, in a neutral way, about the shape of a
religion’s “doors and windows” as they open toward unconditioned reality?
It is not the purpose of a study such as this to decide about the truth or falsity
of any religion. We are simply trying to know and understand religion better, using a
descriptive and empathic approach—attempting to see each religion, in a sense,
from the inside out. Even so, does one look on everything in the religious world—
from human sacrifice to the healing work of a Mother Teresa—with exactly the
same understanding gaze? Is there no place for a critical look that says one kind of
religious practice is simply better than another?
In the twenty-first century, religion seems to have a newly important role in
world affairs. The clash of religious beliefs and the cultures they foster have been
painfully brought to the fore, making it all too clear that religion can have a dark
side. In this environment, too much empathy certainly can get in the way of even
seeing where the problems are, and world religion scholars realize that they need
to be a part of the discussion about such matters.
Important questions have been raised around the world about religion and the
oppression of women, about religion’s role in maintaining exploitative economic
systems, about ways in which religion can hinder (through allegedly outmoded
religious beliefs) solutions to current problems, like overpopulation—solutions that
are deemed more reasonable by those who propose them. The religious rhetoric
and energies behind international conflict and terrorism, as well as scandals in
major religious institutions, have alienated some people from religion, or at least
some forms of it. On the other hand, some of those involved in such conflicts are
moved to embrace a more profound commitment to their faith. And in the United
States, divisive issues such as the conflict over the appropriate role of religion in
politics and the conflict between science and religion (as in battles over teaching
evolution or medical research using human stem cells) abound. Such issues have
found some religious people on one side and some on the other. In any case, the
power of religion to divide as well as to unite, to oppress as well as to uplift, and
to seem dark as well as to enlighten is apparent. Yet in the thick of these conflicts,
one thing is clear: beneficial change will not occur unless questions are asked and
criticisms made.
Nevertheless, faith and effective change require the most accurate information
and authentic insight possible. For this reason, there remains a vital place for
religious studies that just attempts to present a clear and unvarnished account of the
way things are. And that is why it is especially important to maintain an empathetic
perspective when studying or observing a religion that is from a cultural context
quite different from the one of the student or the observer.
If an attack is made, for example, on a certain religion’s endorsement of war,
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one needs to be sure that one understands how this matter is understood by
believers, not just how it looks from the outside. One also needs to know exactly
who endorses the policy on behalf of the religion: the great majority of members,
authoritative leadership, or only certain extremists that take it on themselves to
interpret the religion’s teaching. It is also important to analyze to what extent this
policy differs from the teaching and practice (not always the same thing!) of one’s
own and other religions. One would also need to be clear about the values to which
one is appealing in advancing the criticism and why she or he believes those values
should be considered superior to those of the religion itself. Only then would one
properly be able to make a critical yet responsible statement challenging the
religion to reassess its position on war.
Our main goal in this book is to be descriptive. This is primarily a work that
provides information and attempts empathetic insight. But it does not preclude
criticism, and the authors hope that what is presented here will help readers to
view religion both empathetically and critically.7 Criticism made honestly on the
basis of knowledge and insight is ultimately necessary if we are to come to our own
conclusions about the validity or rightness of a religious expression that is foreign
to us in our own cultural context. Criticism is essential in any open and honest inter
religious discourse; we must be prepared to deal not only with our criticism of the
religions of others, but also with their criticism of ours.
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RELIGION THROUGH TIME
Think of pictures you may have seen of paintings on the walls of caves by our early
ancestors, some going back as far as 35,000 years or more. They suggest that
“something more” was added by human hand, mind, and spirit to nature. We do not
know exactly why the lavish cave paintings were made. In part, they may have been
a kind of magic to enhance the availability of animals the people hunted. The depth
of the cave may have been considered an otherworldly kind of place, where access
to a realm of divine beings or departed spirits was possible and through which
animal and even human life entered our realm. There is evidence that the caves
were not only art galleries but places of religious rite or initiation. In one cave
recently studied, the archeologists found that the sandy floor was trampled by many
tiny human feet some thirty millennia ago: children dancing in some ritual, perhaps
their initiation?
These remains are from the Paleolithic era, or Old Stone Age: the time when
hunters and gatherers predominated, before the discovery of agriculture. Religion is
oriented, in part, toward what is perceived to be the source of our life, in this case
the animal, and also what is perceived to be that other world that is the source of
dreams, of the visions of shamans, of life itself and its invisible powers. The cave
religion of Paleolithic peoples may be perpetuated in the barrows or underground
artificial burial caves or tunnels of ancient Ireland and Britain, or even the
pyramids of Egypt, which are like artificial mountains with their internal caves for
burial and access to the world of the dead and the Gods.8
With the discovery of agriculture, the plant and its cycle of seedtime and
harvest, of “death” and then “rebirth” were sacralized. Sometimes this mystery was
viewed as a model of human life, and even of the life of the Gods, as well. In
ancient Babylonian religion, Ishtar was the most loved and worshiped of all the
Goddesses. Her brother and spouse was Tammuz, a vegetation God, and a dyingrising deity. Tammuz was said to die and go to the underworld in the fall. Ishtar then
wept for him, descended into the realm of shades, and triumphantly brought him
back in the spring with vibrant rejoicing. This myth had great worship expression
among the common people. Women wailed with Ishtar for her charming yet dying
child, and farmers danced when his return meant the return of fertility and new
crops in a new year. This pattern was commemorated by the great temples of
Babylon and by Babylon’s kings as well.
That worship hints at something else too: agriculture meant people stayed in
the same place, meaning villages, then towns, then great cities and empires like
those of Egypt or Babylon or China. Such great civilizations meant bountiful trade,
together with surplus wealth that could support priests and philosophers. That
brought a momentous development, one even more important than cities, empires,
trade, and priests, though it was related to them: the invention of writing. Writing
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first originated perhaps in the records kept by men of commerce. But soon it meant
chronicles of kings and the sacred books of the priests. Oral traditions that had been
passed down from generation to generation took on new significance as they were
reified in the written word.
A quick glance at chronicles going back over years and centuries told readers
that things change and do not change back. Empires rise and fall, peoples move
about, plagues come and go. Take the Chronicles of the Hebrew Scriptures. They
told ancient readers, as they tell us, that the people of Israel went through many
vicissitudes: slavery in Egypt, entry under Moses into the Promised Land,
innumerable wars, and exile. Each age brought new challenges, and none were
quite the same as those of yesteryear.
This discovery of a sense of history called for a larger religious perspective
than that of cave or tribe. In the new civilizations, lives were more specialized and
individual than in the old tribes. In religion, too, there was more emphasis on
individual responsibility, on one’s own sin and guilt, on one’s merit and salvation,
and on how one’s own life fit in the larger society.
Moses standing on the top of Mount Nebo.
All this was reflected in new religious visions, which were provided by a just
a handful of persons—Moses, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Confucius, Laozi, Jesus,
Muhammad—who were the founders of major religions, several of which came to
dominate the spiritual landscape of vast expanses of the globe. Although their
traditional lives have no doubt been mythologized, it is significant that the founders
were, or were taken to be, historical personages who lived at a definite time in
human history, not mythological beings. For the most part these founders lived over
a relatively brief period within the whole scope of human history, from about 500
B.C.E. to 500 C.E. This period, or its first century, has sometimes been called the
Axial Age, because on it so much turned.9 Not least of this was the use and
institution of sophisticated writing, which enhanced the awareness of historical
time (mentioned above) and centered religion on set texts rather than oral tradition,
which could evolve in its telling over time.
Although the major religions to come out of this period carried over much
from before, cumulatively they marked a tremendously important new start in
Earth’s spiritual history. Believing that a definite word was delivered by a divine
39
voice within the midst of human history, which was memorialized in sacred texts,
like the Bible, the Sutras, or the Qur’an, they could sometimes be stricter and more
intolerant than what went before. Yet they also showed that the onward march of
human history can have sacred meaning: God or the Gods are working in it. In
India, at approximately the same time as the emergence of the founder religions, the
traditions that were to become Hinduism produced written texts of such teachings
as the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita. In them the central theme is the oneness
of the true self with the Divine, transcending history through making absolute the
state of consciousness or angle of philosophical vision in which timelessness
shows is above time.
The founder religions that were successful, such as Buddhism, Christianity,
Islam, Confucianism, and parallel developments in Hinduism, became associated
with major empires, like Christianity and the late Roman Empire under Constantine,
Buddhism with the Ashoka in India, Islam with the Caliphate, and Confucianism in
the Han dynasty of China, which gave them a foothold from which they spread,
sometimes over continents and many diverse cultures. Parallels among them can be
seen in how they developed devotional patterns, had an era of reformation like that
of Europe in the sixteenth century, and produced philosophies and literatures,
ancient and modern.10
Looking Forward
It is clear, then, that religion is always in a state of flux and transition. Each
generation has always been melting into the next. There are always constant themes
in religion, but their ways of expression continually shape themselves anew. The
process is a complex interaction of tradition and new ideas, working through
expression in word, act, and group formation, expressed through symbols or
concepts that may be as old as cave art or inspired and imaginatively created only
yesterday. And it should be remembered that virtually nothing of significance that
appears in the long history of a religion is ever really lost.
40
RELIGION, GOVERNANCE, AND POLITICAL
LIFE
In 1953, Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of England and the United Kingdom in a
solemn and highly religious ceremony in Westminster Abbey. The actual coronation
took place in the heart of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, the central rite of
much of traditional Christianity, celebrated according to the usage of the Church of
England.
Later, in 1990, Akihito was made Emperor of Japan in ceremonies which
included a very ancient Shinto rite called the Daijosai. Virtually alone, the ruler
prayerfully took sips of rice wine twice in the dead of night in thatch-roofed
structures, apparently communing with Shinto deities and his divine ancestors in
this quiet and mysterious ceremony.
In the twentieth century, these impressive rituals had resonances of something
from another era, when a state church or some other form of union of religion and
government had real authority. For that matter, neither the British nor the Japanese
sovereign possesses real political authority, but each is considered the embodiment
of the whole people—a check on ordinary state power but whose function is
actually symbolic. For traditionalists, the symbolic religious enthronement of
symbolic rulers evokes warm nostalgia, from others, criticism for the apparent
presumption that all citizens share one religion or that government has any business
so endorsing a religion.
In the West, we tend to think of religion as a phenomenon more or less
different from the public life of politics and government. Thus i may surprise many
a Western reader to discover that in most cultures around the world, throughout
time, there was not even a word to identify religion as something different from the
society and culture as a whole.11
Even today, nearly all of what we now refer to as “religion” aims toward an
ideal not only for individuals, family, and the religions’ own institutions but also for
all of society. So to study a religion without addressing its vision of society,
including governance and political life, would be taking it out of context.
What we find is that the world religions’ aspirations for government and
society have much in common, in that they address common fundamental questions:
How can society achieve stability, safety, justice, prosperity, and fairness for its
people? What kinds of characteristics and character do we want our governors to
exemplify? What role should religion play in politics or government, if any at all?
What is a good society? Differences arise, of course, in the various ways in which
the world religions have attempted to answer such questions. And the reader will
want to keep these questions in mind as we explore religion, governance, and
political life in the sections on that topic throughout this text.
41
WOMEN IN THE WORLD RELIGIONS
One might ask: Why have the authors included special sections on women in the
chapters that follow and not a complementary one on men? The reason is that too
often what we study about religion is a generalization of human experience using
men’s experience as the norm. This is called being androcentric. The study of
women in religion is an effort to undo this androcentric perspective to provide a
more holistic understanding of religion.
We have already looked at one example of women in religion, the Okinawan
noro or priestesses. But a more typical situation would be that in medieval Europe,
where women had no hope of a leadership position in the official hierarchy, from
village priest to pope, but who might participate in what is sometimes referred to
as the “little tradition” of folk myths and practices that were intermingled with
officially sanctioned doctrines or through unofficial but sometimes significant
influence from the sidelines as saint and advocate.
Take St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). This medieval Italian woman
claimed to have had an ecstatic vision of Jesus when she was only five or six years
old, and at sixteen she was asked by her family to marry the widower of her
recently deceased sister, Bonaventura. Utterly unwilling to enter into this union,
Catherine adopted a tactic she had learned from Bonaventura. The latter, callously
treated by her spouse, had refused to eat until he changed his ways; he finally did
so. Now Catherine, aware of the power as well as of the status fasting could give
women in a society controlled by men, declined to eat until her father relented and
let her remain unmarried.
42
Woman praying at a temple in Thailand.
Catherine later became a Dominican sister, and in a famous mystical
experience, she believed she was inwardly wedded to Jesus. She now reportedly
ate very little but the Holy Communion, and as a now-celebrated ascetic, she sent
letters and traveled about, promoting church reform and, particularly, striving to
end the papal schism, in which rival popes reigned in Rome and in Avignon in
France. Gregory XI in Avignon was apparently sufficiently impressed by the
spiritual power of this impassioned woman, evidenced by her fasts, that he returned
his administration to Rome.
The role of women in religion will be a major concern of this book all the
way through. Occasionally, as with the Okinawan noro and, more recently, in some
religious communities in which reforms have equalized the genders, women have
had positions of institutional leadership. But most of the traditional major faiths
that, since the Axial Age, have dominated the spiritual landscape have been
governed by males, regardless of what their founders may have intended. That is, a
patriarchal social pattern, or “patriarchy” developed where the patriarch or the
father is the authority. Because of this, women were subject to male religious
leaders, fathers, husbands, and even sons on the basis of religious tenets that did not
permit individual status and authority for women.
Fundamental Features of Religions
Theoretical
Basic Worldview
God or Ultimate Reality
Origin of the World
Destiny of the World
Origin of Humans
Destiny of Humans
Revelation or Mediation between the
Ultimate and the Human
Practical
What Is Expected of Humans: Worship,
How the universe is set up, especially in
its spiritual aspect—the map of the
invisible world.
What the ultimate source and ground of
all things is.
Where it all came from.
Where it is going.
Where we came from.
Where we are going.
How we know this and how we are
helped to get from here to our ultimate
destiny.
What we ourselves must do.
43
Practices, Behavior
Sociological
Major Social Institutions
How the religion is set up to preserve
and implement its teaching and practice;
what kind of leadership and groups it
has; how it interacts with the larger
society.
Still, the positions of women have been varied. As wives and mothers they
have, of course, had a role in the shaping spiritual life and wisdom on the domestic
level. Sometimes, perhaps like the noro, perpetuating shamaness and priestess roles
going back long before the Axial Age, they have been folk religion visionaries and
ritualists. Sometimes, as nuns and abbesses, they have carved out a niche with
definite, though limited, authority within the system. Certain women, like Catherine
of Siena, have exercised no small influence through their own inner spiritual
charisma, whether as ascetics, saints, writers, counselors, or even founders of new
religious movements, from Christian Science in the United States to Tenrikyo in
Japan.
More often, though, women have found that their gender has caused them to
face implacable barriers in life, whether in exercising institutional or intellectual
spiritual leadership or in marriage, where the prevailing religion has often taught
wifely submission to the husband and has made divorce or even remarriage after
widowhood very difficult. Some women have invented ways around these
situations; some have known deep inner happiness, nonetheless; some have found
life very hard. All these matters will be reflected in the upcoming sections on
women in the various world religions, as they ask the “woman question” what are
the proper roles and status of women in religion and society?
44
FUNDAMENTAL FEATURES OF RELIGIONS
That each of the world’s religions has a history and encompasses each of the forms
of religious expression means that they all have common patterns. They usually ask
and answer certain questions. All have a basic worldview, ideas about the Divine
or Ultimate Reality, ideas about the origin and destiny of the world and of
individual humans, a revelation or authority or mediation between the Divine and
humankind, standards about what is expected of humans (that is, patterns of
worship, spiritual practices, and ethics or behavior), and an institutional or
sociological expression.
In order to provide a convenient guide to these fundamental features, a chart
that presents the three forms of expression from Joachim Wach (the theoretical,
practical, and sociological) has been prepared for each religion discussed in this
text. An introductory outline for the charts is presented on page 19 so that the reader
can see what will be covered in each of the categories used.
It should be remembered that these charts are able to present only the dominant
or traditional interpretation of the religion; variations often exist but cannot be
taken into account in the charts, although they may be in the text.
It is now time to turn to the religions themselves.
45
Summary
This chapter has tried to present some basic perspectives for understanding the
religions of the world comparatively. We discussed religion as the “doors and
windows” between conditioned and unconditioned reality. We presented the forms
of religious expression: theoretical (narrative and doctrine), practical (styles of
worship), sociological (forms of group life), ethics, religious experience, and art.
We reflected on ways in which both descriptive and critical approaches to religion
are valid and important. We discussed religion’s aspirations for the political
dimensions of society. We talked about the problems and possibilities inherent in
discussing religion in terms of its history and summarized the major historical
periods of human religion. We also discussed the “woman question” in the world
religions and how the answer to that question impacts women’s lives and shapes
the societies in which they live. Finally, we indicated that each actual, living
religion contains tensions and seemingly conflicting motifs that it tries to resolve
into a pattern.
This may all make religion appear very complex and difficult, but if you will
look within yourself, you will see that your own life is ordered in much the same
way. By increasing your understanding of yourself as a human being, you will grow
in your ability to understand the complexity of human religion.
46
Questions for Review
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Discuss whether or not you agree with the contention that today is a
particularly exciting time to study world religions.
Describe some of the problems in today’s world that seem to be involved
with religion and some ways religion can help intergroup and international
understanding.
Explain the difference between conditioned and unconditioned reality and
religion’s role regarding them.
Name and explain Joachim Wach’s three forms of religious expression,
together with ethics, religious experience, and art.
Describe how religious doctrine develops from myths and narratives.
Discuss what sort of messages might be transmitted nonverbally by the
practical (style of worship) and sociological expressions of a religion.
Explain how the forms of religious expression interact.
Present the values of both descriptive and critical approaches to the world
religions. Give examples of both based on your own observation.
Discuss the advantages and possible pitfalls of an historical approach to
understanding a religion.
Summarize the main periods in the history of human religion with an
understanding of the importance of the Axial Age.
Indicate the main ways in which religion has responded to the experience of
the “discovery of history.”
Describe some common characteristics of founder religions, especially
Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.
Explain some of the major characteristics of the modern experience and how
religion has responded to them.
Discuss some of the issues raised by postmodern consciousness and how
religion has responded to them.
Summarize the main issues involved in the study of religion, governance, and
political life.
Discuss the “woman question” in the world religions and how an
androcentric point of view might provide only a limited perspective of
religion.
Discuss how religions both contain and try to resolve the tensions common to
human existence.
47
Suggested Readings on the Study of World Religions
Almond, Gabriel A., R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Siran, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalism
Around the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Armstrong, Karen. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. New York:
Knopf, 2006.
Bowie, Fiona, The Anthropology of Religion, 2nd ed. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
Bowker, John, ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Religion. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002.
Browning, Don S., M. Christian Green, and John Witte, Jr., Sex, Marriage, and Family in the World Religions.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Carmody, Denise Lardner, Women and World Religions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989.
——, and John Tully Carmody, How to Live Well: Ethics in the World Religions. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,
1988.
Christ, Carol P., and Judith Plaskow, eds., Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989.
——, Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1979, 1992.
Eliade, Mircea, Cosmos and History. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959.
——, Patterns in Comparative Religion. Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1963.
——, The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961.
Ellwood, Robert S., Myth: Key Concepts in Religion. London and New York: Continuum, 2008.
——, Cycles of Faith. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2003.
——, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell. Albany: SUNY
Press, 1999.
——, Introducing Religion, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993.
Gross, Rita M., Feminism and Religion: An Introduction. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Haddad, Yvonne Yazback, and Ellison Banks Findly, eds., Women, Religion and Social Change. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1985.
Hitchcock, Susan Tyler, with John Esposito, The Geography of Religion. Washington, DC: National Geographic
Society, 2004.
Idinopulos, Thomas Athanasius, Brian C. Wilson, and James Constantine Hanges, eds., Comparing Religions:
Possibilities and Perils? Leiden: Brill, 2006.
James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Longman, Green, 1902 (many later
editions).
Jaspers, Karl, The Origin and Goal of History, Michael Bullock, trans. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1953.
Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Lincoln, Bruce, Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion after Sept. 11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2003.
MacDonald, Margaret Read, The Folklore of World Holidays. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1992.
Matthews, Clifford N., Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Philip Hefner, eds., When Worlds Converge: What Science
and Religion Tell Us about the Story of the Universe and Our Place in It. Chicago: Open Court, 2001.
Morgan, Peggy, and Clive Lawton, eds., Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh
University Press, 1996.
Neusner, Jacob, World Religions in America: An Introduction, rev. ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2000.
Otto, Rudolf, The Idea of the Holy. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Pals, Daniel L., Seven Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Sharma, Arvind, ed., Today’s Woman in World Religions. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
——, and Katherine K. Young, eds., Feminism and World Religions. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1999.
——, Her Voice, Her Faith. Boulder, CO and Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 2003.
48
Smith, Huston, The World Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1999.
Smith, Jonathon Z., Imagining Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Smith, Wilfred C., The Meaning and End of Religion. New York: Harper & Row, 1962, 1978.
Swidler, Arlene, ed., Homosexuality and World Religions. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993.
Thrower, James, Religion: The Classical Theories. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999.
van der Leeuw, Gerardus, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 2 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
Wach, Joachim, Sociology of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944.
——, The Comparative Study of Religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958.
Waardenburg, Jacques, ed., Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. New York and Berlin: de Gruyter,
1999.
Weber, Max, The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.
Winzeler, Robert S., Anthropology of Religion. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008.
The student is also referred to good encyclopedic treatments of particular topics, such as those in the
Encyclopedia Britannica; Keith Crim, ed., Perennial Dictionary of Living Religions. HarperSanFrancisco,
reprint, 1990; Lindsey Jones, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., 15 vols. Detroit: Macmillan
Reference, 2005; Robert Wuthnow, ed. in chief, Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, 2 vols. Washington,
DC: CQ Press, 2007.
49
Notes
* Terms in bold throughout this text are defined in the Glossary.
* These are only examples of the many terms that are used in different religions. It should be made clear that
these “conditioned” categories are not necessarily evil; they are just arenas of ignorance and separ-ateness
where evil or sin is possible.
* Robert Ellwood
50
C HAPTE R
2
The Sacred in Nature
Indigenous Peoples and Religion
51
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you should be able to
■ Discuss common features of indigenous peoples’ religions, especially how the
sacred is found in nature.
■ Explain the importance of initiations in indigenous peoples’ religious practice.
■ Explain the role of the shaman in indigenous peoples’ religions.
■ Discuss how remnants of archaic indigenous peoples’ religions can still be
found in cultural traditions in the West and elsewhere.
■ Interpret how differences in procuring food influence religious orientations and
symbolism.
■ Talk about how social changes that arose in response to agriculture affected
women and led to great cultural changes.
■ Discuss the importance of understanding early religion for human life today,
including ways in which its themes are found in religions around the world
today.
52
ENCOUNTERING INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’
RELIGION
In 2009, the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions held its international
conference in Melbourne, Australia. The conference opened with a welcome from
an indigenous,* Aboriginal elder and the sounding of the didgeridoo, the aboriginal
ancient horn, which when blown makes deep resonating, undulating tones that are
haunting and comforting all at once. After all, a focus of the conference was
indigenous peoples and their religions, and indigenous peoples had come from all
over the world—from Asia to North America, from Europe to Africa, from South
America to the Pacific Islands and Australia. Any stereotypes that would
characterize them as primitive, or any thought that their religions were all in the
past, fell away as they shared the wisdom and practices of their ancient faiths with
other representatives of the world’s religions. Any stereotypes of what might be
considered “typical” appearance or clothing became unthinkable as well. These
indigenous peoples were of every skin color from the whitest white of the Sami
People of the northern reaches of Scandinavia to the darkest Australian Aborigine.
And they were attired in native costumes of every color and style imaginable and
unimaginable.
In all of this, it was abundantly clear that the substance of these indigenous
peoples’ religions past and present is tremendously varied, for the roster of
indigenous cultures, each with its own deities and rites, is almost endless, and
undoubtedly very many from ancient times have been forgotten forever.
Because of the immense variety of indigenous peoples (estimated to consist of
as many as 5000 communities worldwide, more than 5% of the world’s
population),1this chapter cannot hope to cover the subject in a systematic or
culture-by-culture way. Our discussion is impressionistic and largely nonhistorical,
drawing from cross-cultural observations to illustrate certain great themes and
motifs. Not all of these are shared by all such cultures, of course, but they provide
insight into a worldview that shares much across the religions of indigenous
peoples. As you read this chapter, also keep in mind that today indigenous peoples’
religion has frequently been challenged by disruptive modernizing and missionary
influences from outside. In some places, though traditional feeling about sacred
places, shamanic vision, and life-cycle celebrations remain, their expression may
be mixed in with features of modern life, such as urbanization, and with nominal or
integrated acceptance of another religion religions, such as Christianity or
Buddhism.
53
THE FIRST FAITHS
Behind the panorama of the religions of the axial age with their founders and
scriptures, behind even the world of the ancient empires with their writing systems
and sprawling political-economic entities out of which the founder religions mostly
emerged, is the religious world that went before all of them. That was a religious
world without written texts but rich in art, myth, and dance. It was the religious
world of the ancestors of all living human beings for hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions, of years between the emergence of a distinctly human way of life
on Earth and the development of writing and large political units. Accordingly, such
religious practices may be called “prehistoric religion,” for written history had to
await the development of writing.
We are speaking of ancient societies characterized by three features:
• They were nonliterate—that is, they did not have reading and writing, except
in some cases through pictograms or markings, such as runic inscriptions;
• They were organized in very small political units, such as tribes or clans; and
• They subsisted by hunting and gathering only or practiced an ancient form of
agriculture or lived as nomadic pastoralists.
As late as the nineteenth century, vast stretches of the Earth, from Siberia to
Africa, from Australia to the Americas, still supported such indigenous societies,
though under steadily increasing pressure. Their traditional forms of religion also
flourished, though traditional ways of spirit, livelihood, and social organization
were increasingly undermined with the incursions of “civilized” traders, settlers,
colonial rulers, and missionaries, who all too often combined religious conversion
(whether intentional or not) with an insatiable appetite for land acquisition and
resources, sometimes using violent means. Today remnants of this prehistoric
society and religion survive in what were once remote and largely isolated areas.
Others, have found ways to practice their religion and continue their culture in the
midst of the religion and culture of their conquerors.
To extrapolate from present-day indigenous peoples’ religion back to
worldwide prehistoric religion is risky, especially because evolving change is
inherent in many indigenous peoples’ religions, rather than maintaining consistency
with an ideal of a golden past found in a book. Nonetheless, it seems safe to assume
that at least the major themes of today’s indigenous peoples’ religions can be traced
to roots in prehistoric religion. And if we’re right, today’s indigenous religions are
the oldest living religions in the world.
Here is an example. The Sioux believe in four souls, three of which die with
the individual’s physical death.* When death comes to a person of the community,
you would see his fourth soul kept present in the midst of his people in a kind of
54
bundle, containing his hair wrapped in animal skins, and placed on a tripod in a
teepee. Offerings of the Sioux’s most sacred foods, buffalo meat and wild cherry
juice, would be presented before this shrine to Wakan Tanka, the ultimate force
behind the universe, on behalf of all creatures, “two-legged, four-legged, and
flying.” You would see those foodstuffs then actually consumed by four young girls,
so that when it later comes time for them to conceive, through them something of
that departing soul’s power could be transmitted to a new generation.
Then, after a suitable space of time, you would see the soul released. The
bundle would be carried outdoors, and its spirit-dweller told now to continue its
great journey on beyond the circles of this world, but as she or he progresses
onward, to “always look back upon your people that they may walk the sacred path
with firm steps.”2
While the Sioux are only one among an almost endless number of indigenous
peoples around the world, certain basic ideas are found among a very great number
of them, and that is so here. Several features of the worldview expressed in the
above account may impress themselves upon you.
First, our planet is shared by many kinds of spirits, some as humans, animals,
or forces of nature, some like those of ancestors or Great Gods disembodied at
present, or dwelling in shrines or sacred hills or trees, yet also able to affect our
lives.
Second, that life is like a journey with stages of transition, whether initiations,
or birth and death themselves. Each of these may involve pain and sacrifice, yet
confer new status.
Third, in this religion food, as the source of life, has very important
significance: note the role of the buffalo and wild cherry juice in the funeral rite;
for farmers, the plant and its symbolism have no less important roles.
Fourth, all classes of people, young and old, male and female, have their
sacred parts and obligations, related to their biological nature but going beyond it;
note the role of the four girls in the rite above.
Now let’s explore general themes and motifs of indigenous peoples’ religions,
as they are found today, but also no doubt echo the long past from which they
derive.
55
THE NATURAL WORLD IS THE REALM OF THE
SACRED
Indigenous peoples’ religions find and express the sacred in all aspects of nature
and human life. The celestial sky, the earth, the seasons, sacred rocks and trees, life
passages from birth to death, the community or tribe—all are alive with spirit and
meaning. Here, there is no linkage to historical personalities or written documents
as in founder religions. The sacred is immediate, here and now, not located in the
past or in a book. With this idea of the sacred, one needs little focus on linear time
or an idea of the progress of history. Mircea Eliade called this worldview cosmic
religion.3
Indigenous nomadic peoples, or hunters and gatherers, celebrate the hunt and
stories of Gods and spirits who lead the people to bountiful forests or meadows
with abundant food and shelter. For religions of indigenous agricultural peoples,
there also are festivals focused on seedtime and harvest. And there is always the
veneration of nature—the sacred trees and mountains, the human spirit, and
communing with the Divine, immanent in all that is.
In this way of being, ordinary daily life and the extraordinary experience of
the natural world are inseparably integrated, full of divine beings and goblins,
elves and spirits, the returning dead. The rites of hunting, gathering, and archaic
agriculture make no sharp division between this world and an “other” world.
Moreover, shamans are believed able to travel in trance to heaven or the
underworld to recover strayed or stolen souls or to intercede with the Gods. Ritual
then invokes the fundamental sacredness of nature and human beings’ part in it.
Although these religions have rational worldviews expressed through rite and
symbol and society, they do not have the formal written ideological statements that
in other religions are all-too-tempting pegs for interpretation. For that reason, we
have to see what the unified experience and the particulars alike are saying
themselves.
So, it is the images—symbols, gestures, sacred art, and the mighty figures of
sacred stories—that stand out in the world of indigenous peoples’ religion. It is
from the accounts of heroes in story, from masks, from spiritual leaders in the midst
of a hunting rite, from carvings of ancestors, and from paintings on rocks and caves
that these religions are learned. All of these go together to make up a world in
which spirit and matter are thoroughly interwoven, and everything is more than it
seems as myth, rite, and art make the invisible visible. In this universe, human life
is only complete in its total relationships—with family, community, ancestors, the
wind and the rain, the bounty of the Earth, the warmth of the sun—and all is spirit.
56
GODS, SPIRITS, AND THE WORLD
Indigenous religions have their demarcations between conditioned and
unconditioned reality. Yet, as Clifford Geertz has pointed out, they generally seem
complex, only semiordered, and deeply intermingled with all of life. The images
they imprint on the mind, however, borne by the powerful languages of myth and
ritual, are unforgettable.4
Most prominent of these images carried by myth and ritual may be stories
about creation, the beginning, where the world and human beings came from. At the
same time, humans are aware that the world is far from perfect and that if the
creation was meant to be good, something must have gone wrong. Often an original
or ultimate God will be portrayed as having made the world but then seeming to
have little concern for humankind except perhaps to enforce the moral law. A deity
like this is spoken of by those who study religion as a deus otiosus, a “resting
god.”
Sometimes a myth, comparable to the Garden of Eden narrative, accounts for
the separation of humankind from primordial closeness to the creator. With the
separation, death enters the world. The indigenous people of Poso, Sulawesi
(Celebes) Island, Indonesia, said that originally the sky where the creator dwelt
was very near the Earth and that he would lower gifts down on a rope to his
children. Once he let down a stone, but the first men and women were indignant at
such a useless gift and refused it. So the creator pulled it back up and lowered
instead a banana. This the men and women took. But the creator called to them,
“Because you have chosen the banana, your life shall be like its life. Had you taken
the stone, you would have been like it, changeless and immortal.”5
Or the creation itself may have been accomplished by lower deities. A
traditional story from the Wahungwe Makoni of Zimbabwe, Africa, tells us that
their high God, Maori, made the first man, Mwuetsi, and put him in the bottom of a
lake. Mwuetsi wanted to go out on the land; the high God told him he would regret
his wish, but he insisted on it. Indeed, Mwuetsi found the Earth cold and empty,
with no plants or animals. Maori told Mwuetsi that he had warned him, but Maori
did consent to give Mwuetsi one of his kind as a companion, a maiden called
Massassi. After Mwuetsi took Massassi as his wife, they procreated the pl...