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PURPOSE AND METHOD

• The Purpose
• Defining Religion
• Competing Methodologies
• Defending This Approach
• Use in the Classroom

Prophets of secularism keep on predicting the demise of religion: given the dramatic discoveries of science, they argue, it is only a matter of time before religion disappears. Yet each obituary seems a little premature. Neanderthal humans living 150,000 years ago were intensely religious and, despite all the progress and numerous differences between then and now, they share this characteristic with the majority of citizens in the United States today. Religion continues to survive and thrive despite its secular opponents.

Yet religious people in the secular West cannot ignore the challenge of secularism. So many assumptions made in our schools, colleges, and universities constantly question the value of religion. Can one affirm scientific discoveries and still be religious? Is it possible to be tolerant of diversity and be religious? Does everyday common sense make religion plausible or practical? This is a reader intended for those who find themselves interested in religion, yet aware of and wanting to engage with these questions.

The next chapter will explore the case for secular humanism. Science, philosophy, and concern for a tolerant society all come together to insist that religion is both untrue and damaging. The rest of the book invites each of the major religious traditions in turn to explain how the given tradition is coherent and helpful to society. Each chapter invites the reader to enter into dialogue by empathising with each religion in turn. Each attempts to present its tradition in a sympathetic light. You do not have to agree, but you will be invited to understand.

This opening chapter is intended to explain the interpretative structure and method that will be used in this reader. So first, we shall outline what this book is not. Second, we shall attempt to define the subject matter of this reader. Here we shall examine briefly the thorny question of the definition of 'religion'. Third, we shall define the approach adopted here against alternative approaches used in other comparable texts and defend it against possible criticism. And, finally, we shall explain how best to use the text in the classroom. Much that follows will be quite demanding and it is required reading for those planning to use the text in teaching. However, for those simply interested in religion, it is perfectly possible to skip the rest of this chapter and move to the next chapter.

The Purpose

To start with, this book is a gentle introduction. It is possible simply to use the first section of each chapter, where the student is invited to understand the history, teaching, practices, shadow side, and appeal of each religion. We have kept technical language to a minimum. We want all students to find this world accessible. Then the book becomes a reader. To understand a tradition, one needs to access the sources that define or typify that tradition. Ideally one needs to learn the necessary language(s), and then read the scriptures or other texts of the tradition in the original. But most of us do not have the time (let alone the skill) to master all the relevant languages. So turning to good translations can provide a helpful way in (though translations can never be perfect and free from interpretations). This is still called a reader because it brings together significant texts. At the end of each chapter one must be sensitive to the complexities of each tradition. Every one of them has had a long and enormously complex history. Many thousands of people have grappled with these texts for entire lifetimes; no course in the study of religion would be satisfactory if it did not leave the student slightly confused.

The vantage point that is taken is of a faithful adherent of a tradition; we have sought to identify the 'mainstream' Muslim or Buddhist. We have attempted to find representative conversation partners for each tradition. However, it must be recognised that this book is not a systematic survey of all the strands of each tradition. Put two humans together, and disagreements seem inevitable. Each tradition divides again into numerous subdivisions. So Christianity divides into Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism. Protestants divide into Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists - to name but a few. Major divisions of each tradition are taken account of (e.g. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism within Christianity, Sunni and Shia within Islam). But for more detail about the different schools, one needs to refer to a history or encyclopedia of religion.

The combination of the gentle introduction and the primary texts enables the student both to get an overview and, simultaneously, grasp the complexity of each tradition. The overview is important because it is the way in for those who are unfamiliar. The complexity is important because it is all too easy to imagine that one understands that which is often very alien and very different. Working with the primary text is an important skill to learn. These are texts from scriptures, texts from authorities, texts from scholars, and texts from converts. There is hard work. Most of the texts were not written with the expectation that they would be studied in a twenty-first-century classroom. Inconsistencies were never ironed out. Ambiguous points were not clarified. St. Paul did not expect his letter to the Roman church to become a foundational text for the Christian Church and therefore subject to centuries of argument. Religion would be much easier if one could ignore the messiness of the primary texts. But this would miss so much. The primary texts expose both the brilliance and the bumbling confusion that lie at the heart of most innovation. It is the brilliance that justifies the study; it is the confusion that makes the study so hard.

This then is the invitation. Enjoy easing into our conversation partners and then learn to struggle with the primary texts. Now as a 'World Religions Reader', we need to examine precisely what this is a reader of. In other words, what do we mean by the word 'religion'?

Defining Religion

Consider the following definition of religion:

The real characteristic of religious phenomena is that they always suppose a bipartite division of the whole universe, known and knowable, into two classes which embrace all that exists, but which radically exclude each other. Sacred things are those which the interdictions protect and isolate; profane things, those to which these interdictions are applied and which must remain at a distance from the first. Religious beliefs are the representations which express the nature of sacred things and the relations which they sustain, either with each other or with profane things.1

Emile Durkheim, the brilliant sociologist, offered this definition after his careful study of primitive societies. It is a definition that stresses the distinction between the sacred and the profane. This definition highlights, implicitly, the rituals and practices of a religion, and indicates that these overt religious practices are justified by a sense of the sacred. Now although this distinction is an important feature of much religion, it is by no means universal. Confucianism, for example, is not primarily preoccupied with it. Furthermore, Durkheim's definition enabled him to reduce the significance of religion to its societal role. For example, the sense of the sacred is evoked within the individual by needs and conditions imposed by the greater entity - society as a whole. In other words, Durkheim's definition stresses that feature of religion that served his academic interests and purposes. He has ensured that sociology should be the paramount discipline for understanding religion. Freud defined religion in terms of transference and illusion, and hidden in his definition was the assumption that psychology is the key to illuminate the nature of religion.2

Even more overtly theological definitions of religion end up making the same mistake. So Paul Tillich, for example, defines religion thus:

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life. Therefore this concern is unconditionally serious and shows a willingness to sacrifice any finite concern which is in conflict with it.3

This is a major theme found throughout Tillich's work and he may well have identified correctly the attitude of most committed religious people. However, as a definition, it ignores all those who are nominal in their allegiances. Such people might still consider themselves religious but do not feel it requires what they would probably see as a fanatical identification with a tradition. Furthermore, this definition ignores the content of religion (no mention of any beliefs in the supernatural); it simply concentrates on the attitude of religious people. The problem is that the same attitude can be found in politics or the arts. Some Marxists, for example, treat their commitment to the Revolution as their 'ultimate concern', but they would certainly not want to be described as religious.4 This tendency to define religion in such a way that one picks out what one thinks matters most is almost universal....