The other day I found I might be able to get some funding to revise my World Religions course. When it was first produced in 2004, there was not a lot available on the net that was up to a scholarly level.... The situation is very much better today in 2011. To this point I have fiddled, and adjusted and added piecemeal to bring better linked sites and links to journals and eBooks. But, I might be able to get some cash to spend good time over the summer making the course more interactive and with more mulimedia, the second being more important in terms of understanding religion. Why? Because religion is an experience. It is usually taught in terms of doctrines or dogma - which is how religious professionals see religion - lists of things good and true followers must memorize, and perhaps live, but mostly memorize. My research interests have always been, however, to look at the disjuncture between what the ordinary follower perceives as properly religious, and what any particular religion's leadership defines as properly religious.
Thus far, the difference lies in that dichotomy between dogma and living a religion.... mostly the dogmas are unreachable by the ordinary follower - unrealistic ideals to be strived for, but never reached.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Categorization and the Study of Religion in history
A very satisfying first discussion in my World Religions in Historical Perspective course at the University of Guelph has just concluded. When I wrote this course about six years ago, I labelled a category of religion 'primal'. In the proposal at that time to the university Senate committee I noted that this was a far from satisfactory term, but that I could not think of one better.
In the discussion, I asked the students to supply a critique of the term, and suggest alternatives - which produced a lively and scholarly discussion.
But what I wanted to consider here is not the alternatives suggested [though I will mention one: non-literate or oral], but to ruminate on the usual practice of studying religion using the tools of scientific thought.
Newtonian science has flourished providing the world with all sorts of physical and material comforts and aids. That its fundamental precept of positing an underlying order to the universe has been challenged over the past century or so makes no practical purpose in the provision of a multitude of gadgets for all things. But, from the time I wrote this course, I began to doubt the efficacy of the methods of science in bringing a good understanding of human society in general, and of religion in particular.
Standard world religions text books [and I have a slew of these sent me free by eager publishers] have chapters on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. etc. - each one hermetically sealed from the other. Each is written by an expert in [and often follower of] the particular religion in the chapter. The book's editor or editors try to tie them together in a general introduction which talks about the nature of religion in general - and sometimes in a concluding chapter. The overall impact, however, is of isolation - of each religion existing in isolation from the other - even where something must be said about other religions in one of the chapters, the analysis is usually perfunctory, and surprisingly to me, wrong. Even an excellent general study of one religion, such as Arthur Goldschmidt Jr.'s history of Islam 'A Concise History of the Middle East', which does present religions and other forces which had an impact on Islam accurately, still has misunderstandings, or perhaps it has a sense of preferring Islam to any other. [The link is to the 8th edition - the 7th is available in the Trellis system as an eBook, and there is an audio version 9th edition which is superbly done, also]
The only text which has come close to avoiding this problem of categorization is the now old [1998] second edition of 'The World's Religions' by the late Ninian Smart. Perhaps because it is a book with only one author, I don't know. In this book, categories and definitions and glossaries are abundant - but he attempted to show the profound and frequent and regular interplay of religions one with the other. It does not attempt to separate religions into their own houses, but to present them within cultural context.
I think that dividing religions into discrete categories presents a false picture of the reality of religious institutional structures, of individual faith, of doctrines, of history, of theology, of philosophy - not because each of these approaches produces wrong data - but because the whole is indeed greater than, and more importantly, different than, the parts. Religion to be grasped by the inquiring mind, must first be looked at in whole, not part. The proper method would be what I call the Sound of Music approach - like that venerable movie which begins in the air, and the camera angle gradually descends from the big picture, to the image of one person on the ground, religion should be studied first in its entire context, then one should begin to look at the individual facets.
I don't see, however, how this could be effected using a printed text, or a lecture class, or even the online course as I have it structured right now - which is basically a printed book, or series of lectures, appearing on a computer or mobile device screen, with links and pretty pictures as enhancements. I would like to devise a means where students [including myself here as a permanent student] could see the whole, then delve down into any particular facet or part - to surf the site, that is. If you wanted to compare death rituals across religions, you could do that... or if you wanted to look at a particular religion by itself you could do that too - but the course would not be structured in a linear fashion, except where that made sense, such as a narrative history of change over time.
A possible model is found in a series of multimedia eBooks from a partnership between the American Historical Association and Columbia University Press.
Just meditating.....
In the discussion, I asked the students to supply a critique of the term, and suggest alternatives - which produced a lively and scholarly discussion.
But what I wanted to consider here is not the alternatives suggested [though I will mention one: non-literate or oral], but to ruminate on the usual practice of studying religion using the tools of scientific thought.
Newtonian science has flourished providing the world with all sorts of physical and material comforts and aids. That its fundamental precept of positing an underlying order to the universe has been challenged over the past century or so makes no practical purpose in the provision of a multitude of gadgets for all things. But, from the time I wrote this course, I began to doubt the efficacy of the methods of science in bringing a good understanding of human society in general, and of religion in particular.
Standard world religions text books [and I have a slew of these sent me free by eager publishers] have chapters on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. etc. - each one hermetically sealed from the other. Each is written by an expert in [and often follower of] the particular religion in the chapter. The book's editor or editors try to tie them together in a general introduction which talks about the nature of religion in general - and sometimes in a concluding chapter. The overall impact, however, is of isolation - of each religion existing in isolation from the other - even where something must be said about other religions in one of the chapters, the analysis is usually perfunctory, and surprisingly to me, wrong. Even an excellent general study of one religion, such as Arthur Goldschmidt Jr.'s history of Islam 'A Concise History of the Middle East', which does present religions and other forces which had an impact on Islam accurately, still has misunderstandings, or perhaps it has a sense of preferring Islam to any other. [The link is to the 8th edition - the 7th is available in the Trellis system as an eBook, and there is an audio version 9th edition which is superbly done, also]
The only text which has come close to avoiding this problem of categorization is the now old [1998] second edition of 'The World's Religions' by the late Ninian Smart. Perhaps because it is a book with only one author, I don't know. In this book, categories and definitions and glossaries are abundant - but he attempted to show the profound and frequent and regular interplay of religions one with the other. It does not attempt to separate religions into their own houses, but to present them within cultural context.
I think that dividing religions into discrete categories presents a false picture of the reality of religious institutional structures, of individual faith, of doctrines, of history, of theology, of philosophy - not because each of these approaches produces wrong data - but because the whole is indeed greater than, and more importantly, different than, the parts. Religion to be grasped by the inquiring mind, must first be looked at in whole, not part. The proper method would be what I call the Sound of Music approach - like that venerable movie which begins in the air, and the camera angle gradually descends from the big picture, to the image of one person on the ground, religion should be studied first in its entire context, then one should begin to look at the individual facets.
I don't see, however, how this could be effected using a printed text, or a lecture class, or even the online course as I have it structured right now - which is basically a printed book, or series of lectures, appearing on a computer or mobile device screen, with links and pretty pictures as enhancements. I would like to devise a means where students [including myself here as a permanent student] could see the whole, then delve down into any particular facet or part - to surf the site, that is. If you wanted to compare death rituals across religions, you could do that... or if you wanted to look at a particular religion by itself you could do that too - but the course would not be structured in a linear fashion, except where that made sense, such as a narrative history of change over time.
A possible model is found in a series of multimedia eBooks from a partnership between the American Historical Association and Columbia University Press.
Just meditating.....
Thursday, April 28, 2011
A Procrastinator's thoughts while marking exams
I have been ruminating on the difference between Islam and eastern Christianity on the one hand, and western Christianity on the other. I am speaking about cultural differences of course, but also 'of course' religion and culture are one and the same - even in the so-called 'secular' West. Despite an overt separation of church & state, despite the vagaries and vacuousness of modern atheism, western civilization is inextricably bound with the history and reality of Christianity -- but of a form of faith which is formed by and informing the unique context of the West.
In the world of Islam and of Greek/Russian Orthodox Christianity, faith was deliberately and unconsciously integrated with the state - the emperor of the east Romans had a paramount position over the Christian church beginning with Constantine and his first great council - and lasting after the fall of the city in 1453 in Russia, where the Tsars assumed that authority and christened Moscow as the third Rome. Islam had a similar office in the Caliphate - a position in the early centuries of both civil and religious authority, simply because Muslims could not conceive that the two were separate, but rather aspects of the same authority devolving from the one God. This 'ummah' for Muslims, and empire for eastern Christians was Truth with a capital 'T'. It did for a time have its counterpart in the West in the concept of Christendom - but the West was different from the 5th century on.
What happened then, of course, was the collapse of a central imperial authority, and its replacement by a multitude of civil authorities in the persons of tribal kings, and a separate but unified religious ideal inherent in the papacy. Now this is all very simplified, but I think does get to the roots of the difference - from the 5th century onward sacred and secular began slowly, glacially to separate. This is a leap, but what followed was the rise of individualism and intellectualism in the Renaissance - evidenced firstly in art, architecture, poetry and prose - still religious in focus, but aimed at a wider audience and expressing the individuality of the artist as much as the subject matter of God.
Once on this track, the West produced the Enlightenment, science, and overt atheism and overt secularity. It is the Enlightenment which engages my meditation. This cultural movement produced an ummah of individuals who were trained in and practised at the art of looking at oneself and at one's own culture as though it were a foreign place - I would submit that the eastern mentality of Muslim and Greek Christian never did experience this cultural alteration - that the mindset is one of a holistic integration of body and soul - or church and state, or faith and secularity - that the ability to look dispassionately at oneself is not a skill set found outside the West.
OK! That off my chest, and back to marking......
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Red bird
Red bird in the tree Branches bare for all to see The world was silent Watching waiting quietly He sat he breathed (both in and out) Not wanting a sound to make The bird it flew Towards the sun Seeking warmth it knew would come The world began to breathe once more Freed
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Easter Thoughts [a very few]
The fragmentation of Christianity by means of Protestantism bothers some devout Catholics, going back as far as Thomas More. What seems noteworthy to me is the removal of holiness from the physical and real world, and its imprisonment in words alone - that Christian holiness was made a matter of argument and logic and evidence, rather than a ‘Way’, a mode of living, of perceiving reality - of something one breathed in and one breathed out.
As a questing historian I understand the forces that impelled the reformation movement we label Protestant - a fear that the essence of Christ’s message in the Resurrection was lost under layers and layers of ritual and artwork and music - that there was too much icing and too little cake, as a result. Too much time is wasted debating points of doctrine - all great fun no doubt, but wasted time nonetheless.
Monday, April 11, 2011
The King James or Authorized version of the Bible
This year the 400th anniversary of the King James translation is being marked in England. It should of course be noted in the entire English-speaking world. The language of this translation entered into common speech and the cultural mentality of the English-speaking world until we pretty much decided to toss our heritage into the trash from the 1960s onward.
When remarking on this to classes, I like to mention such things as Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse taken from Revelation chapter 6 verse 8, And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was death, and Hell followed with him.
Linked in the header is the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford's commemoration of the translation.
When remarking on this to classes, I like to mention such things as Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse taken from Revelation chapter 6 verse 8, And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was death, and Hell followed with him.
Linked in the header is the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford's commemoration of the translation.
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