Recently I listened carefully to a series of podcasts taken from CBC Radio's Ideas broadcast. I think it was originally produced in 2012, but the podcasts came to my attention only recently. I selected one of these for students of two of my history of religion online courses, one at the University of Guelph and the other at the related institution, the University of Guelph/Humber.
I presented the third podcast because it deals with the very nature of religion, of society and of the relationship between the two. The producer, David Cayley interviews William Cavanaugh a theologian at DePaul University in Chicago. The interview centres around two books of his, one called The Migrations of the Holy (2011), and the other, The Myth of Religious Violence (2009). Generally (and this is a very general statement!), Cavanaugh advances the idea that the new nation-state became and usurped the object of worship from faith in the early modern era. He thinks that 'religion' became both a tool of the new form called the nation-state and a scapegoat for violence from which the State claimed to protect citizens. In reality this was a cover for violence which as is usual in history was a product of greed, honour, the desire for expansion and so on. Later, the state began to find religion less useful and privatization occurred.
I am not sure yet what to think of his ideas, except of course, most wars were not primarily religious, though sometimes religion was a factor or used by those promoting war, and only rarely was religion a prime factor. This is a reasonable stance for any serious student of history to take. Cavanaugh is farther out on a limb when he discusses the role of religion today - citing examples such as the Papacy's opposition to war in Iraq. He sees 'religion' as having a role in a faith an a political sense.
I need to think a lot more about this before coming even to preliminary ideas.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Dying and Henry
A blog post about my old dog dying may seem inappropriate or irrelevant to some in this space, but not to me... and this is my blog, after all, and my dog, Henry.
My old chocolate lab has a severe kidney malfunction that is causing him to die, slowly. He is ten years old and thus old in dog terms, but as usually labrador retrievers live to 12 or so years, a bit early for this. With all my other pets, I have taken them in to be euthanized when they were in evident distress. Henry is not; he is just slowly shutting down. I decided therefore to keep him at home either to die in peace in his own place, or if he does begin to experience severe discomfort, then to take him. I went today and bought a sedative for him should I have to do so as I do not to want him to suffer the stress all animals do with visits to the Vet.
This has got me thinking about animals and the afterlife. Some years ago I read a newspaper report of some theological opinion from a Jesuit theologian in Rome that animals do not have souls and will not be in Heaven. Seems to me that for some, Heaven wouldn't be Heaven if there were any of those pesky animals in place - just people sitting around on clouds thinking deep thoughts. For others, such as myself, this would be closer to Hell than Heaven. None of us know, of course, if Heaven will be as described when we were young children, or if it will be some place of amorphous joy. I rather hope some version of my childhood view is true than some place where nebulous souls float around meditating.
This too, reminds me of my grandfather's death. He, unlike virtually everybody today in the West, died at home. Not , alas, his home and indeed after a number of years of sad debility and thus in a very hard and unpleasant fashion. But he did not die in a cold, efficient institution. He died in his own bed, while under the care of his wife and my mother - women then as now, shouldered the bulk of caregiving. I was six years old, and I recall while the adults were buzzing and whispering, I slipped into his room because I was curious. I had seen my grandfather in his bed, unable to move, or feed himself or talk, only able to make inarticulate roaring noises when he was frustrated. I fear he was normal inside and going slowly mad within the prison of his stroke disabled body. When I walked into the room this time, it was utterly silent, unlike the subdued excitement in the rest of the house. Although only six, I knew instantly what death was. There was a deep absence that I intuitively understood. That wonderful old phrase I was yet to learn described the mood of that room perfectly: 'the peace which passeth all understanding".
I was taught as a Christian to see death as a passing to a better place. Perhaps Heaven is peace.
An update: Henry's distress became evident the day after I wrote this post. RIP Henry the Dog
My old chocolate lab has a severe kidney malfunction that is causing him to die, slowly. He is ten years old and thus old in dog terms, but as usually labrador retrievers live to 12 or so years, a bit early for this. With all my other pets, I have taken them in to be euthanized when they were in evident distress. Henry is not; he is just slowly shutting down. I decided therefore to keep him at home either to die in peace in his own place, or if he does begin to experience severe discomfort, then to take him. I went today and bought a sedative for him should I have to do so as I do not to want him to suffer the stress all animals do with visits to the Vet.
This has got me thinking about animals and the afterlife. Some years ago I read a newspaper report of some theological opinion from a Jesuit theologian in Rome that animals do not have souls and will not be in Heaven. Seems to me that for some, Heaven wouldn't be Heaven if there were any of those pesky animals in place - just people sitting around on clouds thinking deep thoughts. For others, such as myself, this would be closer to Hell than Heaven. None of us know, of course, if Heaven will be as described when we were young children, or if it will be some place of amorphous joy. I rather hope some version of my childhood view is true than some place where nebulous souls float around meditating.
This too, reminds me of my grandfather's death. He, unlike virtually everybody today in the West, died at home. Not , alas, his home and indeed after a number of years of sad debility and thus in a very hard and unpleasant fashion. But he did not die in a cold, efficient institution. He died in his own bed, while under the care of his wife and my mother - women then as now, shouldered the bulk of caregiving. I was six years old, and I recall while the adults were buzzing and whispering, I slipped into his room because I was curious. I had seen my grandfather in his bed, unable to move, or feed himself or talk, only able to make inarticulate roaring noises when he was frustrated. I fear he was normal inside and going slowly mad within the prison of his stroke disabled body. When I walked into the room this time, it was utterly silent, unlike the subdued excitement in the rest of the house. Although only six, I knew instantly what death was. There was a deep absence that I intuitively understood. That wonderful old phrase I was yet to learn described the mood of that room perfectly: 'the peace which passeth all understanding".
I was taught as a Christian to see death as a passing to a better place. Perhaps Heaven is peace.
An update: Henry's distress became evident the day after I wrote this post. RIP Henry the Dog
Sunday, August 10, 2014
My Definition of Religion (whatever that is)
A belief and hope that there is ultimate meaning.
I listened carefully to Richard Dawkins when he debated the Archbishop of Canterbury. In this debate, to Prof. Dawkins, existence - the universe - was a giant accident initially, pure chance. Development has been a chain of accident combined with cause and effect since that beginning.
Religion - any religion - all religions, on the other hand, whether they are atheist like Buddhism, or philosophies like Confucianism, or monotheistic like the Abrahamic faiths, or polytheistic, all reject chaos and assert there is an essential order beyond any seeming chaos. They may disagree on the nature of this essential meaning; they may disagree on the proper behaviour of individual humans; they may disagree on the structural aspect, but they all start with ultimate meaning. So, religion is also to put it in its negative sense, the rejection of a philosophy or a science that posits chaos as the foundational element of existence.
I would add to this that my wording 'ultimate meaning' is reminiscent of the theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich's definition from the middle of the 20th century which used the term: 'ultimate concern'. My definition above was thought out over the vast period of time of six minutes, but was the culmination of 50 years of thinking about religion and probably Prof. Tillich's thoughts lurked somewhere in that hard drive I carry around on my shoulders. But I think it is different. I will let those of you who read these words decide.
A Postscript:
Intellectual ramblings about the nature of religion are what I call thinking about a Philosopher's God. My thinking about religion as an academic has centred around the religion of ordinary people, believed and practiced in their daily lives, rather than high octane definitions of a purely intellectual sort. Yet, I do not at present see any conflict between my broad definition (now there's an oxymoron!) of religion. One can believe and pray and function as a religious person while assenting to and enjoying an intellectual approach.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Liberal Islam
I have just listened to a Humanitas lecture by Prof. Abdou Filali Ansary where he suggests some very interesting things about Islam today. I had to follow his lecture in bits and pieces as having a full hour uninterrupted is a rarity for me, and if I can find a free hour in the future I will hide somewhere and listen again. He makes important points, not heard much today in the roar of radical Islam that fills the western media, and dare I say, the Islamic media also.
He begins by looking not so much at European reactions to Islam, but at Muslim visitors to Europe as long ago as the 16th century. He begins there as this talk carefully circumambulates modernity. Modernity is, of course, a very slippery term when you dig below the surface, but is useful as clearly something changed in European, and today’s child of Europe, the West with the advent of ‘modernity’. Prof. Ansary does mention here and there in his talk western perceptions of Islam, but what interests him more are Islamic reactions to modernity and therefore the West. He details the reactions of some Muslim visitors to Europe as modernity takes hold and notes their surprise at the profound changes in world view and mentalité that are intrinsic to modernity.
He goes on to speak about the nature of modernity in the Islamic world. Where in the West, the enchanted world (to borrow from Charles Taylor) is replaced gradually by a scientific outlook, which reaches its climax with the birth of social sciences in the late 19th century, in the Islamic world modernity means something quite different. Modernity there is a search and movement to restore ‘normative’ Islam. Muslim intellectuals, many affected by the primacy of logic, reason and the use of observed social evidence see an Islam that had departed from the pure teachings of the Prophet and the ‘golden age’ of the Rashidun. They see an Islam that had syncretically melded Islam with local cultural practices and beliefs, a mongrel and hybrid form, not pure.
Syncretism is a term that is under attack and often rejected these days, but I have yet to find a workable replacement for what it signifies. In the university course I teach on Religion and Society in the modern western world, I have students consider such things as Tequitqui in the former Aztec lands, or the very individual case of an Oji-Cree Anglican priest active in his northern Ontario parish in the 1950s, 60s and 70s who also functioned as a traditional medicine man. Of course his Anglican bishop knew nothing of his parallel track job, but there it was. This fact of syncretism, whether it can be defined as a melding of beliefs and local cultural practices, or an acceptance in some locales of parallel belief systems existed also for any other religion that spread beyond its original socio-cultural setting.
Modernity then, for Islam, was not the rejection of religion as in the West, and its replacement by the secular religion of Science (I use the term religion here stressing its etymological roots as a social apparatus that provides a common worldview for a society, that is in functional rather than substantive terms). Modernity for Islam was a move by intellectuals and activists (often the same persons) to restore a normative Islam and scale away the syncretic accretions attendant on expansion over the centuries. The way this is happening dominates the media: ISIS currently in the news with its claim to restore the Caliphate; the Muslim Brotherhood, a much older organization battling within Egypt; Wahabbism the first of these, still in control in Saudi Arabia.
Abdou Filali Ansary is none of these. He points to a different path to Muslim modernity, one little noticed, but perhaps needing to be so noticed.
He refers to this path as Liberal Islam. It is found in a handful of individual scholars who reject the traditional approach to the Qur’an, which is to regard it as a set of discrete laws, where each Surah is sealed off from the other and applied to modern situations. These thinkers argue that true Islam resides in the spirit, the holistic spirit of Islam that should guide Muslims in the modern world. Ansary is not hopeful that this will happen, as the purveyors of apologetics - the conservative and traditional interpreters of Islam, control education in the Muslim world and each new generation of teachers is trained in the same system. Also he notes that they use language that appeals to the masses, either to fight against despots in the Islamic world, or to fight against the West. The Liberal Muslim intellectuals do not translate their ideas in such a way as to appeal to the masses.
A good place to start an exploration of Liberal Islam can be found in this book:
and here:
He begins by looking not so much at European reactions to Islam, but at Muslim visitors to Europe as long ago as the 16th century. He begins there as this talk carefully circumambulates modernity. Modernity is, of course, a very slippery term when you dig below the surface, but is useful as clearly something changed in European, and today’s child of Europe, the West with the advent of ‘modernity’. Prof. Ansary does mention here and there in his talk western perceptions of Islam, but what interests him more are Islamic reactions to modernity and therefore the West. He details the reactions of some Muslim visitors to Europe as modernity takes hold and notes their surprise at the profound changes in world view and mentalité that are intrinsic to modernity.
Syncretism is a term that is under attack and often rejected these days, but I have yet to find a workable replacement for what it signifies. In the university course I teach on Religion and Society in the modern western world, I have students consider such things as Tequitqui in the former Aztec lands, or the very individual case of an Oji-Cree Anglican priest active in his northern Ontario parish in the 1950s, 60s and 70s who also functioned as a traditional medicine man. Of course his Anglican bishop knew nothing of his parallel track job, but there it was. This fact of syncretism, whether it can be defined as a melding of beliefs and local cultural practices, or an acceptance in some locales of parallel belief systems existed also for any other religion that spread beyond its original socio-cultural setting.
Abdou Filali Ansary is none of these. He points to a different path to Muslim modernity, one little noticed, but perhaps needing to be so noticed.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
50 Years
50 years ago I wrote my first essay, and my first exploration into the nature of religion. I was 13 years old and was in Grade 8 at a school that contained grades 1 through 8. It was a semi-rural school board outside Windsor, Ontario and did not have the money to establish 'middle schools' or 'senior public schools'. I was approaching the end of two years of a hellish experience of being an outsider and bullied by the other denizens of this place. But there were two points of light for me then. One was my confirmation in the Anglican Church of Canada, and the other was a teacher at this school.
This teacher, Norton Mansfield was also the school principal (Head Teacher to Brits). He was a tall, spare Englishman with a loud (when needed) and precise (always) voice and manner of speaking. The year before we all had heard his loud form as that was a year with a coterie of violent and angry young boys in the school. Corporal punishment was normal then, but only in extreme cases and only administered by the Principal, which in this instance he did so and with gusto. Anyway, I was a bit nervous as I entered Grade 8 as my teacher - this school still placed all students into a single room with a single teacher for the academic year by grade - had been the second in command for discipline. The teacher, George Hinch, turned out to be a wonderfully kind and gentle man. Norton Mansfield was the same. But, what mattered here was Mr. Mansfield's love of the English language. He taught us English literature every Tuesday morning from 9 to noon. From him I learned of my own passion for writing. Writing is two things to me: it is thinking in an organized and permanent fashion and it is also and now mostly for me, a feeling/experiencing in a way to communicate either ideas or feelings. We read poetry, a novel, short stories and essays under Mr. Mansfield's tutelage and he made them live and breathe for me. I was a reader already, but he opened new worlds of creativity and profound thought in my heart and in my mind.
Because of him I wrote this first essay. Its genesis was in my local Anglican parish church. After confirmation at age 13 that winter, I began to attend church services rather than Sunday School. This was St. Matthew's Anglican church in South Windsor. As I sat in the pew with my family, I began to argue mentally with the sermon. Many times I wanted to jump up and shout NO, WHAT ABOUT .... X or Y.....
As this was rather frowned upon, I began writing passionately after my family came home from church. I had a desk and I had a pad of yellow, lined paper and a pencil in my bedroom. While my mother made 'our Sunday egg' as she called it (eggs in those days made me mildly nauseous, but I was always a good son, or at least I was rarely caught). I would sit for the half hour or so until called up to eat lunch, furiously writing my essay on the relationship between religion and society, for such it was. I focussed my 13 year old mind on science and religion. I came to the conclusion that as science advanced, religion would decline. I have seen this opinion again many times in student discussions in the university courses I teach in the History of Religions, especially the one that focusses on religion and society. My wiser (I hope) and more mature (less likely) self has mostly rejected this early conclusion as clearly religion is not going anywhere, though its form and practice are altering profoundly.
The next year I entered High School in Grade 9 (for my American friends, we do not use the terms 'freshman, or junior or senior and so on, but the grade you are in - and for my British friends, although we used American 'grade' terminology the Ontario High School system was modelled on the British 'forms' - High School went either to 12 - 5th form for those not going on to university, or Grade 13 - 6th form for those going to university). I polished and worked on my essay, but was in an agony of wanting someone else to read it. I did not want to show it to my parents as they had the habit of finding anything I did worthy of great praise, whether it was worthy or not. That Fall I had made a friendship of sorts with another student, whose elder brother was the school genius and also President of the Student Council. My friend and I used to do homework together in a spare room - much of that time was spent fooling around, but we did some work. I knew also that my friend often had his brother help him with his homework. So I hatched the plan of slipping my pencil written document 'accidentally' into my friend's homework at a time when I knew he was going to get help from his brother.
This happened on a Friday and I waited over the weekend hoping, wondering. On Monday, we met as usual in this room and my friend looked rather oddly at me, as though he had never seen me before. He pulled out my essay and handed it back and said, 'This got mixed up with my homework. 'My brother read it while helping me and said "This would get an A grade in Grade 13". I had my answer. I was a writer and a thinker from that time on in my life. This was the Fall of 1964, 50 years ago.
This teacher, Norton Mansfield was also the school principal (Head Teacher to Brits). He was a tall, spare Englishman with a loud (when needed) and precise (always) voice and manner of speaking. The year before we all had heard his loud form as that was a year with a coterie of violent and angry young boys in the school. Corporal punishment was normal then, but only in extreme cases and only administered by the Principal, which in this instance he did so and with gusto. Anyway, I was a bit nervous as I entered Grade 8 as my teacher - this school still placed all students into a single room with a single teacher for the academic year by grade - had been the second in command for discipline. The teacher, George Hinch, turned out to be a wonderfully kind and gentle man. Norton Mansfield was the same. But, what mattered here was Mr. Mansfield's love of the English language. He taught us English literature every Tuesday morning from 9 to noon. From him I learned of my own passion for writing. Writing is two things to me: it is thinking in an organized and permanent fashion and it is also and now mostly for me, a feeling/experiencing in a way to communicate either ideas or feelings. We read poetry, a novel, short stories and essays under Mr. Mansfield's tutelage and he made them live and breathe for me. I was a reader already, but he opened new worlds of creativity and profound thought in my heart and in my mind.
Because of him I wrote this first essay. Its genesis was in my local Anglican parish church. After confirmation at age 13 that winter, I began to attend church services rather than Sunday School. This was St. Matthew's Anglican church in South Windsor. As I sat in the pew with my family, I began to argue mentally with the sermon. Many times I wanted to jump up and shout NO, WHAT ABOUT .... X or Y.....
As this was rather frowned upon, I began writing passionately after my family came home from church. I had a desk and I had a pad of yellow, lined paper and a pencil in my bedroom. While my mother made 'our Sunday egg' as she called it (eggs in those days made me mildly nauseous, but I was always a good son, or at least I was rarely caught). I would sit for the half hour or so until called up to eat lunch, furiously writing my essay on the relationship between religion and society, for such it was. I focussed my 13 year old mind on science and religion. I came to the conclusion that as science advanced, religion would decline. I have seen this opinion again many times in student discussions in the university courses I teach in the History of Religions, especially the one that focusses on religion and society. My wiser (I hope) and more mature (less likely) self has mostly rejected this early conclusion as clearly religion is not going anywhere, though its form and practice are altering profoundly.
The next year I entered High School in Grade 9 (for my American friends, we do not use the terms 'freshman, or junior or senior and so on, but the grade you are in - and for my British friends, although we used American 'grade' terminology the Ontario High School system was modelled on the British 'forms' - High School went either to 12 - 5th form for those not going on to university, or Grade 13 - 6th form for those going to university). I polished and worked on my essay, but was in an agony of wanting someone else to read it. I did not want to show it to my parents as they had the habit of finding anything I did worthy of great praise, whether it was worthy or not. That Fall I had made a friendship of sorts with another student, whose elder brother was the school genius and also President of the Student Council. My friend and I used to do homework together in a spare room - much of that time was spent fooling around, but we did some work. I knew also that my friend often had his brother help him with his homework. So I hatched the plan of slipping my pencil written document 'accidentally' into my friend's homework at a time when I knew he was going to get help from his brother.
This happened on a Friday and I waited over the weekend hoping, wondering. On Monday, we met as usual in this room and my friend looked rather oddly at me, as though he had never seen me before. He pulled out my essay and handed it back and said, 'This got mixed up with my homework. 'My brother read it while helping me and said "This would get an A grade in Grade 13". I had my answer. I was a writer and a thinker from that time on in my life. This was the Fall of 1964, 50 years ago.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
The History of the Middle East in Maps
No comment here, except that Christians appear to be omitted (though I have only skimmed these and may have missed this component)
The History of the Middle East in Maps
The History of the Middle East in Maps
Friday, July 11, 2014
Science
I am grading final exams for one of my summer courses. One question I require all students to answer requires them to compare the state of religion and religious faith in 1500 to the present day, using a quote from Charles Taylor's A secular Age. Many of the responses discuss science as a leading factor in this change. I don't intend to debate this idea here - the very first thing I ever wrote was an essay for myself on the relationship between religion and science. I was 13 years old when I wrote it and I came then to much the same conclusion my students of today do in their answers. My thoughts have changed since that essay of 50 years ago.
What interests me at this moment, however, is science. That is, what is science to these students? Most of their answers suggest that science is the answer to all questions, or to those questions worth asking. Questions worth asking are those where there exists a concrete impact on human life, sometimes direct as in disease or pain, and sometimes indirect as in food supply or weather. Unspoken is any consideration of what might come after life. Morality is assumed to be 'natural', or 'logical', that is, morality is not something that needs to be discussed or thought about in any deep way, it is merely obvious. All 'real' things and morality are not connected in any direct fashion to religion.
I am not sure what to make of all this. I would have thought, or hoped at least, that a study of different religions as integral components of societies across time and space would have changed this meme. Apparently not.
What interests me at this moment, however, is science. That is, what is science to these students? Most of their answers suggest that science is the answer to all questions, or to those questions worth asking. Questions worth asking are those where there exists a concrete impact on human life, sometimes direct as in disease or pain, and sometimes indirect as in food supply or weather. Unspoken is any consideration of what might come after life. Morality is assumed to be 'natural', or 'logical', that is, morality is not something that needs to be discussed or thought about in any deep way, it is merely obvious. All 'real' things and morality are not connected in any direct fashion to religion.
I am not sure what to make of all this. I would have thought, or hoped at least, that a study of different religions as integral components of societies across time and space would have changed this meme. Apparently not.
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