William Grassie - The New Sciences of Religion

Another great, if older, article from The Global Spiral (Metanexus Institute), this time on the study of religion as a science. This article borders on an integral approach to the study of religion, which is sorely needed. All the scientists who pretend to explain away religion really have done nothing to aid in our understanding of why religions exist, how they perpetuate themselves, the roles they play in people's live, and the cultures that are shaped by them.

The New Sciences of Religion

By William Grassie

The last few years have witnessed a torrent of new books by noted scientists purporting to scientifically explain religion, mostly with the intentions of explaining religion away (Stenger 2007), (Dawkins 2006), (Dennett 2006), (Harris 2006), (Hamer 2005), (Harris 2004), (Wilson 2002), (Boyer 2001). What is religion? What is spirituality? How does one study it? How does one teach it? What does it mean to take a scientific approach to the study of religion? Are religions healthy and functional for individuals and societies, or are they unhealthy and dysfunctional? These are difficult questions at the center of some of the most challenging controversies of the 21st century.

In this essay, I employ the metaphor of inside and outside to characterize different ways of studying religion (McCutcheon 1999). In studying religion from the outside through science, I will survey different theories advocated and the limitations of those theories. I will argue for pluralistic methodologies in the scientific study of religious and spiritual phenomena. I will also argue that religious persons and institutions should welcome scientific investigation, because science impacts only interpretative strategies and does not present a fundamental challenge to core religious commitments. In the end, I will deconstruct the circle and challenge the boundaries that place religion on the inside as the subject and science on the outside as the objective on-looker. I begin and end with the problem of definitions.

The Problem of Definitions

The words themselves – religion and spirituality – beg for rigorous definitions, but this will prove elusive. The term “religion” is derived from the Latin verb religare, which means “to tie together, to bind fast”. In the original understanding, “religion” was about expressing proper piety, i.e., binding oneself to God. Later the term would also be used to designate a bounded belief systems and set of practices, as in the religions of the Greeks, Romans, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese, and others.

Today, in the United States, it is quite common for people to say that they are “spiritual, not religious”. The definition of “spiritual” is also elusive. The term derives from the Latin spiritus. The Latin verb root is spirare, literally, “to breathe or blow”. The connotation is that we are surrounded by a divine reality as pervasive, intimate, necessary, and invisible as the air we breathe. Similar concepts can be found in the Hindu word prana. The Chinese concept of chi energy may be analogous. Jewish mystics noted that the sacred name of God in Hebrew, Yhwh, a name written in the Bible but never pronounced aloud by pious Jews, might itself be understood as the sound of human breath – an inhalation Yh and an exhalation wh. Thus, every time a person breathes, she is actually saying the name of God. Muslim mystics made similar claims about the aspiration of the name Allah. To talk of spirituality then is to affirm that there is an all-encompassing realm, an invisible reality that somehow transcends and sustains human life, consciousness, and values.

In the contemporary context, the use of the phrase “spiritual, not religious” is to disassociate oneself from the institutional and historical manifestations of religions. One wants the “goods” without the long histories of failures and hypocrisy. Religions are organized groups. Spirituality is something an individual can have without being implicated in the ambivalent complexity of human societies and institutions. In this sense, “spiritual, not religious” can be seen as a modern manifestation of a historical, sociological cycle of trying to recapture the imagined authentic origins of religion. Humans, of course, are a social and political species, so it is only a matter of time before “spirituality” also gets messy. Indeed, the notion “spiritual, not religious” is itself the product of a culture that emphasizes individualism and consumerism. It is also the product of a religious history of recurrent reformations that seek to return to an original, unmediated, pure connection with a foundational moment, a mystical experience, or the teachings of a charismatic leader.

I prefer the term “religion” precisely because it invites us to look at, and more importantly take responsibility for, the entire complexity of the phenomena – the good, the bad, and the ambivalent – which is not to say that I do not also seek to breathe and take direct personal inspiration from an invisible spiritual reality which is all around me, everywhere, all of the time. I just do not trust myself or anyone else to be an unbiased and uncorrupted pure vessel for that everywhere-present Presence, whatever it might be.

The term “religion” does not simply translate into other cultures and languages. In Sanskrit, the Hindu term used to indicate “religion” is dharma, which means the teaching or practice, but this is hardly a parallel concept, and much that is not dharma would count as religion in Hinduism. In Chinese, the term Zongjiao was coined in the modern era to mean “religion”. The etymology of the term reflects a Confucian understanding of the teaching of lineage. In Judaism, the Hebrew word dat, meaning law, is used to indicate “religion,” reflecting a Jewish religious pre-occupation with religious laws and justice. In Arabic, the term “religion” is translated as din, meaning simply the path or the way. Regardless of how it is translated, the modern European concept of religion has now traveled the world and humans everywhere in our global civilization struggle to understand how religions stand apart from and perhaps transcend other dimensions of human culture.

Religion from the Inside

Most people in the past and even today study religion from the inside, as a believer and a practicioner of a particular tradition. A Jew studies Judaism; a Buddhist studies Buddhism; a Muslim studies Islam. Later we will consider what it means to study religion from the outside, as a non-believer and non-practitioner, but for now it is important to note that a serious study of a religion from the inside is complicated and engaging work. The subject matter – “my religion” – deals with Self, Society, and Cosmos. Religion from the inside has a lot to say about what it means to be a fully realized individual human, living in a social context with other humans in a universe imbued with power, purpose, and significance.

The subject matter – my religion – is Diverse, Particular, and Universal. Any serious study of one’s own religion from the inside will show that there is heterogeneity within any major tradition. The tradition as a whole and in its diversity relates to particular histories, languages, and cultures. In spite of this diversity and particularism, every religion is also making universal truth claims that apply to all humans everywhere at all times, indeed truth claims about the fundamental character of the universe as a whole. One of the major preoccupations of the study of religion from the inside is this diversity and arguing for normative views of one’s particular understanding of a tradition in opposition to what would be seen as heretical understandings of that same tradition – liberal interpretations versus conservative interpretations, charismatic mystical approaches versus rational textual approaches, Sunni Muslims versus Shiite Muslims, Theravada Buddhists versus Mahayana Buddhists, Protestant Christians versus Catholic Christians, Evangelical Protestants versus other Protestants, and so forth.

For instance, there are hundreds of different sects within Christianity. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with Maronite Christians in Lebanon. They speak Arabic in their homes and use the ancient language of Syriac-Aramaic in their liturgies. Their priests marry, but the Maronite Church is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church that forbids priest to marry. It would take a lot of history to explain this interesting situation. In spite of this particularism, their understanding of Christianity - of sin, sacrifice, sanctification, and salvation - is taken to be universally true for all people, not just Lebanese Maronites. We could fill this article and indeed many libraries with other examples around the world of a tradition’s diversity, particularity, and universality.

It turns out that a serious study of religion from the inside requires a lot of work. One needs to study the tradition, its sacred scriptures, the original languages in which scriptures were written, the translations and interpretations of those scriptures, the histories of the tradition, the legal codes and case law within that tradition, the liturgical practices, the saints and sages, the tradition’s teachings about the everyday mundane life, and all of this while paying attention to one’s own personal experiences as a believer and practitioner within the tradition. Of course, studying the tradition – my religion – is supremely about some concept of the Sacred, the Divine, a notion of Transcendence, God-by-whatever-name (see Diagram 1).

Diagram 1

We will come back to the Divine Mystery, the God-by-whatever-name question, at the center of all religious phenomena again and again in this discussion. We will never be done with it. Note, however, how intimidating a serious study of religion from the inside would be. A scholar of Christianity, for instance, would need to know Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, just to begin with Biblical interpretation. If he is a serious scholar, he is also going to study Aramaic and Syriac, because these were the languages actually spoken in First Century Palestine by Jesus and the Apostles. Then he is certainly going to need to know French, German, and English, because so much of Christian history and thought was shaped inside of these European languages and cultures. And that is just the language study part of the curriculum.

Believers and practitioners of a religion are always looking for a short cut to the Sacred that will by-pass all of this hard work - and understandably so. It is just too much homework and life is short. Hence, the contemporary phenomenon of “spiritual, not religious” is indeed a recurrent phenomenon as old as humanity. Religion would be pretty useless if one were required to do all of this hard work. Hence, the hope and the promise of having “authentic” experience and “unmediated” inspiration of the spiritual origins that motivates the religious quest. In the Christian idiom, we might call such an experience being “born again”, but who would not prefer the ecstasy of Saint Paul at the crossroads instead of the agony of Jesus on the Cross. Spiritual inspiration is just so much easier than strenuous scholarship or sacrificial service. Of course, a lifetime devoted to the serious study of religion from the inside, particularly in the contemporary world, is not likely to be a very remunerative career choice.

Read the whole, long, and interesting article.

Tags: William Grassie, The New Sciences of Religion, Religion, Science, history, culture, The Global Spiral, Metanexus Institute, divine, inside, outside, integral