1、1Unit 2 ReligionArticle 1 What is religioncan religion be defined?When someone is asked What is religion?, they usually point to a mosque or church or Hindu temple or Sikh gurdwara and say that people who go there have got religion! But this is drawing attention to the places of worship and members
2、of the various religions; it is not telling us what religion is. Can it be distilled from a study of these religions? Some scholars have tried to do it but an essence of religion fails to appear so most seek to understand its effect on society. We will begin with stating some definitions and then go
3、 on to comment briefly on them:H. L. Mencken:The cosmos is gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give man the ride.Martin Buber:Religion masks the face of God.J. M. Yin
4、ger:Is system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggle with the ultimate problems of human life.E. B. Tylor:A belief in spiritual beings.Alfred North Whitehead:Religion is what the individual does with his solitariness institutions, churches, rituals, bibles, codes of be
5、haviour, are the trappings of religion, its passing forms.Peter Connolly:Any beliefs which involve the acceptance of a sacred, trans-empirical realm and any behaviour designed to affect a persons relationship with that realm.Arnold Toynbee:It is the presence in the world of something spiritually gre
6、ater than man himself mans goal is to seek communion with the presence behind the phenomena.2Matthew Arnold:It is an emotion or morality touched by emotion.Herbert Spencer:Ancestor worship is the root of every religion.Sigmund Freud:Religion is an illusion.Bronislaw Malinowski:Religion is not born o
7、ut of speculation or reflection, still less out of illusion or misapprehension, but rather out of the real tragedies of human life, out of the conflict between human plans and realities.Karl Marx:It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, the soul in a place without
8、a soul; it is the opium of the people.Richard Dawkins:Religion is a virus.Emile Durkheim:A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, thins set apart and forbidden, beliefs and practices which unite into on single community called a church, all t
9、hose who adhere to them.Most religions:It is a way of life.Ninian Smart:A religion is a seven-dimensional organism, titual, doctrinal, mythical or narrative, experimental or emotional, ethical or legal, organisational or social, material or artistic.Aloysius Pieris:Religion is a revolutionary urge,
10、a psycho-social impulse to generate a new humanity.Rudolf Otto:3Religion is sense of the numinous, the wholly other, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.These definitions reflect the perspective of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, biologists, theologians historians, scrip
11、tures, and show that there is no universally accepted definition of religion. The experts differ even with regard to definition! So a feeling of despair is created. John Hick writes:Religion is one thing to the anthropologist, another to the sociologist, another to the Marxist, another to the mystic
12、, another to the Zen Buddhist and yet another to the Jew or Christian. As a result there is a great variety of religious theories of the nature of religion. There is, consequently, no universally accepted definition of religion, and quite possible there never will be.The anti-religious strain is cle
13、ar when defined by Freud and Karl Marx and more recently by the biologist, Richard Dawkins, who compares religion to a computer virus passed from one brain to another. Dawkins reacts to any wheel of design in the cosmos: we are here because of a random process. The definitions also raise questions:
14、How can religion simply be a private affair since it develops in communities and has an impact on social and political life? If it is a way of life how can we keep it private? But how can it be demonstrated that it has contact with the sacred or supernatural or something greater than ourselves, as T
15、oynbee said? And what is it that religion is pointing to, since the presence of God has different forms in the religions? Perhaps it would be easier to think of religion as emotion and morality with Matthew Arnold, but would that not make it so subjective that validation would be difficult? If it is
16、 a way of life there must be some beliefs connected with it.The definition which relates religion to ancestor worship impressed itself upon me when teaching large numbers of students in Africa. They told me how they venerated their ancestors, had a special place in the home where they went to consul
17、t them before an important decision, and generally showed that respect for them was akin to worship. So was Spencer right when he saw the origin of religion in ancestor worship? It is largely discounted today as applicable only to certain tribes and we cannot simply define something by its origins a
18、nd fail to notice its development. The African students were mainly Christian yet held on to this belief. Perhaps some of their respect for the dead and the living would be helpful in Western society today.Some of the definitions are functional, stating what religion does, but others are substantive
19、, stating what religion is. If we say that religion unites or separates people or comforts those who suffer and so on, then we are thinking of it in a functional way. Functionalism is a theoretical perspective in sociology but function refers more to the role of an institution in society. A substant
20、ial definition seeks to highlight key features of a religion such as belief in God. Durkheim appears to supply both a functional and substantive definition but his beliefs do not include what those who want a substantive definition consider crucial, the supernatural dimension. Religion concerns 4onl
21、y the human: a creation of society. His view has been followed by many modern scholars. Some conclude that religion has declined as religious symbols are less important, supernatural causes are not acceptable, and religion has little to say about society. A demystification of the world has taken pla
22、ce with a fall in attendance at places of worship. The sacred and magical have little place in civilized societies and religious values are being steadily eroded. Religion in any vital form, it is argued, survives only in the cults.But other sociologists disagree, contending that it is based on the
23、assumption that past communities were more religious than today. A consideration of history does not support the assumption since even the domination of Christianity in the Middle Ages did not prevent paganism and mass superstition. Today global religion is flourishing. For example, in the United St
24、ates the majority of Americans believe in God and there is a resurgence of religious fundamentalism. It believes in a return to tradition, certainty, community, sanctification of politics and commitment, and opposes the modernity characterized by relativism, individualism and bureaucracy. Religion h
25、as not kept out of politics but has supported freedom movements to abolish injustice and exercises a world-wide influence.If we estimate the worlds population at about 5400 million, there are 4333 million in the various religionsapproximately 80 percent. And there is a mass of people who are not mem
26、bers of religious communities but say that they are not members of religious communities but say that they are religious. All sociologists recognize the growth of religious cults, with the British media in 1998 reporting that sciences popularity was waning and that there was a boom in New Age mystic
27、ism and spiritual belief. Books on chemistry and physics showed a drop in sales of more that a quarter but New Age titles and books on Eastern and minority faiths published in Britain shot up by 75 percent.Whiteheads definition stresses individualism which figures in religious, but usually there is
28、a community to which one belongs and receives help. John Wesley said that there was no such thing as a solitary Christian and organized his movement on a communal basis. Whitehead understands that the trappings of religion, churches, rituals institutions, bibles and ethics are the passing forms, but
29、 would the religion not disappear without these? Of course, if they are being used as a substitute for a change of heart then he would have the support of Wesley, the Hebrew prophets and some of the founders of the religions. It is true that visions of God often occur in solitary quiet places away f
30、rom not only secular affairs but also the performance of religion.Marxs definition means that religion is the compensator justifier and concealer of exploitation. It endorses the status quo by enabling the poor to accept their inequality and teaches that the capitalists power was God given. But Marx
31、 also saw it as a protest and world surely have endorsed the stand of Gandhi, Martin Luther Kings 5civil rights movement and Liberation theology in Christianity. Christians and Marxists joined together in Latin America with the common goal of defeating injustice. Protest ceased to be passive and bec
32、ame active resistance. Neither Marx nor Freud studied religions other than Christianity but Max Weber did and he argued that religion could spearhead change in society.It may be that the definitions are complementary rather than contradictory and that elements from each might be combined to form a s
33、atisfactory definition. If broad, it would allow secular belief systems, such as Marxism and Humanism and new developments like Transcendental Meditation, to be termed religious. In the latter, members claim that there is a field of consciousness which can be tapped into in order to exploit our inne
34、r energy and reach maximum intelligence. A deep relaxation is induced to reach subtle levels of the mind and eventually transcend it altogether. It is believed that we can then contact the source of thought. What this is, however, remains somewhat vague and there is little indication if it is natura
35、l or supernatural.Definitions can be too broad, including what dominates or appears of ultimate concern: work, home, children, entertainment. Some of these have rituals which are similar to those of religion. Football has its assemblies with crowds displaying ecstasy and wonder at their teams perfor
36、mance. There is the hallowed turf, the flags and banners, the hymn singing, and so on. Nationalism also extols the flag of the nation, and some lands are so sacred that they must be defended at all costs. But all of these consist of visible objects whereas religion, while having outward signs, refer
37、s to the invisible.If the definition can be too broad, it can also be narrow and miss something which is essential. In an effort to distinguish between sacred and secular it may be defined by reference to sacred persons or places or rituals or relics. But, while these can be a focus, the religions i
38、nsist that God is everywhere and cannot be confined to one place. He pervades the world and hence the secular and sacred cannot be kept apart. But if God is essential in any definition then what about Buddhism which in its early beginnings moved away from the Hindu gods? Ninian Smart opts for a broa
39、d understanding of religion by reflecting on the characteristics of religions in his seven dimensions. But why only seven? He does not mention the political which was very prominent in the last century, with religion protesting about apartheid in South Africa, poverty in Latin America, and injustice
40、 in the United States. What is it that makes Smarts dimensions religious? It would seem that he is operating with some definition of religion, a broad one, so as to include Marxism, Humanism and Nationalism. Smart thinks that the search for an essence ends in vagueness, for we have to go on and defi
41、ne the supernatural or the ultimate or the transcendent Being. There is pluralism within traditions and he looks for patterns by considering the dimensions. If movement has these seven dimensions he thinks there is a religion so there is no need to define it. But some religions in their 6beginnings
42、did not have the material dimension of buildings, and he admits that non-literate societies are weak on the doctrinal dimension and the narrative one is absent among Buddhist modernists.Perhaps it might be helpful to consider where the term religion originated. Religio is a Latin word originally mea
43、ning a kind of superstitious awe. It developed into scruples or conscientiousness implying religious feeling and worship of the gods. The awe-inspiring nature of deity has been captured by Otto who pointed to the experience in all religions of the phenomena. His view has been very influential but is
44、 opposed by those who see religion as an illusion and man-made. Whatever the source of religion it soon developed a cult of sacred thins and persons forming a religious system. Thus the definitions that emerge try to embrace these elements or concentrate on one of them.Religion can also mean to bind
45、 a worshipper to the deity by the observance of cultic ceremonies and acts of devotion. Perhaps if we consider the particular expressions of religion as found in six religions it may be possible to arrive at a definition. In so doing we will be taking Max Webers advice that trying to define religion
46、 at the start is a mistake. Indeed it is rare for a contemporary sociologist of religion to do so at the beginning of the investigation.One of the difficulties is that religion is so mixed up with other thins that it is not a distinctive category and it varies in different places and at different ti
47、mes. Hence some, like D.F. Pocock, prefer to talk about beliefs rather than religion. William James remarked that there were so many definitions of religion and so different from one another that the word cannot stand for any single principle or essence but is a collective name. However, we will see
48、 that each religion has its own particular distinctiveness; and it is possible to see signs of it in other belief systems that purport to give some meaning and purpose to life and supply some answers to the ultimate question of death. Are they religions or surrogates for religion?Article 2Christiani
49、ty Remains Dominant Religion in the United Statesby Frank NewportPRINCETON, NJ - This Christmas season, 78% of American adults identify with some form of Christian religion. Less than 2% are Jewish, less than 1% are Muslim, and 15% do not have a religious identity. This means that 95% of all Americans who have a religious identity are Christians.7These results are based on a compilation of 327,244 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking from January-Novem
