REL 205 Methodological Assumptions and Anaytical Frameworks Regarding Religion

METHODOLOGIAL ASSUMPTIONS AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS REGARDING RELIGION

Part One

 

Diane L. Moore

Harvard Divinity School

2015

 

OVERVIEW

 

Religions have functioned throughout human history to inspire and justify the full range of agency from the heinous to the heroic.  Their influences remain potent at the dawn of the 21st century in spite of modern predictions that religious influences would steadily decline in concert with the rise of secular democracies and advances in science.  Understanding these complex religious influences is a critical dimension of understanding modern human affairs across the full spectrum of endeavors in local, national, and global arenas. The Religious Literacy module focuses on how to recognize, understand, and analyze religious influences in human experience with a special emphasis on the role of scriptures.   This same method is employed in the Religious Literacy Project where the focus is on understanding religion in contemporary life through the overarching theme of conflict and peace and the specific (often intersecting) sub-themes of gender and sexuality and public health and environmental sustainability.

 

 

FOUNDATIONS

 

For a variety of reasons dating back to the Enlightenment (including Christian influenced theories of secularization that were reproduced through colonialism) there are many commonly held assumptions about religion in general and religious traditions in particular that represent fundamental misunderstandings. Scholars of religion are well aware of these assumptions and have articulated some basic facts about religions themselves and the study of religion that serve as useful foundations for inquiry. [1]  

 

Differentiating Between Devotional Expression and the Study of Religion

 

First and foremost, scholars highlight the difference between the devotional expression of particular religious beliefs as normative and the nonsectarian study of religion that presumes the religious legitimacy of diverse normative claims. The importance of this distinction is that it recognizes the validity of normative theological assertions without equating them with universal truths about the tradition itself.

 

Unfortunately, this distinction is often ignored in public discourse about religion. For example, there is a great deal of contemporary debate about the roles for women in Islam. In truth, there are a variety of theological interpretations of the tradition that lead to different, sometimes antithetical practices and assertions. Equally common is that differing communities will have similar practices but with diverse theological justifications.

 

It is appropriate for members of a particular community to assert the orthodoxy of their theological interpretations of the tradition, but it is important to recognize the difference between a theological assertion of normativity and the factual truth that multiple legitimate perspectives exist. The latter represents the nonsectarian study of religion. This is the approach promoted here and the one most appropriate to advance the public understanding of religion. 

 

There are three other central assertions about religions themselves that religious studies scholars have outlined and that flow from the recognition of the distinction between devotional expression and the nonsectarian study of religion outlined above:

 

1) religions are internally diverse as opposed to uniform;

2) religions evolve and change over time as opposed to being ahistorical and static;

3) religious influences are embedded in all dimensions of culture as opposed to the assumption that religions function in discrete, isolated, “private” contexts. 

 

Religions are Internally Diverse

 

This assertion is a truism but requires explanation due to the common ways that religious traditions and practices are frequently portrayed as uniform.  Aside from the obvious formal differences within traditions represented by differing sects or expressions (e.g., Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant for Christianity; Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, for Hinduism, etc.) there are differences within sects or expressions because religious communities function in different social/political contexts.  One example is the debate mentioned above regarding the roles of women in Islam.  The following assertions are also commonly repeated: “Buddhists are nonviolent”, “Christians oppose abortion”, “Religion and science are incompatible”, etc.  All of these comments represent particular theological assertions as opposed to factual claims representing the tradition itself.

 

Religions Evolve and Change

 

This is another truism but again requires explanation due to the common practice of representing religious traditions without social or historical context and solely (or primarily) through ritual expression and/or abstract beliefs. Religions exist in time and space and are constantly interpreted and reinterpreted by believers. For example, the Confucian concept of the “mandate from heaven” evolved within dynasties, geopolitical regions, and historical eras and continues to evolve today.  Another example is that the practice of slavery has been both justified and vilified by all three monotheistic traditions in differing social and historical contexts. Finally, in a more specific example, the Southern Baptist convention in the United States passed a series of resolutions in the 1970s supporting the moral legitimacy of abortion and reversed those resolutions in 2003.[2]

 

Religious Influences are Embedded in Cultures

 

Religions are collections of ideas, practices, values, and stories that are all embedded in cultures and not separable from them. Just as religion cannot be understood in isolation from its cultural (including political) contexts, it is impossible to understand culture without considering its religious dimensions. In the same way that race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and socio-economic class are always factors in cultural interpretation and understanding, so too is religion.

 

Whether explicit or implicit, religious influences can virtually always be found when one asks “the religion question” of any given social or historical experience.  For example, political theorists have recently highlighted the ways that different interpretations of secularism have been profoundly shaped by varied normative assumptions about Christianity.[3] This is just one representation of a fundamental shift in political theory that is challenging the legitimacy of the longstanding assertion that religion both can be and should be restricted to a private sphere and separated from political influence.

 

Modernist claims predicting the steady decline of the transnational political influence of religion that were first formalized in the 17th century have been foundational to various modern political theories for centuries. In spite of the ongoing global influences of religions in political life throughout this time period, it is only in the aftermath of 1) the Iranian Revolution in 1979; 2) the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the subsequent rise vs. the widely predicted demise of religion; and 3) the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks that political theorists in the West began to acknowledge the highly problematic ways that religions and religious influences have been marginalized and too simplistically rendered. 

 

This shift is a welcome one and paves the way for multi and cross-disciplinary collaborations with religious studies scholars across the full range of social science investigations in order to explore the complex and critically important roles that religions play in our contemporary world.

 

Definition of Religious Literacy

 

The following definition of religious literacy articulated by Diane L Moore has been adopted by the American Academy of Religion to help educators understand what is required for a basic understanding of religion and its roles in human experience:

 

Religious literacy entails the ability to discern and analyze the fundamental intersections of religion and social/political/cultural life through multiple lenses. Specifically, a religiously literate person will possess 1) a basic understanding of the history, central texts (where applicable), beliefs, practices and contemporary manifestations of several of the world's religious traditions as they arose out of and continue to be shaped by particular social, historical and cultural contexts; and 2) the ability to discern and explore the religious dimensions of political, social and cultural expressions across time and place. 

 

Critical to this definition is the importance of understanding religions and religious influences in context and as inextricably woven into all dimensions of human experience. Such an understanding highlights the inadequacy of understanding religions through common means such as learning about ritual practices or exploring “what scriptures say” about topics or questions. Unfortunately, these are some of the most common approaches to learning about religion and lead to simplistic and inaccurate representations of the roles religions play in human agency and understanding. 

 

 

 

---

[1] See The American Academy of Religion Guidelines for Teaching About Religion in K-12 Public Schools in the United States, Atlanta: AAR, 2010.

[2] For a full text compilation of all the Southern Baptist resolutions on abortion from 1971-2005, see www.johnstonsarchive.net/baptist/sbcabres.html.

[3] See Charles Taylor, The Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); J. Bryan Hehir, “Why Religion? Why Now?” in Timothy Samuel Shah, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Duffy Toft, eds., Rethinking Religion and World Affairs (NY: Oxford, 2012) pp. 15-24; José Casanova, “Rethinking Public Religions” in Shah, et. Al., eds., pp. 25-35; and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, “The Politics of Secularism” in Shah, et. Al., pp. 36-54.

REL 205 Misunderstandings about Religion

Misunderstandings

REL 205 Faces of Religious Diversity

Diversity

G.I. Jews Trailer

Jews

HUM 111 Egypt and Black and White

Because the whole idea of “black” and “white” is an arbitrary invention based on the very specific racial issues of the United States. For most of American history, there was a clear divide between extremely pale skinned English and Germanic settlers and the dark skinned sub-Saharan African slaves they imported.

If we go anywhere else, this dichotomy isn’t nearly as clear. Would southern Europeans like Italians, Greeks and Spaniards be considered white? Most people today would say yes. But if we actually look, they have more in common physically with Middle Eastern groups than British or Scandinavian groups. They aren’t clearly “white” or “black.” They’re a level of brown in the middle. Below are some Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Tunisians, and Lebanese Arabs. Can you tell which are which? Who’s white? Who’s not?

Greek, Lebanese, Italian, Tunisian, Spanish by the way

The point is, arguing whether Near Eastern people like the Ancient Egyptians were white or black isn’t useful, because they, like most people, didn’t fit neatly into either category. The art and sculpture they left behind usually depicts themselves as looking similar to modern Egyptians. Their pictures of completely black skinned people were typically drawings of Kushites, who were actually sub-Saharan Africans, or rarer stylized paintings. That’s not to say there weren’t black Africans in Egypt, as there was constant contact between Egypt and Kush. A Kushite dynasty even conquered and occupied all of Egypt for over a century. But they weren’t the dominant ethnic group.

HUM 112 HIS 105 Charlie Manson Beach Boys

The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world.

Its origins may be traced to European social movements in the 19th and early 20th century such as Bohemians, and the influence of Eastern religion and spirituality. From around 1967, its fundamental ethos — including harmony with nature, communal living, artistic experimentation particularly in music, and the widespread use of recreational drugs — spread around the world during the counterculture of the 1960s, which has become closely associated with the subculture.

The change in the public label from "beatnik" to "hippie" occurred after the 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, where Allan Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure led the crowd in chanting "Om". Ginsberg was also at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, and was friends with Abbie Hoffman and other members of the Chicago Seven. Stylistic differences between beatniks, marked by somber colors, dark shades and goatees, gave way to colorful psychedelic clothing and long hair worn by hippies. While the beats were known for "playing it cool" and keeping a low profile, hippies became known for displaying their individuality.

On January 14, 1967, the outdoor Human Be-In in San Francisco popularized hippie culture across the United States, with 30,000 hippies gathering in Golden Gate Park. The Monterey Pop Festival from June 16 to June 18 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love." Scott McKenzie's rendition of John Phillips' song, "San Francisco," became a hit in the United States and Europe. The lyrics, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", inspired thousands of young people from all over the world to travel to San Francisco, sometimes wearing flowers in their hair and distributing flowers to passersby, earning them the name, "Flower Children."

Bands like the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), and Jefferson Airplane continued to live in the Haight, but by the end of the summer, the incessant media coverage led the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade. According to the late poet Stormi Chambless, the hippies buried an effigy of a hippie in the Panhandle to demonstrate the end of his/her reign. Regarding this period of history, the July 7, 1967, TIME magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: "Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun."^[29]

It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. The media was right behind them, casting a spotlight on the Haight-Ashbury district and popularizing the "hippie" label. With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti-work, pro-drug, and permissive ethos. Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to drug abuse and lenient morality, fueled the moral panics of the late 1960s.

Charles Manson was a lifelong criminal who had been released from prison just in time for San Francisco's Summer of Love. With his long hair, charisma and the ability to charm a crowd with his guitar playing, his singing and rhetoric, Manson exhibited many of the outward manifestations of hippie identity. Yet he hardly exemplified the hippie ideals of peace, love, compassion and human fellowship; through twisted logic, hallucinogenic drugs, and psychological manipulation, he inspired his followers to commit murder. Manson's highly publicized 1970 trial and subsequent conviction in January 1971 irrevocably tarnished the hippie image in the eyes of many Americans.


Charles Milles Manson (né Maddox, November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal and cult leader. In the late 1960s, he formed what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune in California. Manson's followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971 he was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, all of which were carried out at his instruction by members of the group. Manson was also convicted of first-degree murder for two other deaths.

At the time the Manson Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict who had spent half of his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses. Before the murders, he was a singer-songwriter on the fringe of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly through a chance association with Dennis Wilson, drummer and founding member of the Beach Boys. Manson believed in what he called "Helter Skelter", a term he took from the Beatles' song of the same name to describe an impending apocalyptic race war. He believed the murders would help precipitate that war. From the beginning of his notoriety, a pop culture arose around him in which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence and the macabre. After Manson was charged with the crimes of which he was later convicted, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially, starting with Lie: The Love and Terror Cult (1970). Various musicians have covered some of his songs.

On March 6, 1970 (the day the court vacated Manson's status as his own attorney), LIE, an album of Manson music, was released. This included "Cease to Exist", a Manson composition the Beach Boys had recorded with modified lyrics and the title "Never Learn Not to Love". Over the next couple of months, only about 300 of the album's 2,000 copies sold.

Cease to Exist

1:59

Never Learn Not to Love

Songwriter Neil Young also knew Charlie and wrote a song from the perspective of Charlie Manson and his Family.

Revolution Blues, Neil Young