The pragmatics of defining religion in a multi-cultural world

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Volumn 59, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 133-152

  Harrison, Victoria S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33748531016     PISSN: 00207047     EISSN: 15728684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11153-006-6961-z     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. This typology is not, however, universally accepted, and some thinkers have proposed alternative schemes. According to William Alston, for example, religions are best categorized as predominantly "sacramental," "prophetic," or "mystical." See William Alston, "Religion" in Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7 (London: Macmillan, 1967), p. 143.
2. Martineau's definition is cited in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ibid.
3. Eugene B. Borowitz, A New Jewish Theology in the Making (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968), p. 44.
4. George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), p. 16.
5. Functional definitions, in contrast, as we shall see below, are non-religious definitions of religion. In seeking to define religion in naturalistic terms, those adopting this approach arrive at definitions that will inevitably seem inadequate to the vast majority of religious people. This type of definition, as Lindbeck points out, is typically adopted by scholars of religion who are not themselves committed to any faith, and who seek to explain religion from one of the perspectives offered by the social sciences. Lindbeck himself finds all of these approaches inadequate and, consequently, seeks to develop an alternative "cultural-linguistic" approach. The key to Lindbeck's analysis is the idea that "religions resemble languages together with their correlative forms of life and are thus similar to cultures." The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, Ibid.,(1984), p. 18.
6. Cited in Alston, "Religion," op. cit., p. 141.
7. And see F. D. E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), pp. 16f.
8. Other examples of affective definitions are that of J. M. E. McTaggart and C. P. Tiele. McTaggart writes: "It seems to me that it [religion] may best be described as an emotion resting on a conviction of a harmony between ourselves and the universe at large"; while Tiele insists: "Religion is, in truth, that pure and reverential disposition or frame of mind which we call piety." Both quoted in Alston, "Religion," op. cit., p. 140.
9. Amida Buddhism would, perhaps, constitute a notable exception.
10. Schleiermacher's claim that rejecting religious doctrines and religious institutions is not the same as rejecting religion altogether seems to have been borne out by studies of late 20th-century attitudes towards religion (See Victoria S. Harrison, "On defining the religion person," forthcoming in Theology.).
11. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, translated by W. D. Robson-Scott (London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1962), pp. 28f.
12. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, Ibid. (1962),
13. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, Ibid. (1962), However, writer and director Dennis Potter would seem to be in agreement with Schleiermacher against Freud when he declares: "Religion to me has always been the wound and not the bandage."
14. Dennis Potter, Seeing Blossoms (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), p. 5
15. Cited in Alston, "Religion," op. cit., p. 140.
16. See, for example, Borowitz, A New Jewish Theology in the Making, op. cit., pp. 44f.
17. For a survey of prominent examples of these rival theories, see James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999). Remarking on the sudden appearance of these theories in the West from the mid-18th century, Thrower suggests that "it is only when religion has ceased to be at the living heart of a culture, that is, when its status has become problematic, that explanations to account for its existence come to the fore."
18. James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, Ibid., (1999), p. 3.
19. James Thrower, Religion: The Classical Theories, Ibid., (1999), p. 3.
20. Naturalistic psychological theories typically suggest that religion originally arose out of a primitive mental state such as fear or guilt, with Freud being the most famous exponent of such a view. Alternatively, sociological theories, which are also naturalistic, typically propose that religious beliefs and practices arose to fulfill a social function. One such function could have been to stabilize society through encouraging people to conform to social norms. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) went so far as to suggest that religions originated in primitive human beings who worshipped society. See Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995).
21. It should be noted that an important debate is currently taking place between those scholars of religion who regard religion as merely a human activity that can be completely analyzed by the methods of the social sciences and those who believe that such analyses cannot provide a complete explanation of religion. Arguing for the former, naturalistic stance, one protagonist declares: "like all other aspects of human behavior, those collections of beliefs, behaviors, and institutions we classify as 'religion' can be conceptualized and then explained as thoroughly human activity, with no mysterious distillate left over." Russell T. McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. xi.
22. Herbert Spencer, cited in Alston, "Religion," op. cit., p. 140.
23. Keith Yandell, Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 16.
24. Geertz's work is voluminous. However, see, for example, Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), ch. 4.
25. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Ibid., (1973), p. 89.
26. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Ibid., (1973), p. 90.
27. Geertz's perspective continues to be developed by, among others, Russell T. McCutcheon and Timothy Fitzgerald. See, for example, McCutcheon, Critics not Caretakers, op. cit.
28. and Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
29. Smith's thesis is taken even further by Timothy Fitzgerald when he claims that "[t]he construction of 'religion' and 'religions' as global, crosscultural objects of study has been part of a wider historical process of western imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. Part of this process has been to establish an ideologically loaded distinction between the realm of religion and the realm of non-religion or the secular. By constructing religion and religions, the imagined secular world of objective facts, of societies and markets as the result of the free association of natural individuals, has also been constructed." Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, Ibid., (2000), p. 8.
30. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A Revolutionary Approach to the Great Religious Traditions (London: SPCK, 1978), p. 19.
31. This dynamic seems to have had a profound effect on the development of both Christianity and Islam, as these rival forms of monotheism were often perceived by their adherents as mutually threatening.
32. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959), paragraph 66.
33. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Ibid. (1959),
34. Examples might include Quakerism and Roman Catholicism (both are forms of Christianity that exhibit striking diversity but which, nevertheless, retain a family resemblance) or Hasidic and Reconstructionist Judaism.
35. At one stage, the Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach was almost universally accepted as the best method available for understanding "religion."
36. See John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 3-5.
37. Ninian Smart's popular book The Phenomenon of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1973) was also instrumental in promoting the family resemblance approach.
38. While Wittgenstein himself does not appear to have held that possession of a common feature was a sufficient condition for two things to bear a family resemblance, many of those who have subsequently discussed the family resemblance approach to religion would nevertheless seem to have made this assumption.
39. For a discussion of this and other problems arising from the family resemblance theory, see Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, op. cit., ch. 4.
40. Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, op. cit., p. 4.
41. Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, op. cit., Ibid., p. 5.
42. Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, op. cit., p. 6.
43. Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies, op. cit., Ibid., p. 4.
44. For the case of the Hopis, see Frank Waters, The Book of the Hopi (London: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 317-321.
45. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949).
46. In Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Russell T. McCutcheon argues that the modern academic study of religion serves to reinforce the projection of these concepts onto the world, and is thereby collusive in distorting the phenomena.
47. Joseph D. Bettis, Phenomenology of Religion (London: SCM, 1975), p. 170.
48. One need only think of the supposed separation of Church and state in certain liberal democracies.
49. For example, members of the Ahmadiyya movement (founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, d. 1908) have always claimed to be Muslim; an identity which has often been denied them by others, leading to their persecution in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. There are reports of Ahmadis being sentenced to death on the charge of apostasy simply because they do not meet the criteria which, according to some Muslim governments, define what an orthodox Muslim believes. Likewise, there is little agreement among those adhering to the various forms of "orthodox" and "non-orthodox" Judaism concerning what should count as authentic Judaism. Moreover, the struggle on the part of some Christian groups to establish their version of the faith as exclusively correct has been a long and fraught one, and has continued into the 21st century.
50. For the notion of "essential contestability," see W B. Gallie, "Essentially contested concepts," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1955-1956): 167-198.
51. It should be noted that many philosophers now reject the Wittgensteinian approach to meaning, especially with regard to natural kinds (such as water). The impetus for this rejection has come from the work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam. See Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980),
52. 2O. However, religion would not seem to be a natural kind entity with a causally efficacious underlying structure à la water, with its specific molecular structure that is presumed to be causally responsible for its observable properties. Hence, the family resemblance approach might be thought to remain viable in the case of a number of concepts, such as "religion," that do not refer to those features of the world ordinarily studied by natural scientists.