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Irving Hexham is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and adjunct professor of World Christianity at Liverpool Hope University. He has published twenty-seven academic books, including The Concise Dictionary of Religion, Understanding Cults and New Religions, and Religion and Economic Thought, plus eighty major academic articles and chapters in books, numerous popular articles, and book reviews. Recently he completed a report for the United Nations’ refugee agency on religious conflict in Africa and another for the Canadian Government’s Department of Canadian Heritage on Religious Publications in Canada. He is listed in Who’s Who in Canada and various scholarly directories. In 2008, he was honored at the historic Humboldt University in Berlin with a Festschrift, Border Crossings: Explorations of an Interdisciplinary Historian (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag).

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Standard introductions to academic fields, such as Anthropology, Economics, History, or Sociology bristle with debates about both facts and interpretations. Yet similar Religious Studies textbooks strenuously avoid anything that might be considered controversial. The virtue of this book is that it removes Religious Studies from the dream world of academic irrelevance into the nitty gritty world of daily life where religions play a major role in shaping social attitudes and behavior. This text helps students to understand the vital role of religion in contemporary society. Recognizing that existing textbooks structure the way course are taught, this text provides the reader with a standard overview of world religions. But rejecting the approach that sees all religions as a reflection of the values of Liberal Protestantism, Irving Hexham recognizes that uncritical descriptions fail to prepare students for the reality of events like the attacks of September 11, 2001, or the ongoing war between Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka. Therefore, he combines empathic description with critical analysis. In his view, understanding precedes criticism, but this does not mean that criticism should be avoided.

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Understanding World Religions

Zondervan

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................................7Introduction..............................................................91. Introductory Issues in the Study of Religion...........................152. A Biased Canon.........................................................313. African Religious Traditions...........................................494. Witchcraft and Sorcery.................................................655. God in Zulu Religion...................................................796. The Case of Isaiah Shembe..............................................977. The Origins of Yogic Religions.........................................1158. The Richness of the Hindu Tradition....................................1299. Rethinking the Hindu Tradition.........................................14510. Gandhi the Great Contrarian...........................................16111. Buddhism..............................................................17912. The Development of Buddhist Belief and Practice.......................19513. The Moral Quest of Edward Conze.......................................21314. Other Yogic-Type Traditions...........................................23315. Early Judaism.........................................................25116. Rabbinic and Other Judaisms...........................................27117. Jewish Faith and Practice.............................................29318. Martin Buber's Zionist Spirituality...................................31119. Christianity..........................................................32520. Christian History.....................................................34321. Christian Faith and Practice..........................................36722. Christian Politics according to Abraham Kuyper........................38723. The Challenge of Islam................................................39924. Muslim Beliefs and Practices..........................................41925. Muslim Piety..........................................................44126. Sayyid Qutb and the Rebirth of Contemporary Islam.....................453Conclusion: Whither Religious Studies?....................................465Suggestions for Further Reading...........................................477Credits...................................................................487Index.....................................................................497

Chapter One

WHAT IS RELIGION?

Most people have a clear idea of what they mean by religion and can usually identify religious behavior when they see it. Nevertheless, when we have to define religion, we soon discover that the task is quite difficult, because religion is manifested in many different ways in our world. Thus, while for most people religion involves a belief in God, this is not true for certain forms of Buddhism. Indeed, to the educated Buddhist, God is quite unimportant.

Yet for many peasants living in Buddhist countries, the role of gods in their daily lives is important. Therefore, a distinction has to be made between Buddhism as a great tradition and the many little traditions embedded in a predominantly Buddhist culture. The educated Buddhist does not seek God, but his peasant neighbor, while acknowledging the importance of Buddhism for liberation, does worship various gods.

Because of the difficulties created by movements, such as Buddhism, that are clearly religious, many students turn to experts for a definitive definition of religion. What they find is a bewildering series of definitions. For example, sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) defined religion as "a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."

Another author who is often cited for his definition of religion is the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who defined religion as "the recognition of all duties as divine commands." Similarly, Max Müller (1823–1900), whom many regard as the true founder of religious studies, gave a twofold definition of religion as "a body of doctrines handed down by tradition, or in canonical books, and containing all that constitutes the faith of Jew, Christian, or Hindu" and as "a faculty of faith ... which distinguishes man from animals." Reflecting on these and many similar definitions of religion, one soon sees that most of them reflect both the complexity of the subject and the interests of the person making the definition. Thus Durkheim writes as a sociologist, Kant as a philosopher, and Müller as a historian-linguist influenced by theological discussions.

NINIAN SMART'S MODEL FOR IDENTIFYING RELIGION

It was for this and related reasons that Ninian Smart, who founded the first religious studies department in Britain, proposed that serious students of religion abandon the quest for a clear definition in favor of a workable model, or guide, which would allow the student to identify religion and religions as they are observed in daily life. Instead of defining religion theoretically, Smart argued, we ought to call something a religion when it conforms to certain general characteristics found in similar phenomena which we also call religions. We can say we are in the presence of a religion, he suggested, when we discover

a set of institutionalized rituals, identified with a tradition and expressing and/or evoking sacral sentiments directed at a divine or trans-divine focus seen in the context of the human phenomenological environment and at least partially described by myths or by myths and doctrines.

Each of the key terms in this model for identifying religion can be discussed at great length. All we will do here is briefly discuss their key characteristics. First of all, when we attempt to study a religion, or religions, all we can really do is look at their institutional manifestations. We can observe behavior, but we can never really know what goes on in a person's head. Therefore, for practical purposes, studying religion means studying religious institutions or institutions identified as religious. This means the study of religion is the study of religious movements which are observable within society and therefore are a form of social movement.

The next question is whether a movement is religious or secular. Many secular movements appear religious. For example, a crowd at a hockey game or watching American football often acts in ways that look like those of a religious group. But although some people argue that such actions are "religious at heart," there is a big difference between a secular and a religious gathering. Political parties, the fans mobbing rock stars, and the veneration of nationalist leaders all have similarities to religion, but none are religious in themselves. Therefore, they need to be excluded from our study.

This is why the other characteristics indicated by Smart are important. Let us begin by considering ritual behavior. Rituals are repetitive behavior fixed by tradition. In the study of religion they are, as Smart says, "traditional religious behavior or actions." Probably the most obvious form of ritual is the Roman Catholic Mass, which contains a lot of color, carefully ordered actions, a fixed order of words, particular smells, and what is in many ways a carefully orchestrated theatrical performance. In other religious traditions, things like pilgrimage to Mecca, for Muslims, or sacrifices and ritual bathing, for Hindus, are good examples of ritual action.

Some religious traditions, especially those associated with religious movements such as the Protestant Reformation, react strongly against what they call "dead rituals." Such groups fail to recognize their own ritual actions while identifying the rituals of other religious movements as somehow unspiritual or false. For example, the Plymouth Brethren strongly reject rituals like those of the Catholic Mass or High Anglican services on theological grounds. Yet, in fact, their own services have many rituals, even though the participants usually fail to recognize them as rituals. The very order and arrangement of the Brethren service actually make it a ritual action. Consequently, rituals need to be understood in terms of the convictions of the worshipers and the relationship between them and the divine, or, as Smart argues in some cases, the "trans-divine."

Seeing ritual in this way, one can argue that a football game is a ritual act, but not a religious one. And yet very clearly the divine, or trans-divine, element is missing. This is why, Smart insists, religious rituals need to be "identified with a tradition." Traditions are those things that add meaning to action. For students, probably the best example of a tradition is the act of graduation after they complete their degree. On such occasions people dress up in peculiar clothes, make speeches, and do all sorts of unusual things. While cynics might say that such actions are a waste of time, they serve a useful purpose. They remind people that the awarding of a degree conveys certain privileges and responsibilities that gain their validity from the fact that they are not some new, fly-by-night invention. Tradition assures the student that their degree is valid because the institution awarding it has stood the test of time. Thus a degree from Harvard University is immediately recognized because of the tradition associated with Harvard, while one from Upper Backwoods College may have little value.

Smart then notes that these institutions, and the rituals and traditions associated with them, have an impact upon the people involved. This he describes as "expressing and/or evoking sacral sentiments." In other words, participating in religious activities within the framework of a traditional institution not only expresses a certain commitment to spiritual values but often has the remarkable effect of creating or evoking a sense of the sacred in the worshiper and sometimes even in people who simply attend the ceremony without really intending to worship.

This sense of the sacred, Smart explains, is "directed at a divine or trans-divine focus." That is, the participant directs their feeling of worship, awe, and respect toward either the divine or something beyond the divine. By "the divine" he means God, gods, or, as in the case of Buddhism, something beyond or at least separate from the divine. This latter option Smart identifies as the "trans-divine focus," a term for such things as Nirvana in Buddhism, or the veneration of ancestors in African and other primal traditions.

Next, Smart reminds his readers that religion takes place within "the human phenomenological environment," by which he means the totality of human social life and individual experience within which religion exists.

Finally, Smart raises the important point that religious people describe their beliefs and practices in terms of myths, or, as he says, "myths and doctrines." Here it is important to understand what Smart means by myth. For many people a myth is a story that is simply untrue. Essentially, this is the way the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) used myth when he developed his theories about the necessity of what he called "demythologising," which he believed was necessary to make the New Testament acceptable to the modern world. In Bultmann's view the New Testament is a product of a prescientific age, many of whose stories, such as accounts of miracles, are therefore unacceptable to people living in an age of science. Therefore, in his view, these stories need to be reinterpreted to explain what they really mean in terms of their message and not regarded as literal accounts of what happened. In other words, Bultmann says that the stories he identifies as myths in the New Testament are simply untrue.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Understanding World Religionsby Irving Hexham Copyright © 2011 by Irving Hexham. Excerpted by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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