What is
Religion? Six Insightful Statements to Describe It
By the late Marcus Borg (biblical scholar and theologian)
Found in the public domain at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHIv-c-Rpzw&t=0s&index=2&list=WL / (from 08:30 to 21:05) / Annotations by Julius-Kei Kato
(The
main text is a transcript of Marcus Borg’s talk. Italicized parts within square
brackets [ ] are my own [jkk’s] annotations.)
[1] Religions as Cultural-Linguistic Traditions
First
statement about religions: "Religions are cultural - linguistic traditions."
That’s pretty abstract but it's actually a very helpful definition. Let me
repeat it: Religions are cultural-linguistic traditions and I owe this language
to George Lindbeck of Yale Divinity School. I'm not sure that it’s original
with him, but that's where I ran into it. And what it means to say is that each
religion originates within a particular culture. And thus, it uses the language
and symbols of that culture. So, in that sense each religion is a cultural-linguistic
tradition. Moreover, if that religion survives for any length of time and, of
course, all major religions have. If that religion survives, it becomes a
cultural-linguistic tradition in its own right. That is, it becomes a way of
construing the world, of structuring the world, and it has its own particular
language and symbols.
And thus, being Christian or Jewish or
Muslim is a little bit like being French or Italian. To be French means not
only knowing French (the language). It also means knowing something about
the ethos of being French. It means to have lived within a French world and
to have that world structure your vision of life. And of course there's a sense
in which being religious is different from this as well because it is a much
more universal identity - one that transcends national, ethnic, and racial
boundaries but nevertheless it is very helpful to think of religions as
cultural-linguistic traditions, each with its own language, symbols, etc.
[2] Religions as Human Constructions
Second
statement about religions, "Religions are human constructions".
Religions are human constructions or human products. This is a corollary of the
first statement of religions as cultural-linguistic traditions. Religions are
human creations and, within that, I'm including their scriptures. Their
scriptures are human products, and thus for Christians, the Bible is a human product.
The religions’ teachings, their doctrines, their rituals, and their practices,
all of these are human creations, human constructions.
This time I'll use a phrase from a Harvard
religious scholar, Gordon Kaufman. Kaufman speaks of religions as " Imaginative
human constructions." And by imaginative he doesn't mean imagined,
imaginative and sort of a negative sense of the word as when we say about
something that sounds really far-fetched or that's really imaginative, not in
that sense but imaginative in the sense of both creative, as well as using the
language of the imagination, the language of images and symbols, and story, and
so forth.
Now, of course not all religious people would agree with this statement that, "Religions are human products or human constructions." Within the three major Western Religions, the Abrahamic traditions, as they are commonly called, there are many who would say that their religion comes from God, that it's a divine product and not a human product. I think you are all aware that official Muslim teaching is that, the Koran was dictated by Allah to Muhammad. Within Judaism, Orthodox Jews, not all Jews but Orthodox Jews typically affirm that the Torah including the laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai that are included in the Pentateuch but also the ‘Oral Torah’, all of it was given directly by God to Moses. And of course, fundamentalist Christians typically claim that the Bible is a divine product, and thus infallible and inerrant. But, within the framework of the academic study of religion, these claims look like a common human tendency to ground their sacred traditions in God. That is, if lots of religious traditions say this (that “our traditions come from God”), we can say then that one of the characteristics of religions is that they tend to ground their traditions in divine origin.
[When
seen in a humanistic way, we can say that, in order to strengthen the claims
that religions make, some of the key figures involved in the
institutionalization of a particular religious tradition established at a
certain point in history the notion that this particular religion (e.g.
Christianity) was “revealed” directly by God. Seen from a more theological or
faith perspective, we can say that religions often have their origins in a
powerful religious/spiritual experience of certain people at the start of the
religion’s history. Reflecting on their profound spiritual experience, they
concluded that this experience was a revelation of God, hence, the religion
that was born out of that experience “came from God”.]
[Borg’s
statements #1 and #2 are not theological evaluations of religions. That
is, they do not come from a perspective of faith. They are a result of
looking at the phenomenon of religion from a purely humanistic standpoint. We
can consider them, therefore, as coming from the discipline of religious
studies, which does not presuppose any faith but studies religion as a human
phenomenon. The statements below, however, contain some faith perspectives.
Although they are still affirmed by many in the academic study of religion,
they can be considered as grounded more in the discipline of theology, which presupposes
religious faith but tries to deepen its understanding of faith through reason.]
[3] Religions as Human Responses to the Experience of the
Sacred
Now,
those first two statements both stress the human origins of religion. The third
statement brings God back into the picture, namely, "Religions are
responses to the experience of the sacred or the experience of God, or the
spirit." Those terms are ones I use synonymously and interchangeably. I
take the reality of God very seriously. I am utterly convinced that there is a “More,”
to use [philosopher and psychologist] William James's marvellously
generic term for the sacred -- a stupendous, wondrous “More,” and I am
convinced that this "More" has been experienced in every human
culture, and that the origin of the major religious traditions lies in
experiences of the "More". So, I see religions as human products but as
human products created as response to the experience of the sacred in the
particular culture within which each emerged.
[4] Religions as Wisdom Traditions
My
fourth statement, "Religions are wisdom traditions." And I owe this
statement to a man I'm honored to call my friend, Huston Smith [He was a
widely respected US professor of world religions]. He speaks about this a
lot--of religions being wisdom traditions. Wisdom (in both religion and
philosophy) is concerned with the questions: "How shall I live?",
"What is life about?" [Religion attempts to respond to humans’
most perplexing questions – also known as “ultimate” or “existential” questions.] This is what the religions to a large extent
are about. They are disclosures of how to live, and by that I don't mean just
morals but something more comprehensive than that. They are disclosures of what
life and reality are about, and it's not just that they have responses to that
question, but they are the accumulated wisdom of the past of centuries of
thinkers. [An insightful way to refer to the activity of learning about religions
is the expression A.W.E. ‘Ancestral Wisdom Education’, as proposed by
theologian Matthew Fox.] This wisdom ranges from very practical wisdom to
theological and metaphysical wisdom. The religions are a treasure trove of
wisdom.
[5] Religions as Means of Ultimate Transformation
Fifth
statement: Religions are means of ultimate transformation. I'll repeat the
sentence, religions are means of ultimate transformation, and I owe this short
statement to Fredrick Strang, author of An Introduction to Religion
textbook, published some 25 years ago or so now. Let me unpack that definition.
Religions are means; it's partly that they're not ends, okay, but it's
also that they are means in the sense of that they have a very practical purpose;
and that practical purpose is ultimate transformation. And when we speak of
ultimate transformation, we mean not just psychological transformation (important
as that is) but ultimate transformation in the sense of spiritual
transformation, in the sense of the transformation of the self at its deepest
level. That is the very practical purpose of religion, and that transformation
is from an old way of being to new way of being, from an old identity to a new
identity. And the fruit or product of this transformation across religious
traditions is compassion, becoming more compassionate beings. This is central
to all the major religions and the saints of the various traditions look very
similar in this respect.
[6] Religions as Sacraments of the Sacred
And
sixth, and finally, "Religions are sacraments of the sacred."
Religions are sacraments of the sacred. Now, let me define the word sacrament
here. Those of us who are Christians are familiar of course with the two
universal sacraments of the Protestant and Catholic traditions and then of
course the five additional sacraments of the Catholic tradition itself. But I'm
using the word sacrament in a broader sense and not just to refer to those two
or those seven.
Namely, a sacrament is a mediator of the
sacred, or a sacrament is mediator of the spirit. A sacrament is
anything finite and visible through which the spirit becomes present to us.
Now, in this broad sense, nature can be a sacrament; music can be a sacrament. Okay,
virtually everything in human history has, for somebody, been a means
whereby the Spirit has been mediated to them. [This is the meaning of “a
sacrament” in the broad sense: Something that makes the sacred present and
tangible for us humans in our world.]
Now, to apply this definition to religions,
the purpose of religions is to mediate the sacred [to make “the Sacred”
present and tangible in a concrete way]. The purpose of their scriptures,
their rituals, their practices is to become a vehicle or a vessel for the
sacred to become present to us. Now, if one takes this seriously, it also has
an effect upon what we think being religious means. Within the Christian
tradition over the last 300 years (especially for Protestants but for Catholics
as well because this is generally true of what's happened in Western
Christianity since the Enlightenment), there's been an enormous emphasis on ‘believing’
as what it means to be a Christian: that to be a Christian means believing in
the Bible and Jesus, and God, or in Christianity, or whatever. Well, if you see
religions as a sacrament, the point is not to believe in the sacrament. The
point is to live within the tradition and let the sacrament do its work within
you; to let the sacrament mediate the reality of the sacred to you. And it
seems to me that this is the purpose of the Buddhist tradition, the Muslim tradition,
the Jewish traditions, and so forth -- that they are means whereby the sacred
becomes present to people and works within people.
*****
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