What is Religion? [Video Script]

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law

Religion gets a bad rap, perhaps deservedly so. However, I find that most critiques are rather shallow. They focus on one aspect of a religion and act as if that one aspect is representative of the whole. Some of the better ones will focus on two of the aspects and compare them for inconsistencies.

Perhaps I should take a second to define religion as I use the term. Religion used to mean belief in god and the religious body devoted to that god (i.e., church, synagogue, mosque). As we came to understand non-European conceptions of spirituality, the term was broadened to include such things as Buddhism and Taoism.

Religion, as I tend to use it, is the conception of how the *I* perceives its relationship to the *not-I*. Typically, this has a supernatural component, as the not-I tends to take on an eternal quality. To put it another way, it is the conception of what is, what was, and what shall be, combined with the conception of the self’s relationship to what is, what was, and what shall be.

Technically speaking, this means that there are many secular religions. Humanism, Communism, Fascism, Atheism, etc. all posit a worldview (i.e., what was, is, and shall be) and the self’s relationship to that worldview.

So religion, the driving force for civilization (see my video “On Reality”). Religion is, at its core, the embodiment of a societies values, ideals, dreams, and aspirations. It provides guidance for what a given culture finds “good” and what it despises as “evil”. It dictates the roles and bounds of our interactions with other members of our culture and with the outsider.

However, religion, even within a given culture, is far from monolithic. Aside from differences in interpretations of myth and scripture, religion also differs by virtue of its practitioners. The three broad categories I find useful are Scriptural, Elite, and Folk. These three divisions map to the classic castes of Priest, Aristocrat, and Commoner. Note that some societies also have a merchant class, whose members align, religiously, with either the Folk or Elite customs (or are outsiders). Now these aren’t strictly delineated, and there is overlap. They are more akin to what Bourdieu describes as the interaction of habitus, fields, and doxa, which I view as analogous to a template.

When most people talk about a religion, other than their own, they tend to focus on the scriptural. The bible, the Tao Teh King, the Koran, the Torah, etc. They will often supplement this with commentary by the priesthood (or its equivalent), thus we get Augustine, Changtse, the Hadiths, and the Talmud. This is informative. It puts forth the official ideals held by that cultural group.

Pendant to the scriptural form of a religion, we have the elite interpretation. The elites used to be synonymous with the aristocracy, but in today’s modern world, this function is held by the affluent, educated class. Here we tend to find the esoteric, or occult, variations. Philosophy, other religions, and science are brought into, and incorporated into, the elites’ understanding of the scriptural religion. This is where the Hermetic disciplines grew and flourished.

In another branch from the scriptural form, we have the folk traditions. These are typically formed by what is now termed the working class, though of old they were the peasants and slaves. These practices are a combination of older religious traditions and outright superstitions. Sometimes the scriptural form is nothing more than a cloak for the continuation of the aboriginal practices, such as with the start of Santaria, or (more commonly) they are an incorporation of previous traditions that were too strong to be displaced (such as the Catholic Cult of the Saints). This is where your hedge-witch or kitchen-witch mythos arose.

Now a holistic understanding of a peoples’ culture must take into account all three aspects of a cultures’ religion. In the case of the Universalistic religions (e.g., Christianity, Islam, Buddhism) it becomes even more complicated. Christianity shares a common scripture, but the Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Calvinist derivatives (which are further subdivided) must take into account the various differentiations within each cultural group. The folk and elite customs of the Anglican Communion in Ethiopia are a far cry from those in the United States. With Buddhism, the differences are even more striking, as the different sects adopted different scriptures so that Nikāya and Mahayana Buddhism are barely related in the scriptural sense.

It should be pointed out that these three aspects are not isolated. They are in constant communion with each other. They inform and modify each other. Also, the priesthood, which is the guardian of the scriptural tradition, is often pulled from the other two groups, the thoughts and ideas of the elites and folk are constant influences on the interpretation of the scriptural tradition. Likewise, as the priesthood are the guides of the spiritual life of both the elites and folk, the scriptural interpretation is constantly being exposed to the other two groups. The village priest is quite likely to leave out a bowl of milk for the hobs, if not from belief then to express solidarity with his rural flock.

Essentially, what I am getting at is that Religion is a complex, multi-faceted phenomena. Most criticism, even when it manages to go beyond “Hur,hur, dey so stupid”, seldom takes in this complexity. In fact, they take this complexity and use it as if it supported their opposition. To say that some folk tradition is in conflict with a scriptural doctrine is about as logical as criticizing Buddhism as being false because Zen is at odds with Tibetian Buddhism.

To recap, Religion is the codification and inspiration for a culture’s values. It translates the metaphysics into a sensible form which instructs and informs the members of its culture. Depending on the circumstances of one’s position within said society, one’s relationship with the religious tradition will vary. The most useful major divisions of a religion are into its Scriptural, Elite, and Folk interpretations. These interpretations form a dynamic relationship constantly influencing and reinforcing each other. To decry the fact that a folk interpretation is at odds with an elite or scriptural one is as pointless as claiming that Priest A thinks X, but Priest B thinks Y, so obviously the whole religion is false. This is as silly as when the creationists argue that evolution is false because of the discrepancy between punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism.

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