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Chapter 1 Religious Responses
Learning Objectives
1.1 Explain what is meant by spirituality.
1.3 Differentiate between monotheistic, polytheistic, and nontheistic.
1.5 Contrast absolutist with liberal interpretations of a religious tradition.
1.7 Describe how women are challenging the patriarchal nature of many institutionalized
religions.
1.9 tudy religion.
Chapter Overview
Attempts to define religion
Living Religious Responses: An Interview with Ivy DeWitt
Why are there religions?
Materialist perspective: humans invented religion
Functional perspective: religion is useful
Faith perspective: Ultimate Reality exists
Understandings of Ultimate Reality
Exclusivism vs. Universalism: A Letter from I. H. Azad Farqi
Ritual, symbol, and myth
Ritual
Absolutist and liberal responses to modernity
The encounter between science and religion
Historical background
Science and religion: recent developments
Key Points
Introduction
Teaching Note: This chapter is foundational to the entire book. It may be helpful
to students to outline the chapter and think through how each section in the
chapter relates to the chapter title and the other sections in the chapter. Students
may consider questions such as: Why are there religions? How have various
thinkers sought to explain the origin and continuation of religion throughout
human history? How do the different examples of explanations of religion help us
understand and refine our own approach to the study of religion? In addition,
students should be prompted to pay attention to key terms and names as they work
The sense that there is something or someone, some truth beyond our everyday
experience of reality, seems to be common to all cultures throughout history.
How people worship or respond to this universal presence, deity, or ultimate
Pictured as a tapestry, religion illustrates that many diverse forms of expression or
Many religions have some or all of the following dimensions:
o ritual
o narrative and mythic
o experiential and emotional
Despite common elements, religions are complex systems of belief and culture
that often stand outside institutional ex
to define; nevertheless, all religions seem to share a common aim: connecting
people back to something greater that lies behind the surface of life or invisibly
permeates the tangible world of our five senses.
Teaching Note: The text
1.1 Attempts to define religion
Teaching Note: This section briefly introduces the difficulty we encounter in
naming religions, which may fall outside institutional definition. This section also
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values) are called spirituality, which is personal and lacks ritual and the social
dimensions of organized religions.
Religion is dynamic and brings about changes in individuals and society.
1.2 Why are there religions?
Teaching Note: This section briefly introduces a range of theories of religion in
three broad groupings, which are not mutually exclusive.
For many cultures, religion has been the foundation of life impacting all facets of
human life.
Materialist perspective: humans invented religion
The materialistic perspective asserts that humans invented religion.
For scientific materialists, the supernatural is imaginary; only the material world
exists.
o This theory came to prominence during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
o Ludwig Feuerbach
argued that deities are projections of human qualities; qualities that humanity
fails to see in themselves, thus promoting a notion of weakness and sinfulness.
o Karl Marx saw religion as derived from economics and the longings of the
oppressed and argued that religion could be used as a tool of oppression,
which is tied to the rise of twentieth-century atheistic communism.
Functional perspective: religion is useful
necessarily evaluating the truth claims religions make.
The functional perspective holds that religion is useful for individuals and society.
Emile Durkheim, for example, saw religion as a glue that holds human societies
together.
John Bowker has argued that religion serves a biological purpose in protecting
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Faith perspective: Ultimate Reality exists
Faith perspective is that some form of ultimate reality exists.
Some religious people accept belief in a sacred reality on the basis of holy books;
others come to their own conclusions.
There are two basic ways of apprehending reality: rational thought or reason and
non-rational modes of knowing; religious practitioners may use both methods.
The experience of direct perception of truth, beyond the senses, may be called
mysticism.
Enlightenment, realization, awakening, and gnosis are some of the terms used
for encounters with the supreme, unseen, or ultimate reality; many religions have
techniques to bring about such encounters.
In ordinary experience, people perceive themselves as separate from the material
world, but mystical experience may challenge this typical dualistic form of
awareness of it are one.
Rudolf Otto defined this experience of being grasped by reality, or numinous, as
the basis of religion.
1.3 Understandings of Ultimate Reality
That which has been experienced as the sacred has many faces. Mircea Eliade
helped develop comparative religion, which compares religious patterns
found throughout the world. Eliade used the terms sacred and profane;
however, not all cultures make a clear distinction between the two.
A vocabulary exists in the study of religions that helps us understand the
different ways, culturally and historically, in which Ultimate Reality has been
approached and defined.
The profane is everyday, ordinary, unimportant occurrences.
Sacred reality can be envisioned as immanent, which means present in the world.
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theistic.
In these religions, if Ultimate Reality is worshiped as a single being, the religion
is called monotheistic. On the other hand, if a religion maintains that there are
multiple attributes and forms of the divine, then it is designated polytheistic.
Religions that maintain that behind the plurality of apparent forms there is one
underlying substance are termed monistic.
Nontheistic views assert a sacred reality that is not in the form of a personal God.
Some religions believe that sacred reality can be manifested in human form or
events called incarnations.
Atheism
thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, argues that religious faith is not just wrong,
but evil, because it can be used to support violence.
Agnosticism is the view that it is impossible for humans to know with certainty
1.4 Ritual, symbol, and myth
Worship seeks to express reverence and may also be used to request help with
problems.
Rituals, sacraments, prayers, and spiritual practices are used to create a sacred
atmosphere or state of consciousness, to bring some human control to situations
normally not under human power, to mark key life stages, and to provide spiritual
instruction.
Ritual
Predictable and repeated worshipful actions are known as rituals.
Actions can be a recitation of prayers, chants, scripture or stories; dancing;
sharing food; spiritual purification by water; lighting candles or oil lamps; or even
offerings of flowers, food, or fragrance to the divine.
Symbol
Symbols are images borrowed from the material world that are similar to
ineffable spiritual experiences.
There are many similarities among symbols used in different cultures.
Carl Jung posited a collective unconscious, which contains a store of archetypal
symbols.
Also relevant are allegories, narratives that use concrete symbols to convey
abstract ideas.
Myth
A set of symbols together may become the basis for myths, symbolic stories
Myths may explain how things came to be, perhaps incorporating historical
1.5 Absolutist and liberal responses to modernity
Traditional religious understandings are under increasing pressure due to the
phenomenon of globalization.
Each religious community has different ways of interpreting its traditions.
Particular labels for these modes of interpretation have arisen.
Four of these labels are the subjects of this section: orthodox, absolutist,
fundamentalist, and liberal.
o Orthodox people stand by a historical form of their religion, strictly
following established practices, laws, and creeds.
o Absolutists are those who reject contemporary influences on their religion.
o Non-faith-based research treats scriptures as literary collections from
particular cultural and historical contexts rather than as the absolute word of
God.
o Such research has sought to identify the earliest forms of scriptures, the
historical aspects of scriptures in comparison to other historical data, the
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1.6 The encounter between science and religion
Science, like religion, searches for universal principles to explain reality as we
experience it.
Historical background
Since ancient times, religion and science have often gone hand-in-hand.
o While some of the ancient Greek nature philosophers sought to understand the
world through their own perceptions, Plato argued that the testimony of the
senses differs from that which is determined through reason.
o Plato considered the soul superior to the body and reason superior to the
Science and religion: recent developments
More recently, however, some scientists have sought to understand religious
belief without necessarily rejecting it outright and have also questioned the nature
of science itself.
Scientists studying the cosmos have encountered virtually insurmountable
complexity and have also acknowledged the complicating factor of our own role
as observers.
More dynamic biological models are emerging, as science moves beyond earlier
mechanical models. For example, James Lovelock has proposed the Gaia Theory
of the earth as a complex, self-regulating organism instead of the work of a Grand
Planner.
The conflict between science and religion is exemplified in the opposing views
of creationism:
The intelligent design movement holds that scientific discoveries may be seen
There are four general positions in the current dialogue between science and
religion:
o The conflict model
o The view that science and religion deal with separate realms
1.7 Women in religions
A central but often understudied dimension of religion is the exclusion of women
and the feminine; most institutionalized religions are patriarchal, i.e., they have
male leaders who are like father figures.
Throughout the world, people are challenging the inferior roles to which women
have been relegated in various religious traditions.
Teaching Note: As students work through the book, they should be alert to the
1.8 Negative aspects of organized religions
The text indicates some key problem areas to which the reader should pay close
attention:
o Religions may split rather than unify humanity.
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o Religion may lead to an exaggeration of guilt in people with perfectionist or
paranoid tendencies; religion may become a form of escapism; religion may
1.9 Lenses for studying religions
Scholars use different lenses for studying religions, including history, sociology,
psychology, anthropology, theology, politics, economics, feminist studies, and
phenomenology a special field devoted specifically to the study of religions.
Phenomenology studies religion from the perspective of the believer or
practitioner.
Others approach the study of religion through hermeneutics the study of the
Key Terms
absolutist humanism redaction
agnosticism immanent religion
allegory incarnation ritual
Creationism mysticism symbol
dogma myth theism
enlightenment orthodox transcendent
Review Questions
1. In what ways
2. What are some of the different perspectives for understanding religion?
3. Describe absolutist and liberal interpretations of religious traditions, how they relate to
Discussion Questions
1. To what extent do you find materialistic arguments rejecting the reality posited by
religion and spirituality useful in understanding religion?
2. What relationship does spirituality have to institutional religions?
3. In what ways is the patriarchal nature of institutional religions changing?
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Class Activities/Assignments
1. Ask students to assess the religion section in the local newspaper. What issues are
covered, and which religious traditions are addressed?
2. Have students look up and in the online Yellow
Pages or on church websites. How many of the living religions in the table of contents of
the textbook are represented in your community? Have them investigate other ways of
3. The religious response is expressed in a multiplicity of ways. Have students collect
different examples of this from newspapers, magazines, periodicals, books, websites, and
4. Ask students to visit a religious place of worship with which they are not familiar.
Have them examine the architecture, the layout, artwork if present, hymnals, reading
material, and the like. How can they connect what they see with what they have learned
about the history of the religion practiced at the site? Have them compare and contrast
5. Ask students to write a dictionary-style definition of religion; compare it with actual
6. Divide the class into small groups. Assign different groups the task of investigating
very positive contributions that some religions have made to human affairs, and assign
Recommended Films
Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood, DVD by Warner Home Video, 2002. 116
minutes. OR O Brother, Where Art Thou?, DVD by Walt Disney Video, 2001. 106
minutes. Students can select scenes from these movies that depict an aspect of religion.
to the film clip.
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, 1988; DVD released by
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Addresses the roles of women in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Additional Class Discussion/Essay Questions
1. How is the study of religion different from the study of subjects such as mathematics
or other sciences? How can we best approach our study when religions make claims
with which we may or may not agree?
2. Explain what a myth is, and describe some of the different ways that the function of
3. Give two examples of scientific materialist explanations of religion. To what extent
are such explanations useful in understanding religion? What aspects of religion might
they miss?
4. What is involved in the historical-critical study of scriptures? How does this approach
differ from an absolutist approach?
5. In trying to understand the negative side of organized religion, some people have