Class Lecture for April 19, 2006

Religious Studies 101

Bring: Bowl, candle, matches, film on Dalai Lama—Ethics for the New Millennium

Why Religion Matters, by Houston Smith, Chapters 5, 6, 7

Focus on Chapter 5

How Higher Education has Minimized Religion

1. The first colleges

1. Created to train clergymen [church leaders]
2. A religious atmosphere pervaded the campuses
3. Only a little over a century ago, private universities had colleges held compulsory chapel services.

1. Today

1. This has all but disappeared.

1. How did this happen? Science and religion were allies in the beginning.

1. Early colleges were formed in a time of national and moral idealism.
2. Evangelical Protestants took the lead

1. Bible-centered people—divinely revealed truth
2. Conservative
3. Encouraged "revivals"

1. Early colleges also recognized "natural reason"

1. Philosophy
2. *Natural Philosophy (what would become science)

1. Aristotle: "For what is Natural Philosophy, unless a system in which natural things are explained; and in which that hypothesis is certainly the best by which the greater part of natural phenomena are most fully and clearly explained. These things are to be sought and acquired."

1. Religion becomes pushed to the periphery [out of the center of importance].

1. Colleges/universities kept pace with "secularization" in America. *Secularization: the activity of changing something (art or education or society or morality etc.) so it is no longer under the control or influence of religion

1. The main cause of secularization: The development of all kinds of technologies in the Western world—Europe and the United States.
2. *Materialism [only matter exists] led to more focus on developing/producing material goods and running businesses for profit.
3. Science and engineering explode as subjects of study on campuses. Business classes supplemented.
4. The humanities and social sciences, involved in the study of human beings, were pushed to the sidelines.
5. The colleges/universities lack of valuing "a reality that exceeds nature" (or even denying that reality exists), shapes students’ minds.

1. The humanities move toward encouraging skepticism.

1. Religious studies courses focused on teaching objective facts about religion. Often discounts sacred myths and texts as divinely created.
2. *Theology, the study of God, moves to private institutions. Seminaries try to maintain a strong intellectual culture while at the same time teaching subjects for church leaders.

1. The battle between the two ways of knowing.

1. Knowledge truth: Derived from science and grounded in reason. Objective.
2. Religious truth: Derived from a blend of feeling, intuition, ethical action, communal convention, folk tradition, and mystical experience. Grounded in sacred texts and tradition, not excluding reason. Subjective.
3. Crisis of faith: Today the great distance between these two ways of knowing has led to a crisis of faith.

1. The danger to us today

1. To be reduced to being a instrument for the advancement of the world’s materialism.

1. What are we to do to ensure the health of our own souls?

1. Keep a balance of objectivity and subjectivity.
2. Pay attention to feeling (inner states).
3. Pay attention to intuition (hunches).
4. Commit to ethical action.
5. Be a part of a community of faith.
6. Find a spiritual mentor you can trust and respect.
7. Learn the meaning and value of life, and live and become the person you were born to be.

Focus on Chapter 6

How the Media has minimized religion—artistic license and advertising, and the education of journalists.

1. The Turning Point

1. The media’s handling of the Scopes Trial, 1925, Dayton, Tennessee.

1. Well-known movie and play: Inherit the Wind

1. Science is cast as "the knight in shinning armor"
2. The issue around evolution is put in a religious framework where religion is cast as ignorant, bigoted and backward-looking.
3. The facts are changed for dramatic effect.

1. Over 200 reporters poured into Dayton

1. Became the first trial with international coverage
2. The facts were confused.

1. What was the trial really about?

1. Context: Dayton was decreasing in size and wanted a boost.
2. The biology teacher, Scopes, was a substitute who knew almost nothing about biology.
3. Bryan, the religious minded attorney, did not read the creation story in Genesis as exactly true, but rather as allegorical [allegory: a visible symbol representing an abstract idea].

1. Bryan had seen the "survival of the fittest" used to defend social injustice in the US and Germany. Large businesses used unfair practices, exploiting workers, putting farmers out of business through new banking policies which financed the large businesses. This was primarily what Bryan objected to and fought in the trial. This was not about religious fundamentalism. The real issue from Bryan’s point of view was "not what could be taught in public schools, but who shall control the educational system."
2. The fear expressed during the trial: "that we shall lose the consciousness of God’s presence in our daily life if we must accept the theory [Darwinism] that through all the ages no spiritual force has touched the life of man and shaped the destiny of nations."

1. This example typifies how the media approaches religion.
2. The place of advertising.

1. Advertising essentially rules the media.
2. Advertising presses for immediate gratification of the individual, and is unconcerned with "the common good."
3. These pressures work to degrade character:

1. See Houston’s pg. 119, "Imagine three different scenarios…."

1. The education of journalists.

1. Secular colleges/universities; the secular outlook leads to overlooking the approximately 120 million people in the US who regularly practice their religion.
2. Many see religion as a hobby, like building model airplanes, rather than a fit activity for intelligent adults. Yet nothing has been more stable in our society than religious belief and practice.

Focus on Chapter 7

How the Law Minimizes Religion.

1. The separation of Church and State.

1. In the past, there was respect for someone else’s religion. Today that has changed.
2. The liberal-rationalist culture imposed the belief that rational, public spirited people can’t take religion seriously.
3. The courts bought into this and stripped the Native American Church of its constitutional rights. (Use of peyote as sacrament denied.)
4. Appeal changed that decision.
5. But also changed the wording that allowed government interference in religion from "compelling state interest" to a "rational basis."
6. Antonin Scalia argued that America’s religious diversity was something we could no longer afford. In essence, religious freedom became compromised.
7. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

1. 1993, Congress restored the wording "compelling state interest" as the standard that government agencies must meet before they interfere in religious affairs.
2. 1997, This law struck down by the Supreme Court, saying Congress had overstepped its authority in passing the act.

1. The danger

1. The church is no longer only separate from the state, but subservient, its voice disregarded in the great public discussions.
2. This would essentially remove religion’s role as external moral critic, and an alternative source of values and meaning.

1. Houston’s declaration:

1. "If faith properly enables religious citizens to resist the unjust policies of government, it does so because it has first enabled those citizens to resist the dark sides of themselves."

Focus on His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

Ethics for the New Millennium

Overview:

1. The Dalai Lama will open in Tibetan and be translated.
2. May have trouble understanding at first.
3. He opens by saying that he is not a special human being, but just like us.
4. We all have the potential to transform our minds and transform into a better person, a happier person.
5. A lot has to do with our mental attitude.
6. Goes on to talk about ethics of war; the gap between the rich and poor.
7. Gives his solution to these.
8. Talks about true dialogue between religions: 1) Scholars discuss the similarities and differences; 2) Devote practitioners discuss their inner experience; 3) Experience sacred sites of other faiths, e.g., Lourdes.
9. The real destroyer is "hatred." Disarm it internally.
10. Answers a few questions you will find interesting.
11. Ends with a moment of meditation followed by encouragement on how to live well.

In Class Quiz:

1. What change in ourselves does the Dalai Lama suggest?
2. What is the Dalai Lama’s solution to violence?
3. What does he think the purpose of religious faith is?
4. What is the pattern he suggests for living a good life leading to peace of mind?