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Welcome! Religious
Studies 101
Instructor, Nancy
Pfaff, M.A.
Defining Religion
Two Significant
Definitions
Religion is…
•An explanation of the ultimate meaning of life
•Based on a notion of the transcendent
•And how to live accordingly.
•Religion normally contains the four C’s”
–Creed—Explains the meaning of life
–Code—Defines acceptable behavior/ethics
–Cult—All the ritual activities and spiritual disciplines that relate the follower to the transcendent and toward religious specialists.
–Community structure—Relationships among followers
Religion is…
•What is “the transcendent?”
–That which goes beyond the everyday, the ordinary, the sensate experience of reality, beyond scientific reality.
–Spirits,
gods, a personal God, an impersonal God, the Buddhist “emptiness” or
“void”, and more.
A Second Definition of Religion
•Any person’s reliance upon a pivotal value
•In which that person finds essential wholeness as an individual
•And as a person in community.
A Second Definition (cont’d)
•What is a pivotal value?
–For that person, all other values are less than this central value.
–It is authentic to the individual though it may not be meaningful to others.
–A pivotal value when shared by others is called a “religious tradition.”
–For a person’s professed commitment to be authentic, the person’s life must be governed by the religion’s pivotal value.
Dialogue between Religions
•Often difficult for one to understand the faith commitment of someone with a different faith perspective.
•This may occur within or outside one’s religious group.
•To truly dialogue vs. debate, one needs an open and searching attitude, and respect and trust for the other; a willingness to share ideas without an attempt to minimize honest disagreements.
•Example
of dialogue: Martin Buber and an
older, admired man. (Pg. 17 of text)
The Beginnings of
Our Religious Traditions
Introduction
nWe are at a turning point in history.
nOur difficulties mask a deep spiritual crisis.
nOur ability to harm and maim has kept pace with economic and scientific progress.
nWe lack the wisdom to hold our aggression in check.
nWe risk environmental catastrophe because we no longer see the earth as sacred but simply a resource.
nWe need a spiritual revolution!
Introduction (cont’d)
nA purely rational education will not suffice.
n9/11 revealed what can happen when the sense of the sacred inviolability of every single human being has been lost.
nReligion, which is supposed to help us cultivate a deeper response to life, seems to reflect the violence and desperation of our times.
nMore people are turning from traditional religion to art, music, literature, dance, sport, or drugs to give them the transcendent experience humans require.
Introduction (cont’d)
nWe all look for moments of ecstasy and rapture.
nWe inhabit our humanity more fully than usual.
nWe feel deeply touched within.
nWe feel lifted momentarily beyond ourselves.
nWe are meaning-seeking creatures.
nWe despair if we cannot find significance and value in our lives.
nWe are looking for new ways to be “religious.”
nThe 1970’s brought religious revival worldwide.
nMilitant fundamentalism is the extreme manifestation.
Finding Inspiration in the Axial Age
n1500 bce – Seventh century ce
nKarl Jaspers, German philosopher
nPivotal to the spiritual development of humanity
nThe great world religions came into being
nConfucianism
& Daoism in
nHinduism
and Buddhism in
nJudaism,
Christianity and Islam in the
nPhilosophical
Rationalism in
nThe period of the Vedas & Upanishads, Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Moses; Mencius and Euripedes; Jesus and Muhammad
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nIntense creativity where spiritual and philosophical geniuses pioneered an entirely new kind of human experience.
nHow can these sages who lived in such different circumstances speak to our current condition?
nYet we have not yet surpassed the insights of this Axial Age
nLater generations tended to dilute their vision.
nThis is the problem of our modern age.
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nAll the traditions developed during the Axial Age:
nPushed forward the frontiers of human consciousness.
nDiscovered a transcendent dimension in the core of their being.
nThe experience was ineffable (too sacred to talk about & to difficult to express in words).
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nThe sages did not seek to impose their own view.
nThey believed:
nNobody should take religious teaching only on faith or at second hand.
nEverybody should question everything and test any teaching against your personal experience.
nWhat mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved.
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nReligion was about doing things
nthat
changed you at a profound level!
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nBefore the Axial Age:
nRitual and animal sacrifice
nExperienced the divine in sacred dramas
nIn the Axial Age:
nStill ritual, but with a moral component
nThe only way to encounter what they called God, Nirvana, Brahman or the Way was to live a compassionate life.
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nThis meant you had to be willing to change.
nThe sages’ intent was to create an entirely different kind of human being.
nThey insisted that people must abandon their egotism and greed, their violence and unkindness.
nYour concern must somehow extend to the entire world.
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nEach tradition developed its own formulation of the Golden Rule of Christianity:
nDo to others as you would like them to do to you. (Do not do to others what you would not have done to you.)
nBe
concerned for the sacred rights of all beings, including yourself.
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nThe sages circumstances:
nThey lived in societies like ours--torn apart by violence and warfare.
nThis was often a catalyst for religious change.
nA principled rejection of aggression
nThey looked for the causes of violence in the psyche and discovered their interior world—a hitherto undiscovered realm in human experience.
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nThe unanimity of the spiritual quest of the human race:
nThe compassionate ethic works.
nAll the great traditions agree about the importance of charity (love) and benevolence (kindness & goodwill).
nThis tells us something important about our humanity.
The Axial Age (cont’d)
nReligious Studies 101
nOur study of religion and of the world’s religions can be an affirming experience.
nBecause we are so deeply in accord with others core values.
nBecause we can learn from others how to enhance our particular pursuit of the empathic (one's ability to recognize, perceive and directly, experientially feel the emotion of another) life.
Pre-Axial Religion
nMost had an early belief in a High God, a Sky God, associated with the heavens. Tended to disappear (fade from religious consciousness) because seemed to be inaccessible.
nPeople experienced the sacred (that worthy of religious emotion inspired by a deity) as everywhere present in the world around them and within themselves.
nAll were subject to an overarching cosmic order that kept everything in being.
nAnimal sacrifice was a way of recycling the depleted forces that kept the world in being.
Pre-Axial Religion
nThey had a strong conviction that life and death, creativity and destruction were inextricably entwined.
nThey understood that they survived only because other creatures laid down their lives for their sake, so the animal victim was honored for its self-sacrifice.
nThey often began a new project by performing a ritual that re-presented the original creation of the cosmos. This gave their mortal activity an infusion of divine strength.
nThey depended on the “perennial philosophy.”
nEverything and every experience was a replica of a reality in the divine world.
Pre-Axial Religion
nThe Perennial Philosophy
nThe sacred world was richer, stronger and more enduring than anything on earth and men and women wanted desperately to participate in it.
The Perennial Philosophy (cont’d)
nEvery single person,
nEvery single object,
nEvery single experience,
nWas a replica, a pale shadow, of a reality in the divine world.
nThe divine world was present on the earth
An Australian Example
nThe Australian Indigenous People
nWhen an Australian goes hunting, he models his behavior so closely on that of the first Hunter, when he falls away from that primal richness, he fears that the domain of time will absorb him, and reduce him and everything that he does to nothingness.
The Perennial Philosophy (cont’d)
nRitual
nIn ritual the individual imitated the gods and gave up the lonely, frail individuality of their secular lives.
nIn ritual, they truly felt the significance of who they were, of their existence and purpose.
Many human beings today
nProfoundly superficial
nFollow dictates of fashion
nSurgically alter bodies for beauty
n
nImitate their celebrities; feel lifted to a “high” in their presence.
Contrast to the Axial Age
nMore authentic version of spirituality
n“Human beings look at the outside, but God looks at the heart.”
nSpirituality included morality and good works, along side faith.
nPeople taught to seek the ideal, archetypal self within
n“The
A Major Failing of the Axial Age
nIndifference to women
nSpiritualities developed in urban environments:
nDominated by military power
nAggressive commercial activity
nWomen tended to lose the status they had enjoyed in more rural areas.
nNot hated as women, simply ignored
Growth in insights
nAxial peoples did not evolve in a uniform way.
n
n
n
One of the Axial Sages
nZoroaster
nAn Iranian prophet lived sometime between 1200 – 658 bce
nClaimed he had been called to restore order to the steppes by Ahura Mazda, God of justice and wisdom.
nHad a vision of Vohu Manah (“Good Purpose”)
nLed him to Mazda, who was surrounded by his retinue of seven radiant gods.
nTold Zoroaster to mobilize his people in a holy war against terror and violence. Order vs. evil.
nZoroaster saw Mazda as the Supreme God.
Zoroaster
nConvinced there was a wicked deity who inspired evil, a Hostile Spirit—Angra Mainyu. Equal in power to Mazda but his opposite.
nThe Hostile Spirit was committed to the lie.
nThis was the epitome of evil.
nEvery human being had to make a choice between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu.
Zoroaster (cont’d)
nLord Mazda had created a completely clean and perfect world for his followers, but the Hostile Spirit had invaded the earth and filled it with sin, violence, falsehood, dust, dirt, disease, death and decay.
nTo liberate the world, people must pray five times a day.
nThe battle between good and evil would end in a great battle after which there would be a great judgment.
nA blazing river would flow into hell and incinerate the Hostile Spirit.
nThe cosmos would be restored to perfection.
Zoroaster (cont’d)
nHe realized he would not live to see this last battle.
nAnother would come, a superhuman being
n“who is better than a good man.”
nBy
the end of the second millennium bce, these peoples had migrated to eastern