Class March 15 with Study Guide

Religious Studies 101

Bring: Bowl, candle, matches, cornmeal, music—Native Healing, PowerPoint, Hopi film

Sun Prayer

You who are the source of all power,
Your rays illuminate the whole world;
Illuminate our hearts also,
So we too may do your work...
Asquali, Holy Ancestors

http://www.thehopiway.com/content/spiritual/prayers.htm#greatspirit

Insight on the Sun Prayer by a Hopi, Southwest Native American Tribe

The Sun is our Father, the elders remind us over and over. The suggested and most effective way to prepare to do the Sun Prayer we have found is:

*Stand facing the Sun or a symbol of the Sun (candle / fire ) even in your mind, anything that looks like the Yellow Father Sun.

*Place an offering of Corn Meal , Tobacco or food offering for the Holy Ones. A cup of pure water also if you have one or do the ceremony by water.

*With your mind and/or hands go through your body and remove anything that is not in Harmony with your highest good. This can be physical things, like a headache or spiritual things like a broken heart. Take these things in your imagination and give them away to the Father Sun.

*Continue to remove things from you body and aura until you feel clean and pure inside. Like a hallow tube or bone to allow the good work of the Creator to work in and through you.

*Visualize the Sun and its energy moving in through the top of your head and all the way down through your feet. See the Sun's energy moving down into the middle of the mother Earth to purify the Earth's energy and grid systems.

*When you feel yourself as being a pillar of Golden Sun Light then reach out your hands, palms upward, in a cupped fashion. What is received in your hands will be your gift from the Holy Ones to renew and purify you.

* All the extra (and there will be much) send out through your "Heart" out into the World. See Golden Yellow Light pouring from your heart and chest area and direct it to renew and purify the World and all our Relations in the Love of the Creators Goodness and our Holy Ancestors.

*Sing your healing or Thanksgiving song as this is happening... We sing the Sundance song of the Lakota. However, there are many songs, maybe your personal power song, or chant or pray one that fits the moment and intention you have for that day. It does not have to be Native American and in time your very own spirit song will be revealed to you if you do this exercise with a pure and loving intent.

Then say the prayer once more before closing...in thanksgiving for another beautiful day.

You who are the source of all power,
Whose rays illuminate the whole world,
Illuminate our hearts also,
So we too may do your work
Thank you Holy Ancestors

Repeat as often as desired.

1. *Robert Bellah, sociologist
1. Defines evolution:
1. Increasing differentiation (similar > different)
2. Complexification of organization > social system
3. Greater capacity to adapt to its environment
4. More autonomy (independence) toward the environment
5. Not inevitable; not irreversible
6. Nothing metaphysical implied
2. Five major stages in the evolution of religion (the most generally observable historical regularities)
1. Primitive Religion
2. Archaic Religion
3. Historic Religion
4. Early Modern Religion
5. Modern Religion
3. *Primitive Religion
1. Religion itself is an evolutionary advance
1. Allows the human being to transcend and dominate suffering and limitations to some extent by the use of symbols > freedom.
1. Comfort in death—afterlife
2. Transition to adult responsibility—Initiation
2. Primitive religion has three major features
1. Their world is sacred and mythical. Church and society are one.
2. Their myths are constantly being revised and altered when they meet contradictions to their myths.
3. Neither worship nor sacrifice to a divinity; their rituals make possible their identification with the mythical beings.
4. *Archaic Religion
1. Essentially advanced primitive religion
2. Their ritual and myth is far more systematized and developed.
3. One world, one reality with gods dominating. Church and society still one.
4. People learn to "please" the gods > some objectivity and control; increased burden of anxiety
5. *Historic Religion
1. The great world religions arising in the first millennium B.C.E.
1. Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Greek philosophy.
2. Major shift in attitude: There is a transcendent reality beyond our own—vastly superior. Duality—this world and the transcendent world; life and life-after-death.
3. Must seek this transcendent world interiorly; detach from the present world.
4. Aware of the need for salvation from a basic flaw:
1. Buddhism: Clinging to desires
2. Hinduism: Being ignorant of ultimate reality
3. Judaism: Sinful living
5. The promise of historic religion:
1. You can understand the fundamental structure of reality
2. Through salvation/liberation you can participate in this reality; this becomes the primary goal
6. A religious leadership class develops more fully and is separate from the political leadership class.
1. Society still held together by religion
2. Divergence/conflict between religious leadership and political leadership. Higher standards for political leadership to meet.
7. Religion begins to provide ideologies that further rebellions and reform movements.
6. *Early Modern Religion
1. Reform movements
1. Less duality: Salvation is found in everyday life.
2. Protestant reformation—priesthood of all believers vs. religious class/secular class > institutionalized
3. Other religions also had reforms, but they were not institutionalized.
7. *Modern Religion
1. Flowing from the Enlightenment
2. New stage of consciousness
1. history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, philosophy
3. Religious symbols being reinterpreted
1. Better understood as symbols opening up to a precious and rich truth.
2. Example of Santa Claus: p.79; a new "naiveté".
3. Codes/ethics are based more on human reality than on religious orthodoxy. Need both reason and experience.
2. A Radically New Period
1. Humanity can destroy itself globally.
2. Imperative of Global Dialogue
3. Postmodernism
1. Notion of reason as the final judge of human knowledge is too shallow.
2. Must also consider:
1. Motivations from the unconscious
2. Economic motivations
3. Class motivations
4. Gender motivations
5. Racial factors
4. Looking Ahead
1. Going deeper in our own view while being enriched by other’s views
2. Discover what is most authentic in each religion
3. Recapture the unity of tribal consciousness by seeing humanity as a single tribe and this tribe related organically to the total *cosmos—a living unity.
5. Dialogic rather than dialectic dialogue
1. Dialogic: Walking in the other’s "moccasins"
2. Dialectic: Refuting the claims of the other

PART II

1. Not all time is the same
1. Sacred time; religious acts-- Festivals/ceremonies

The Hopi--Ceremony days are determined by the ceremonial calendar and the position of the sun and moon. Special blessings are given before a ceremony is announced. The blessing acts as an official declaration of a ceremony and a town crier announces it. All ceremonies are preceded by secret rituals in the "kiva", a special gathering place for the elders of the tribe. This ensures that the proper spirituality is obtained for the prayers to the "kachinas". After the proper rituals, ceremonies are performed to give the people an opportunity to mediate and offer prayers.

1. Every religious festival and ceremony, any liturgical time [liturgy: an established ceremony prescribed for public worship], recreates a sacred event that took place in "the beginning."
2. Sacred time can always be accessed, is infinitely available
3. Sacred time is that time created and made holy by the gods, the ancestors…at the beginning.
4. Traditional religious peoples live in sacred time as a sort of eternal mythical present that is re-integrated by means of established ceremonies. It is a "transhuman" time, a time beyond the ordinary.
   
2. In sacred time, primordial mythical time is made present
1. The very beginnings of all things relevant
   
3. Ordinary time
1. A time when acts without religious meaning take place
2. Rituals have the power to interrupt ordinary time by periods of sacred time
1. Example: The church in a modern city
1. Outside the church = profane space
2. Inside the church = sacred space
3. Before the church service begins = ordinary time
4. Ritual [customary observance] = sacred time
4. Threshold time/transition from ordinary time to sacred time
1. Special rites protect the person in moving from ordinary to sacred time.
2. Western culture and time
1. We experience certain differences in the quality of time
1. Time for work
2. Time for fun
3. Time with a beloved
4. Holidays
2. We do not experience a "transhuman" quality of time like traditional peoples, except perhaps during altered states of consciousness—visions, dreams, a spiritual in-breaking [hierophany], hallucinogens…
1. Could the use of drugs in our culture be expressing a longing for the "transhuman"?
2. Those without religious beliefs do not experience divine presence in time; only human experience.
3. What is the difference between Christian sacred time and Traditional peoples sacred time?
1. Christian sacred time re-enacts a "historical" period when Jesus Christ lived and died and rose from the dead.
2. Traditional peoples time re-enacts a "mythical" period—the very beginnings before which no time existed.
4. Religious peoples’ behavior regarding time
1. The universe—cosmos—is considered to be a living unity
1. Is born, develops and dies on the last day of the year to be reborn at every New Year [some tribal peoples but not all]
2. Time begins with an "initiation" ceremony
2. Construction of sacred buildings
1. The sacred lodge symbolizes both the cosmos and the year. [Algonquians & Sioux]
2. The year is understood as a journey through the four cardinal directions represented by the Lodge’s four doors and four windows.
3. The Dakota tribe: "The Year is a circle around the world." [The world being their sacred lodge which is "the center of the world."]

 

4. The Vedic fire altar: The altar is the year. The 360 bricks of the enclosure represents the 360 nights of the year
1. By erecting the fire altar, the world is sanctified—placed in sacred time.
2. With the new altar, the cosmic god, Prajapati, is reanimated and the sacredness of the world strengthened.
5. The Jewish temple in Jerusalem—Solomon’s temple
1. 12 loaves of bread on the table in the temple = 12 months of the year
2. The candelabrum with 70 branches = the decans [the zodiac division of the seven planets into tens]
3. The temple was the center of the world and sanctified both space and time.
6. In archaic cultures (not all)
1. The world is renewed annually
2. Each new year establishes the original sacredness that the world had when it came from the Creator
3. Each New Year—a time that was "new", "pure", "holy"—not yet worn or used.
4. Time also was reborn; this restores primordial time
5. This also wipes away the sins of the year before since the New Year ceremonies also destroy the past year as if consumed by fire. This past time is considered profane and abolished by rituals that signified a sort of "end of the world."
6. By participating in the renewal rituals, the human being was also made new, began a new life.
1. Symbolically the human becomes present at the creation of the world.
2. The most important, powerful time in history…the most real—"the cosmogony is the supreme divine manifestation."
1. If sacred time is that in which the gods manifested themselves and created, obviously the most complete divine manifestation and the most gigantic creation is the creation of the world.
2. Therefore: Ritual and ceremony around the cosmogony is used in healing, in installation of new rulers…all creations…. Chants giving the origins of the medicines can be part of the ritual.
3. With regard to healing: "Life cannot be repaired. It must be recreated."
7. Before the cosmos came into existence, there was no cosmic time.
8. Whenever something first appears, time gushes forth in a new way. *Myth reveals the way a reality came into existence. This makes myth very important.
5. Religious Festival/ceremonial Time
1. Always takes place in original time, in the beginning with the gods.
2. Behavior before the festival and after is distinguished from behavior during the festival. Behavior during the festival is religious in nature.
3. Certain prohibitions may exist: not eating, no sex …
4. The festivals themselves restore human knowledge of the sacredness of the models.
5. The ritual performance of repairing a boat, for example, differs from simply repairing a boat. Things are done in a more precise manner closer to the divine models, and their intent is religious. The boat becomes a mythical boat used by the gods "in the beginning."
6. Does living in the past with the gods oppose progress?
1. Only to a certain extent
2. For the traditional person, progress is accepted in principle
3. At the same time, the traditional person bestows on progress a divine origin and dimension. In other words, they expect new divine revelations.
7. What is the religious meaning of this repetition of divine acts and gestures?
1. Traditional religious peoples desire and attempt to live close to the gods.
8. Reintegrating the sacred time of origin
1. Last week we saw that living at the Center of the World was equivalent to living as close as possible to the gods.
2. Through religious festival, traditional peoples enter the beginning of time when the gods were active. This is considered a mythical time, not an historical time with a chronology.
3. This is equivalent to living in the presence of the gods.
4. This is living in the "perfection of the beginnings" because the world is newly born.
5. These peoples have a great longing to live in the divine presence and in a perfect world.
6. If we go back to the article, "The Religious Mammal", we might draw a parallel to the longing of all human beings for spiritual experience, for fulfillment, and psychologically, for the center of the psyche, the self, to be related to the center of consciousness, the ego.
9. Responsibilities assumed by early religious peoples
1. Collaborating in the creation of the world
2. Ensuring the life of plants and animals
3. This differs from modern people who do not take on a "responsibility on the cosmic plane". However, the environmental movement is attempting to do this in a scientific manner. Certain mainline churches have also taken up the protection of the environment as a religious duty.
1. Modern people understand taking responsibility for moral, social and historical aspects.
4. This may seem childish, but the tribal peoples simply use a different language than we do, and they live in a sacred universe.
10. The *Myth—sacred story
1. The supreme function of the myth is to set in place models for all ceremonies and all significant human activities—eating, sexuality, work, education….
2. By imitating the divine models, tribal peoples remain in the sacred and contribute to maintaining the sanctity of the world.
3. Relates a sacred history
4. Relates a primordial event that took place at the beginning of time
5. Reveals a mystery, the source of creation is a divine work
6. Persons in the myth are gods or culture heroes
7. Includes what the gods or semi divine beings did at the beginning of time
8. The myth establishes a truth that is absolute
9. Always a recital of a creation, how something came to be
10. Speaks of sacred realities
11. Reveals and describes the various and sometimes dramatic irruptions of the sacred in the world
12. Among many tribal peoples, myth can only be recited at certain times and places.
13. Recounts a time that the gods created "out of an excess of power". Creation is accomplished by a surplus of ontological substance—of being, of existence.
14. It falls to the primordial myth to preserve "true history—the history of the human condition.
11. Comparing sacred work with non-sacred work, sacred vs. profane
1. To tribal peoples, agricultural work is a ritual revealed by the gods or culture heroes. Energized by the world of Spirit.
2. To Western society, the ground is to be tilled for profit and food. Empty of religious symbolism, no opening to the world of Spirit. Can be exhausting.
1. What people do on their own initiative, without a mythical model, belongs to the sphere of the profane.
3. Tribal people assume a humanity that is "transhuman"—related to the gods.
1. Tribal people "make" themselves by acting out the divine models.
2. Western society sees themselves formed by history, but history that would be of no importance, or profane, to tribal people.
4. The "dark side" of myth and ritual
1. Cannibalism and other strange practices
1. Even the most barbarous act has a divine model.
2. Remember it is instituted by divine beings.
1. Symbolically an eating of the divine being because the myth relates this as divine activity.
3. Enables the tribe to assume the responsibility for the continuity of life—vegetable & animal
12. Summary
1. Traditional religious peoples experience two kinds of times
1. Sacred and profane
2. The sacred time flows in a closed circle—the cosmic time of the year, sanctified by the works of the gods.
3. The New Year coincides with the first day of creation.
1. The world is recreated
2. By symbolically becoming contemporary with the Creation, the person reintegrates the surplus of power from that time, the sick person becomes well as one begins life again with its full energy in tact.
3. [The importance of the placebo effect.]
4. The religious festival is the reactualization of a primordial event, of a sacred history in which the actors are the gods or semi divine beings.
1. Allows the people to live in the presence of the gods
2. A religious calendar indicates the time of festival
5. Sacred history is repeated in the myths.
1. By reiterating these, the people emerge from ordinary time to recover an unmoving time, eternity; they approach their gods and participate in holiness.
2. Living according to the myths gives the people great hope, for with each re-enactment they can change their existence. It is by this eternal return to the sources of the sacred and the real that human existence appears to be saved from nothingness and death.
6. The religious loss of the cosmos
1. The gods are no longer accessible
2. Religious meaning is forgotten
3. Cyclic time becomes terrifying
7. The breakthrough by Judaism
1. There is a beginning and there will be an end.
2. God continues intervening in the present
8. The Christian perspective on time
1. God incarnated in a human being in a historic time
2. In liturgical time, a Christian enters the time Christ lived, suffered and rose again, but not in mythological time, in the time when Pontius Pilate governed Judea.
3. A theology of history—God in history for the salvation of the human person.

Tonight’s Film

"Hopi, Songs of the Fourth World"
V06240

Hopi Prayer To The Great Spirit

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy ---Myself--- Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. Asquali, Kawquai

STUDY GUIDE FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES 101 MIDTERM EXAM

The mid-term exam will contain twenty definitions selected from those below and four essay questions. You will select two of the four essay questions to answer. I will pair them, so be sure and study at least three of them. Each definition needs from one to three sentences. Each essay should take up two to three pages of your blue book.

Definitions

1. The Transcendent
2. The numinous
3. Hierophany
4. Profane
5. Popular religion
6. Reflective religion
7. Redemption
8. Liberation
9. Salvation
10. Enlightenment
11. Nirvana
12. Heaven
13. Conversion
14. Carl G. Jung’s "religious need"
15. Mantra
16. Cosmology
17. Metaphysics
18. Naturalism
19. Transcendence

20.Immanence

21.Scientism

22.Abraham

23.Monotheism

24.Moses

25.The Torah

26.Shabbat

27.Messiah

28.Historicism

29.Hermeneutics

30. Ka'bah

31.Mecca

32.Robert Bellah

33. Primitive Religion

34.Archaic Religion

35.Historic Religion

36.Early Modern Religion

37.Modern Religion

38.Sacred time

39.Myth

40.Religious festival/ceremony

Essay Questions

Define religion according to the authors of The Study of Religion in an Age of Global Dialogue. Give examples. Conclude with your own definition of religion.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional period, the modern period and the postmodern period? What does Huston Smith suggest we need to do in our present time to revitalize religion?

Define, then contrast sacred and profane space. Why do traditional peoples need to create sacred space? How do they go about creating it? What does the irruption of the sacred make possible?

Name the five major stages in the evolution of religion and give some of their characteristics.