Some thoughts about religion, religions and the religious

Introduction

Wherever we have found evidence of human activity on earth, we have found religion. For instance, even in the dimmest moments of recorded history, there is evidence of people burying their dead, which many assume indicates a belief in what happens to a person once they died [1].

The oldest world religion still practiced by large numbers of people today is Hinduism. This began around 5,000 years ago in India. Sikhism is the youngest major world religion, having also begun in India less than 500 years old. 

Although all religions are centered on the belief that each of them contains the truth about life, many of them are also directly related to each other. For example, although Jesus is said to be the founder of Christianity he was also a Jew and a follower of Judaism. For example, Jesus never attended church, but visited the temple in Jerusalem or taught at a synagogue. Siddhartha Gautama, who became known as the Buddha (also the founder of Buddhism), and Guru Nanak (the founder of Sikhism) were both born and raised Hindus. Finally, in the Qur'an (Islamic Scriptures), Islam is said to be a direct descendent of both Judaism and Christianity as these three faiths can be traced back to Abraham (the father of Isaac (Jews) and Ishmael (Arabs)). The Qur’an also talks of Jesus as a great prophet and a respected teacher of Islam. 

Some of the similarities and differences between religions can also be explained by geographical location. For example, religions which have their origins in the Middle Eastern countries (such as Israel, Saudi Arabia), tend to view God as a personal deity and each person as distinct from God and each other. On the other hand, religions which originated in the Indian continent have tended to arrange their beliefs around the idea that each person has a divine soul is directly related to God (or a part of God) [2].

What religion is (or types of religion) 

For all the conflict religion has created in the world, it is also something which draws people together and gives many people a sense of purpose and meaning in their life. One problem Sociologists face with regard to the study of religion is defining exactly what a religion is. In other words, what makes a 'religion', a religion?

Consider the following example. Theistic faith traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and even Sikhism, are grounded in the notion that there is one God. So we might say that a 'religion' is that which has as its central belief, the idea that there is one God (monotheism). The problem with this definition is that Hinduism is also considered to be a religion, but it promotes the belief that there are many gods (polytheism). The common factor here is the suggestion that a religion promotes belief in a Deity of sorts. However, many consider Buddhism to also be a religion but this does not promote any belief in God. So we see here how we need to broaden our definition of “religion” to accommodate the variety of beliefs in, or non-beliefs in, God/Deity.

Despite the problems associated with defining what religion is, common features of 'religions' are said to be: 

• Belief that there is something greater than humanity
• A distinction between the sacred (pure/good) and the profane (impure/evil)
• Rituals
• A moral code
• Feelings of awe, guilt, or mystery
• A relationship and response to that which is believed to be higher than humanity
• A social group/community based on these shared beliefs

Why people are religious 

Many people who are religious are born into a family where religion plays an important part in the life of their parents or other family members. In this case people are often religious because they have been taught that this is the right way to think about the world.

Others are religious because at some stage they have begun to consider what the Buddha called Ultimate Questions (E.g. ‘Where did the world come from?’, ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘Where am I going?’), and find satisfactory answers to these in a particular faith tradition (or religion). For these people, religion gives them a sense of purpose to life, a and answers questions the non-religious life does not. Of course, if a person believes their religion gives them satisfactory answers to these “ultimate questions”, then they will naturally believe it to be true. Problems arise when people of different faiths claim their beliefs (or religion) is true to the exclusion of others [3].

Of course, the religious point-of-view is only one amongst many other ways of understanding the world and the same event can be interpreted both as an act-of-God, or as a coincidence, or a natural outcome of events. For instance, is someone being healed an answer to prayers, or the result of medicine doing its job ob (or maybe both)? Before science became a significant force in the world for explaining the way things are, people had a more superstitious view of the world. Heaven was believed to literally exist above the clouds, with earth in the middle and hell beneath the crust of the earth. Spirits (angels and demons) were also believed to live in the world, and people relied on the gods for food (i.e. sun and rain). Also, because people believed life in all its fullness was dependent on the gods, people were concerned to keep them happy through sacrifices or living a certain way. Thus as our knowledge of the world and universe grows, so it seems our need for gods (or God) to help us make sense of them becomes less and less necessary.

Yet we need to keep in mind that often 'science' and 'religion' are asking and answering two very different sets of questions about the nature of the world we live in. Science tends to ask and answers how? questions whilst religions tend to ask and answer why? questions. So science might tell us how the world was made, but religion might tell us why it was. Clashes between these two worldviews tend to occur when they try to do what they other does (E.g. If the world is here simply as a natural occurrence, that our purpose in life is solely for genetic reproduction).

The Alistair Hardy Research Centre has recorded over 6,000 personal testimonies of religious experience. In answer to the question, 'How religious are British people in the latter half of the twentieth century?', the centre found that nearly half the adult population of Britain would respond positively to the question by claiming they have had a religious experience or 'other-worldly' (transcendental) experience of some kind. Out of these, some do not want to call this an experience of God, whilst others do. Half of the positive respondents had never attended a place of worship, and many had never told anyone about their experience. One interesting find was that people reporting these experiences are better educated, happier and better balanced mentally than those who did not report them. This, therefore, challenges the generally accepted notion that people claiming to have had a religious experience are odd and mentally unbalanced.

Many may hold this view of the religious mindset because modern science has generally discarded and tabooed the spiritual dimension of human experience. However, if a spiritual experience is not due to error or sickness, and has a positive function for individuals and society, then these taboos will ultimately be challenged.

Some of the positive aspects of religion: 

• Gives people self-esteem and a sense of purpose
• Helps people through difficult times
• Inspires creative activity (E.g. Churches, sculptures, paintings, music)
• Unites people into a community
• Inspires positive political action (E.g. William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade) 

Some of the negative aspects of religion:

• People think that their religion is the only one that is right, which can (and does) breed intolerance amongst people
• Most wars are fought in the name of religion
• Being in a religion can create an unhelpful distinction between those who believe, and those who do not
• Believing that one’s religion holds all the answers can limit the scientific enterprise (NB. Copernicus and the Catholic Church) 

Notes 

[1] In some religions the dead are not buried. For instance, Zoroastrians have traditionally left the bodies of their dead to be consumed by vultures in special places called Towers of Silence. This is because they believe burying or cremating dead bodies will defile the earth (and the elements).

[2] As you are reading this article you will notice that God is never referred to as a 'He' or a 'She'. Rather, the view is taken by the author of this website that God is neither he or she. As such, the terms 'God' and 'Godself' are preferred so as to avoid using any gender-biased language.

[3] It might be tempting to conclude that fighting between people of different faiths is proof that religion is a bad thing, or even that these particular religions are not true. However, the problem might not be with these religions per se, but with the way people understand and practice their faith.

An Introduction to John Hick's Pluralist Hypothesis (Part 2)

To read part 1 of this article click here

Re-interpreting religion (and religions)

With the publication of An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (1989), Hick introduced the most developed version of his religious pluralism (and the one he is most known for). Whereas in his earlier work he had tended to see religions as culturally determined landing-pads for God, now he presents religions as particular responses to a transcendent Reality. In other words, he has shifted the emphasis from subject (God) to perceiver (humanity). The seeds for this were sown in his early work (as noted above). However, Hick's also acknowledges his indebtedness to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), both of whom examined knowledge as something conditioned by our own (limited) way of perceiving things (as).

In An Interpretation of Religion, Hick (following Kant) argues that there is the world in itself (noumenal), and the world as we understand and perceive it (phenomenal). Support for this view of things can be seen in the fact that people often see and perceive the same things differently. So we all cannot be seeing the world as it really is (otherwise, there would be no disagreement). Each person's experience of the way the world is is, therefore, an interpretation of experience specific to that individual's point-of-view.

Applying this insight to the matter of religious experience, Hick concludes that all religious experience is simply an expression of a particular experience of a transcendent reality by the devotee (what he also calls 'experiencing-as'). Thus we can see how someone born in India is not only going to naturally be a Hindu but also, consider the Hindu-worldview normative (or normal) and all others wrong. For they simply have no way of seeing things any differently!

The Real

In An Interpretation of Religion, Hick radically revised his earlier concept of God, replacing this notion with the idea of an ineffable Real. In theistic traditions (E.g. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) God is encountered as a personal deity, but what of the non-personal encounters such as Brahman in the Hindu tradition? How can a personal God also be experienced as non-personal at the same time? The concept of an ineffable Real alleviates this dilemma. Turning once again to Kant, Hick distinguishes between the Real as it is in itself ('Real an sich') and the Real as it is variously experienced and thought of by the different faith traditions:

“I want to explore the pluralistic hypothesis that the great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human; and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to Reality-centredness is taking place.” (John Hick)

The idea that we experience the Real in different ways, and that this is the reason why there are different faith traditions in the world, releases an inherent tension in pluralist theologies. Religious diversity does not try to avoid contradictions. Diversity and difference are the natural results of the varieties of human experience of the Real. People are different. We have been born in different places, into different families, and have been raised in different ways to each other. We should not be surprised that just as we have developed different sorts of music and art, so we are naturally going to develop different expressions of faith, belief and practice.

Now the fact that people are 'experiencing the Real' in different ways also begins to challenge the idea that only one faith-tradition is true (exclusivism). Also, in saying that the Real is ineffable and unable to be experienced, or understood, or expressed by human understanding/language, means Hick can also argue for the various faith-traditions as contexts for moral and spiritual betterment. Overall, the 'truthfulness' of a faith-tradition is not so much to do with whether its beliefs are true, but what sort of believer they are producing.

Re-interpreting salvation

In An Interpretation of Religion (and subsequent writings), Hick grounds his pluralist hypothesis in the idea of salvation as that which is a transformative thing:

“I suggest that these different conceptions of salvation are specifications of what, in a generic formula, is the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to a new orientation centred in the divine reality.” (John Hick)

For example, the Golden Rule can be found in all religions, which in the Christian tradition is expressed as “Treat others as you want them to treat you” (Matthew 7:12). Hick believes the extent to which faith-traditions promote this attitude in its adherents, is the extent to which we can consider it to be a valid (and true) expression of faith. Now this might immediately imply a sense of moral exclusivity, for if one faith tradition is producing more ‘saints’ (or good people) than others then surely we should be seeking to win people over to that faith in order to make the world a better place. However, when we compare each of the great world faiths to each other they all seem to be equally as effective in promoting this attitude in their devotees:

“We have no good reason to believe that any one of the great religious traditions has shown itself to be more productive of love/compassion than another.” (John Hick)

Although members of a faith may want to suggest that they are morally superior to others (and as such they would be suggesting that they are members of the 'true faith'), any claim to moral superiority cannot be validated by religious history. In each of the great world faiths, there have been both good and evil actions performed by its devotees. As Hick himself notes: “I suggest today that the onus of proof or of argument is upon any who claim that their own tradition produces morally and spiritually better human beings than all the others.”

Summary

Initially Hick presented his pluralistic hypothesis as something which held in tension the idea of a God of love and was based on a universal plan of salvation. However, over the course of his research, this shifted to focus more on the idea that each of the religions of the world is a unique and culturally conditioned human response to what he calls the Real. Furthermore, because Hick argues for the Real’s ineffability, the various religions of the world are not there to pass on 'truths' concerning it but to simply act as contexts in which human salvation (the shift from egocentrism to non-egocentrism) can take place. Although each religious tradition would distinguish itself from the others by seeing itself as superior to them (exclusivism), this claim cannot be validated when we observe that religious history reveals no distinguishable difference between each of them, so as to suppose the moral superiority or salvific effectiveness of one of them above the others.

An Introduction to John Hick's Pluralist Hypothesis (Part 1)

John Hick (d.2012) was an English philosopher of religion, who in his early years embraced a more evangelical (and fundamentalist) form of Christian belief; one that was firmly committed to the idea that Christianity was the true faith, and the Bible was God's sole revealed Word. However, due to numerous positive encounters with members of other faith traditions, he began to find great difficulty holding onto the belief that one religion was true, and that friends of his who were not-Christians would be going to hell for not subscribing to a belief in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, on the basis of his extensive reading of the scriptures of other faith traditions, he began to conclude that there was just as much 'good' in them as there was in the Bible.

Reviewing his subsequent shift in thinking in God Has Many Names (1980) he writes: “I have from almost as early as I can remember had a rather strong sense of the reality of God as the personal and loving lord of the universe”. The idea of God being both 'personal' and 'loving' were major influences in his development of a more open understanding of the relationship between faith traditions.

Problems with religious exclusivity

In his book God and the Universe of Faiths (1974), Hick began to lay the foundations of what would become his pluralist hypothesis. His initial interest was to explore what he felt was an inherent tension between the idea of a God of love and the Evangelical Christian attitude towards non-Christians. Within Evangelicalism, the possibility of salvation has traditionally been centred on the belief that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone (the incarnate Son of God) has secured salvation for humanity, and that only a personal commitment and belief in this 'fact' would guarantee salvation. This has led to Christian exclusivism, expressed as 'outside Christianity there is no salvation' (aka 'outside the Church there can be no salvation').

However, Hick became concerned that if the Christian God is a God of love, and Christian salvation is the only true salvation, “Can we then accept the conclusion that the God of love who seeks to save all mankind has nevertheless ordained that men must be saved in such a way that only a small minority can, in fact, receive this salvation?”

Taking such a limited approach to the means by which people can be saved (i.e. literally by hearing about Jesus or becoming members of the Christian Church), means that for Hick most of the world would have to be considered damned: 

“It is the weight of this moral contradiction that has driven Christian thinkers in modern times to explore other ways of understanding the human religious situation.” (John Hick)

Accidents of birth 

As far as Hick is concerned a person's religious beliefs are largely determined by where they are born, and as such people cannot be held accountable for 'accidentally' not being born into a Christian environment. Thus, it makes no sense to say that a person born in India into a Hindu family, subsequently leading a good life based on Hindu beliefs, should be condemned by God simply because they were not born in a Christian country, or a Christian family, or because a Christian missionary had failed to reach them in time to tell them about Jesus before they died. In fact, it is obviously going to be the case that a person born in India will most likely grow up with the belief that salvation is achieved through (and by) the many Hindu gods, just as much someone born in Saudi Arabia is most likely going to become a Muslim and follow the teachings of Islam, and therefore will see no reason to convert to another faith tradition.

All this means Hick believes one's view of salvation (and the subsequent means of attaining it), is dependent on (and influenced by) where one has been born, and with this insight he felt he had dealt Christian exclusivism a mortal blow:

“Can we be so entirely confident that to have been born in our particular part of the world carries with it the privilege of knowing the full religious truth?” (John Hick)

Orthopraxis, not orthodoxy

From very early on in his work Hick rejected the Evangelical belief that one needed to hear and respond to a specific message in order to be 'saved'. He also sought to move away from notions of orthodoxy (correct belief) to orthopraxis (correct living); the latter being required if we want to begin to say, “All salvation… is the work of God”. As such, Hick began to interpret the world's religions as culturally-conditioned contexts within which people could grow as moral and spiritual beings, and thus challenged the idea that mission should be about attempting to convert rather than learning from people. Instead, Hick believes contact between members of other religions should only and always be positive and fruitful (“Not to displace but to deepen and enlarge their relationship with God”).

With these early insights, Hick laid the foundation for a revolution to take place in his theology of religion:

“Our next question is this: do we regard the Christian way as the only way, so that salvation is not to be found outside it; or do we regard the other great religions of mankind as other ways of life and salvation?”

An Introduction to John Hick's Pluralist Hypothesis (Part 2)

Notes

*Official website: www.johnhick.org.uk/jsite/