"What makes "world religions" imaginable and palpable as an objective reality is something like a new sensibility of global awareness, a sense of immediacy of the far and wide world" (Masuzawa, 40)
Context is everything, so it is important to take a very cursory (and flowery) look at the developments in Europe in the early modern period in order to understand the mind-set of the scholars Tomoko Masuzawa studies in her book The Invention of World Religions. Copernicus had kick-started the scientific revolution and Descartes fleshed out the scientific method, which brought with it a means to systematically understand the world around us. New worlds were being discovered, and old worlds were being colonized. The world was shrinking and our need for understanding was growing. Although rather late to the party, the study of religion was eventually caught up in this fervor.
Beginning as early as the seventeenth century a four-way classification system was employed by religion scholars to discuss the variety of religions in the world, which included Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism and Idolatry. This system was not meant to identify and describe 'belief' systems that paralleled Christianity, but instead "it classified peoples according to the kinds of homage they pay, the ceremonies and customs they observe that purpose, as well as according to the specific objects and beings to which they perform these acts" (61, emphasis mine).
In the mid-nineteenth century, the system began to change, and by the 1930s taxonomy for the 'world religions' had taken shape. This included the ten to twelve 'major' or 'great' religions (which aside from the Abrahamic faiths now includes Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, the traditions of the 'Far-East') and a myriad of smaller traditions lumped into categories like 'preliterate' and 'shamanism'. To show how this system developed, Masuzawa looks at the works of nineteenth century comparative theologians. These men studied the world religions in order "to establish the truth of Christianity" (78, quoting Clarke). The classification system that began to form out of these polemics was based on a West versus East philosophy, where Eastern religions are simply preservations of historical and incomplete beliefs, and the West (Christianity) is progressive and at the forefront of history (4). The classification fell along very strict geo-spatial and racial lines. Islam took the brunt of this taxonomy's biases, becoming the "epitome of the racially and ethnically determined, nonuniversal religion" (xiii), trapped by its extreme "backwardness" (83) and although younger, unable to compete with the progressiveness of Christianity.
The classification of 'world religions' has outgrown its classical biases to some extent. Scholars no longer use it as a means of proving the truth of their own religion, but as a useful way of categorizing the nearly unmanageable amount of religious groups into
workable subjects. Since both Masuzawa and Smith used linguistics in their work, I will do the same. I see the 'world religions' as akin to the classification of languages. If we take 'Russian' as an example, we can show it as Indo-European>Satem>Balto-
As a complete aside, I was wondering how you guys would describe an –ism? While reading Masuzawa it was hard not to notice that Christianity is the only religion that isn't one (aside from Islam, but it was Mohammedanism when it was anglicized) I'm just wondering why that is.
5 comments:
i'll reply to your blog later mike, but the ~ism question you asked me this afternoon has been bothering me. here's what my mac dictionary lists it as:
-ism
suffix forming nouns:
1 denoting an action or its result : baptism | exorcism.
• denoting a state or quality : barbarism.
2 denoting a system, principle, or ideological movement : Anglicanism | feminism | hedonism.
• denoting a basis for prejudice or discrimination : racism.
3 denoting a peculiarity in language : colloquialism | Canadianism.
4 denoting a pathological condition : alcoholism.
Hi Mike,
Before I comment on your post, I should mention that I've just joined the course and have been assigned this subgroup. So going forward, you'll have one more blog to respond to (sorry!). Here's the URL: http://sipihr.blogspot.com
I'm a double major in NMC and Religion and I'm graduating this year. I actually took the Introduction to World Religions course this summer (something I should have taken at the beginning of my major but alas, procrastination...) So the example you cite about the categories used to teach such intro courses is in very recent memory to me!
The use of classifications proved its clumsiness over the summer, with the danger being that students often essentialized various traditions to fit them into the categories of "East" and "West". I somewhat agree with you about their usefulness in beginning to approach religions, if only to build them up just to demonstrate why they are faulty. To put it simply, we have to start somewhere.
But it seems that until very recently these categories were not understood at starting points. Rather they had a staying power that served to dichotomize "wisdom" and "prophetic" traditions as if to say the latter contains no wisdom element and the former, no central figures. For Hinduism and Islam, Shankara and Ibn al-'Arabi respectively are just two examples of how unitive mysticism pervades both faultily delineated categories of religions. In addition, both these figures can be seen as representative of the "prophetic" element in their respective traditions.
Still, it would be interesting even as an experiment to teach an introductory religion course without the use of such categories. What if each tradition was presented on its own, or just in relation to another it may have preceded? What if the commonalities of each faith was pointed out from the get-go, to say there is a mystical dimension in nearly all traditions and by the same token nearly all can be seen at one time or another as being taken up in a literalist manner historically...
Throughout my experience in that course I wondered if such an approach was possible. The danger however might be that the diversity and peculiarities of traditions might be played down in the effort to find commonalities amongst them, a generalizing in itself!
Hey Mike!
I quite enjoyed reading your summary of the past couple hundred years of "religious" study. I liked the conciseness of it!
I had one issue to bring up. At one point you wrote that before the nineteenth century religious studies were "rooted in bias". My question is if we are still rooted in bias? I know in my field of biblical studies the ways in which we approach the text (Bible) can be VERY biased, whether we view the text as "holy scripture" or not. I think that there really is no way to be unbiased in our reading of a text (or study of a group). I think that it is inevitable to escape bias even if we are striving for objectivity. Ultimately I think the only thing that we can do as scholars (in training) is to acknowledge our biases and be open and willing to adjust our opinions and reformulate our understandings as we are critically engaged in issues of religious discourse.
Hi Mike,
First off, in response to your comment, I do think that the study of religion has outgrown its Christian apologetics, especially since many scholars in the area don't profess Christianity themselves. Whether or not it has outgrown its Western apologetics, I don't know. Probably because I'm one of them, the biases don't stand out glaringly.
Perhaps we do need classifications, I don't think it would be practical to look at everything as a collection of individualites. To some extent we need to paint with large brush strokes. While world religions may be the most practical way to teach under grads, it is very difficult to decide what to teach to students in the one month alloted to each religion. (I remember this being a major source of contention between professors at McGill).
Perhaps the only way to avoid being Western-centric is to have a whole bunch of scholars, one who studies the texts and the phenomena(yes, Eliade can be useful, I admit), others who study invididual cases, anthopologists, historians, ethnographers, and put them all in a room to exchange information.
I liked all the outside examples you brought in to illustrate your points, see you in class!
"Scholars no longer use it as a means of proving the truth of their own religion, but as a useful way of categorizing the nearly unmanageable amount of religious groups into
workable subjects."
hey mike,
perhaps scholarship is no longer used as a vehicle to proselytize on the religious front, but there is a definite driving force behind why the categories continue to work - this is why we still use them! i think masuzawa refers to the "othering" factor of categorization - perhaps by taking an anthropological stance of 'othering', scholars (and students) of religion are able to justify delving into a tradition for academic purposes...how, otherwise, could we justify studying a tradition if we were all the same!
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