Church Without Boundaries

4 Reasons I Might Return to Paid Ministry . . . Maybe

2014-06-09T10:03:00.002-05:00

I have a confession that, if you know me, may come as a bit of a shock:

I've been considering returning to paid ministry.

Some of you are gasping. I know. I'm as surprised as you are - maybe more so. Six years ago I left paid, professional ministry for a number of reasons. Those reasons are still valid and important to me, so I should clarify.

Recently I was approached about taking a part-time position in conjunction with a local congregation. I was initially wary, but I heard the offer, and wasn't immediately repulsed. The position was part-time, with modest but acceptable pay, and would be with a congregation that would be open to what my brother-in-law calls a "messy faith" - one that doesn't have everything figured out and is welcoming of questions and doubts.

Long story short: the offer fell through.

I'm disappointed. That surprises me.

I'm surprised because I never expected to return to paid ministry, much less to be disappointed about not returning. I was looking forward to being part of an intentional group again and to helping my brothers and sisters minister to people they encounter in their lives.

I never thought I would return to paid ministry because of my objections about pay, the clergy/laity divide, how congregations often handle their funds, and how congregations separate themselves from others. Over the last few weeks, though, I've considered the conditions under which I would return to professional ministry. Here they are:

1) If my position was not as clergy ministering to people, but as an enabler of other peoples' ministries.
I am still firmly against the class system within Christianity. A professional class that is separate and above the amateur class is completely unacceptable and inefficient. If I were to return to working with a congregation, it would need to be as a person who was paid not because of my ordination but because of my investment of time in helping other people minister wherever they find themselves. I am committed to the idea that the people are the Church, not the building or the service or the clergy. My mantra would be, "Be the Church." I would encourage people to see themselves as ministers who occasionally gather for personal growth and connection. "Ministry" and "worship" happen everywhere, all the time, with everyone.

2) If my employment was about my expertise rather than about external control.
When I left paid ministry, I had an undergraduate degree from a non-regionally accredited Bible college. Six years later, I have earned a master's degree from a nationally recognized, fully accredited university. Then, I had some good biblical knowledge; now I am an expert in religion with emphases in biblical studies and lived religion and a particular interest in the Spiritual but Not Religious. If people want to hire me because of that expertise, I would understand and be okay with that. If they want to pay me to try to exert control over me, that is still not going to work.

3) If the congregation was open to multiple opinions on divisive social issues.
Issues like economics, abortion, war, marriage rights, and many others are complex spiritually, politically, socially, and personally. Any congregation with which I would potentially work would need to be open to the complexity surrounding these concerns.

4) If, one day, when I am financially independent, the congregation would keep their money and use it for better things, like helping the poor.
That would be a great congregation to work with.

I guess all of this is to say that I won't be returning to paid ministry soon, but I've found the door open and I'm not pushing it shut. I still believe the way we gather as congregations is ineffectual and even sometimes damaging, but I haven't given up hope that a change is coming.

I'm ready for that change.

13 Tools to Build a Happy, Lasting Marriage

2014-06-03T12:21:00.004-05:00

Marriage is tough.

No marriage is the same. How can they be since everyone is different, and marriage is a pairing of two different people?

Recently I've had the pleasure of seeing new marriages begin, and the sadness of seeing some marriages end. I often wonder what happened between two people who professed undying love for one another and yet their marriage didn't make it. I wonder what I would have done in their situation.

I also wonder what people who make it in marriage do. What are their habits toward each other? How do they disagree? How do they handle differences in parenting, families of origin, interests, and personalities? What makes them last, where others don't?

Today is Amy and my anniversary. We made it 13 years, and it seems to be getting easier. After many years of "discussions" (that's what we call disagreements), differences in parenting style, and the challenges of life in general, I've been thinking about the tools I discovered and have used to try to make Amy's marriage to me as painless as possible. Here they are, in no particular order:

Choosing the first time is important, but re-choosing is even more so.
Deciding to propose or accept a proposal is no frivolous task. It should be done with care and consideration. You should *know* it's the right choice. However, marriage is about re-choosing. You will have to commit to that other person every day - commit to making it work, commit to loving them, commit to fixing problems.

You cannot change people, but people change.
Trying to change your spouse is a trust-killer. At the same time, it is important to recognize that your spouse will change. Amy and I are not the same people we were at 20 and 21, and that's a good thing. If we expected the other to be the same, we would be sorely disappointed. And also crazy.

Love allows change.
While you cannot change your spouse and shouldn't try, there is a tool that can promote positive change: loving acceptance without strings. There have been times I've been stubborn and difficult, and Amy's acceptance of me allowed me to let go of my stubbornness. While she doesn't try to change me, her love for me makes change safe and positive.

No one is perfect, and we can fix problems.
You might be delusional at the beginning of your relationship and think your amazing mate is perfect, or, perhaps more delusionally, that *you* are perfect. Time will disprove that, and give you the opportunity to see something else: you can fix problems. They aren't permanent, or personal attacks, or conspiracies to ruin your life. People make mistakes. I do. You do. We can fix it.

Apologize quickly for whatever you can.
The faster you apologize, the easier it is. Also, in a disagreement, there is always something you can apologize for. Maybe you hurt the other person's feelings. Apologize for that. Maybe you didn't think of their feelings. Apologize for that. Even if the other person is clearly more to blame, there is something you can apologize for, too.

Apologizing shifts a disagreement from focusing on hurt feelings to fixing the problem.
Apologizing lets the other person know you did not intent to injure them, and that you want to fix the problem and heal the relationship. I can't overstate how important apologizing can be to having a healthy relationship. Do it often and quickly.

Find hobbies you enjoy together.
Marriage is not all about disagreeing well. When you exist together free from conflict, enjoying stuff together can be a great marriage builder. Cook lavish meals together. Go on walks or bike rides. Plant a garden. Find something you both like to do and enjoy each other enjoying it. Smile together. Smile at each other.

Find hobbies you enjoy apart.
It is patently unhealthy and lame to try to interact with someone who has no interests of their own. Read different books. Watch different movies. Pick up archery or guitar or writing. Do something on your own. It will give you something to talk about when you are together.

Hold hands.
It's romantic. It's free. It's a silent, intimate language that can be spoken anywhere, in any crowd, or without a crowd. It's a habit that can be rekindled if it has been lost. It can last a lifetime.

Kiss.
Kiss quickly. Kiss slowly. Kiss in front of the kids. Kiss in front of strangers. Kiss when you're alone together. It's free. It's romantic. It's trusting and trust building.

Speak their language.
Amy likes notes. I don't know why. I'd rather just hang out together and spend time together. For some reason, though, notes are particularly meaningful to my spouse. So I text her, or leave a post-it for her, or buy her the occasional card. Maybe your spouse likes gifts, or hugs, or kind words. Speak your love in a way they can hear it.

Don't need them.
I imagine many people are so wrapped up in the other person that they cease to be a healthy person on their own. Please understand me when I say, I don't need Amy - I want Amy. I am a whole, emotionally and mentally healthy person all on my own. However, I want to share my life with Amy. I want to grow old with her, to spend my weekends with her, and to relish every single day that I get to share life with her. But I don't need her. I'm not sure I could be a good husband to her if I did need her. Such a relationship would be filled with too much expectation, too much drain on her. I am a better husband to her because I want her without needing her.

Be loyal.
There are other people in the world. I choose to choose Amy though, every day. Our relationship would not work if we didn't choose to invest our time, our love, and our emotions in making us work. Loyalty, always, even when it is difficult, is vital.

I know there are some situations that cause marriage to be painful to one or both parties, and I realize that one person cannot hold a marriage together if the other person is not interested. However, I'm old-fashioned, and believe marriage is a blessing worth fighting for. Maybe some of these tools can help you build a happy, lasting marriage, too. If so, you'll find a gift that cannot be bought and a security that transcends daily difficulties.

Happy marriage to you and yours!

The Many Messages of Frozen

2014-03-25T13:55:00.002-05:00

People are freaking out about the messages they are seeing in the movie Frozen.

Some see it as the most Christian Disney movie to date. Some see it as a movie about coming out. For others it's hyper-sexual, empowering to women, a promotion of teenage angst, propaganda to normalize the gay agenda, or a satanic attempt to turn kids gay (which I find most strange since the people who made the movie mostly seem to believe you can't "turn" gay or straight. But I digress).

So, what do we need in all of this jumble of mixed messages about Frozen?

Why, another blog post about it's messages, of course. That's where I come in.

I decided to watch the movie for the first time last weekend and see what all of the fuss was about. I didn't like the movie when I saw the first teaser trailer a year or so ago. I really didn't like the movie when it came out and everybody talked about how great it was. So, I saw the movie with the expectation I would hate it.

The only thing I hated about it was how much I loved it.

It was musically well done. The characters were (mostly) believable. It was chock full of meaning.

My kids are now old enough to watch movies I am interested in, including superhero movies like Spider-man and Man of Steel. To help them process these movies, we discuss the meanings embedded within them. After watching a movie, we discuss the themes and meanings that the movie expresses. They have taken to the process, and now always want to talk about the meanings of the movies they watch. They're learning that some movies are pretty terrible, with no coherent themes or meanings. Some movies, like Frozen, are full of meaning, and lead us to hours (or, more realistically, minutes) of discussion about a range of important topics. Such a discussion happened after we watched Frozen. We both picked up on a number of important themes, and they agree this movie is pretty great.

I thought I'd examine the many messages of Frozen in a way that hasn't been done before: with the expectation that there are many meanings in the movie, and that those meanings are revealed in the relationships between the main characters. This movie isn't about just one thing, but about many things. There is one overarching theme that is expressed in the resolution of the film, but we'll get to that later.

I'm starting the movie again now, and we'll progress through the messages as they are presented in the movie. Feel free to watch along with me as they are presented.

[Obviously, what follows contains spoilers. So, if you are the last person on the planet who hasn't seen Frozen, be ye warned.]

Here we go:

Elsa/King and Queen of Arendelle
Key quote: "Conceal it. Don't feel it. Don't let it show."

While she is still young, Elsa accidentally hurts her sister Anna with her magic. Their father and mother take them to see the trolls for healing and advice. Anna is healed, but not without removing the memory of Elsa's magic from her mind. The trolls give the advice that Elsa should learn to control her magic abilities. The head troll says, "You must learn to control it. Fear will be your enemy." How right he turns out to be! From this time on, Elsa fears her powers and tries to hide them with her parents' help.

[Aside: Elsa is "born" with the powers, not "cursed," "and they're getting stronger." Elsa's character represents people who are born different from others. She is advised to "conceal, don't feel, don't let them know." While Elsa could represent anyone who is different from others, I believe she most clearly represents lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. [Aside within an aside: Like other writers, I agree that the song "Let it Go" is Elsa's coming out song. I will not analyze this song for two reasons: 1) I'm not qualified to speak about what it is like to come out, and 2) I'm not analyzing characters in this post, but relationships. End aside within aside.] While Elsa represents LGBTQ people, the movie is not about trying to get your kids to be LGBTQ. It is about the reality of their existence, and what both they and we are going to do about it. The King and Queen choose to try to hide it, which turns out to be bad advice. End aside.]

Until Elsa can learn to control her powers, he father shuts her away from everyone, to "keep her powers hidden." This hiding becomes her modus operandi for the most of the rest of the film, and becomes the major source of conflict between Elsa and the other main characters.

Message: Some well-meaning folk will tell you to hide who you are. While they mean well, their advice is ultimately harmful.

Anna/Elsa
Key quote: "Do you want to build a snowman?" "Go away, Anna." (From the song "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"

Anna is confused that Elsa is suddenly withdrawn and unavailable. She wants to return to her happy relationship with her sister and doesn't understand how or why the change occurred. Anna still loves her sister Elsa, but Elsa is afraid of what might happen if she "opens up the door."

Even after the death of Elsa and Anna's parents, Elsa remains withdrawn. Her coronation as Queen is the first time she opens up the gates to the castle. For Anna, this is a happy event, filled with possibility and promise (see the song, "For the First Time in Forever"). But for Elsa, this is the first time she will have to test her years of training in hiding who she is. For Elsa, the event is terrifying, and her worst fears are realized when everyone learns of her icy powers.

Message: Shutting people out because of fear only damages and prevents relationships. Revealing yourself is scary, but it is the only way to gain real, lasting relationships.

Anna/Hans
Key quote: "Can I say something crazy? Will you marry me?" "Can I say something even crazier? YES!" (From the song "Love is an Open Door")

On coronation day, Anna is hoping, and maybe expecting, to fall in love. She sees a man does just that, and by the end of the day she is engaged to Hans, a prince from a neighboring nation.

Anna and Hans request Elsa's blessing. Elsa refuses, thinking Anna's decision to marry someone she just met is unwise.

Later, Kristoff joins in the critique, saying, "Hang on. You mean to tell me you got engaged to someone you just met that day?!?" Kristoff tells Anna to her face that he questions her judgement, saying, "Who marries a man she just met?"

It turns out that Elsa and Kristoff's concerns are justified. Hans reveals he is only using Anna to gain a throne, as he is 13th in line for the throne of his own kingdom. Hans betrays Anna, leaving her to die when she needs him most. If Anna would have slowed down and gotten to know Hans a bit more before committing to marry him, this heartache and betrayal might have been avoided.

Message: Romantic love can be unreliable. It is wise to get to know a person before you commit your life and heart to them.

Elsa/Anna
Key quotes: "None of this would have happened if she'd just told me her secret," "Elsa, we were so close. We can be like that again," and "For the first time in forever, I finally understand. For the first time in forever, we can fix this hand-in-hand. We can head down this mountain together. You don't have to live in fear. 'Cause for the first time in forever, I will be right here" (from the reprise of "For the First Time in Forever").

After Elsa accidentally reveals her powers to the world, she runs away to hide (and sings the most popular song in the movie). Anna comes after her. Anna now understands her sister's strange behavior, and comes to apologize for the misunderstanding, lamenting that, if she'd known, there would have been no problems.

Anna arrives at Elsa's ice castle, and tries to reconcile with Elsa. Elsa is still afraid, though, and turns away from Anna again, an in the process accidentally freezes Anna's heart. Anna is now destined to freeze to death, unless saved by, as the chief troll puts it, "an act of true love." Anna and some of the less-wise trolls believe this refers to true love's kiss, and Anna takes off for Arendelle to find Hans. Hans at this time betrays Anna, revealing his true intentions. A kiss from Hans is not to be, so Anna leaves to find Kristoff, who might be her true love and might warm her frozen heart.

Message: Hiding who you are can deeply injure those who love you. Reveal yourself - there are people who will love you no matter who you are.

The last four relationships epitomize the main theme of the movie: self-sacrificial love. In the relationships between Kristoff and Anna, Olaf and Anna, Sven and Kristoff, and finally Anna and Elsa, the theme of true love crystallizes in the last half of the movie.

Kristoff/Anna
Key quote: Anna, to Kristoff: "Are you going to be okay?" Kristoff: "Don't worry about me." Kristoff to attendants: "Make sure she's safe!"

After nearly half of the movie spent together, and after acts of kindness (Anna buying carrots for Sven), surviving trials together (like escaping the snow golem), and even meeting Kristoff's family, Kristoff develops feelings for Anna. Anna, however, is convinced that Hans is her true love.

When the trolls reveal Anna's fate of death by freezing and the only cure as an act of true love, Kristoff takes Anna to Hans, in spite of how he feels about her. Kristoff leaves Anna with the person she wants to be with because her happiness more important to him than his own.

Message: True love (as opposed to romantic love) cares more about the needs of others than the needs of the self.

Olaf/Anna
Key quote: "Love is putting someone else's needs before yours," and "Olaf, you're melting!" "Some people are worth melting for."

Olaf finds Anna on the brink of death, abandoned by Hans and left to freeze. He builds a fire for her and helps her over to it in an attempt to save her life. The fire is a bad idea for Olaf, being a snowman, who begins to melt. He delivers his memorable line, solidifying the theme of selfless love that Kristoff initiated.

Olaf doesn't melt, but instead goes to the window and sees Kristoff and Sven racing to find Anna. It is Olaf who tells Anna that Kristoff truly loves her.

Message: Some people are worth sacrificing oneself for. Self-sacrifice is the picture of love.

Sven/Kristoff
Key quote: "Sven!" Sigh of relief as Sven climbs out of the water. "Good boy."

As Kristoff is racing to find Anna, Sven carries Kristoff with all haste across the frozen harbor. The ice begins to crack, however, and a safe way forward is impossible for both Sven and Kristoff.

Sven jumps one last time onto an small island of ice and catapults Kristoff safely to the other side of the frozen water. The action, however, also sends Sven into the ice-cold water.

The first time I saw the film, I though Sven falling into the water was an accident, and I expected him to die. After consideration and a second viewing, I thought that such a death would only detract from the true climax of the movie (still ahead), and that Sven's action was intentional. He bears discomfort for one he loves.

Message: Those who love will sacrifice their own comfort for the needs of the ones they love.

Anna/Elsa
Key quote: Elsa: "You sacrificed yourself for me?" Anna: "I love you." Elsa: "Love will thaw. Love. Of course!"

As Anna is left with only moments to live, she is faced with a choice: run toward Kristoff and save her own life, or run toward Elsa and sacrifice herself to save Elsa from Hans' sword.

She chooses to sacrifice herself for her sister.

This is the act of true love that resolves the conflict in the movie and unfreezes Anna's frozen heart. Elsa learns that love can unfreeze the world she has accidentally frozen, and the movie ends with a celebration of Elsa's powers.

Message: No one has greater love than this, that she lay down her life for others.

Conclusion
Frozen is all about love. In particular, it is about the reality of LGBTQ people living among us, and what they and we are going to do about it.

We can tell them to hide it away, which will ultimately cause harm and separation.

They can run away and be who they are, but that life of isolation is only slightly better than hiding who they are.

Ultimately, the only "solution" to the "problem" is for us to love them and even sacrifice ourselves for them.

This theme of sacrificial love is juxtaposed against romantic love, but ultimately lasting love of any kind will only come with self-sacrifice and acceptance.

Regardless of your opinion of or religious or spiritual beliefs about homosexuality, the solution to the conflict in our culture is self-sacrificial love.

I am happy that an increasing number of people, be they conservative or liberal, religious or spiritual or neither, are affirming LGBTQ people and expressing their willingness to sacrifice themselves on their behalf. For this theme, I am proud to recommend the movie Frozen and to talk to my kids about how we treat people who are different. Kudos, Disney, for offering up such a valuable allegory for learning to understand and love people who are different than us.

Disney dreams of a world where "them" and "us" simply become "we." May that day come quickly.

The Teachings of Jesus: 11 Warnings about Religion

2014-01-09T09:31:00.000-06:00

Adi Nes, Untitled (Christ), 2009, found at
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/37762/cross-pollination

The Teachings of Jesus: The Dangers of Religion[1]

Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. They abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition. They have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep their tradition!

Beware, you false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! Hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! Hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.’ How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! Hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.

How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees! Hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors. You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.

You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.

I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.[2]

Jesus doesn’t mince words on the dangers of religion. The quotes above give 11 blunt warnings about the dangers of religion:

Religious corruption is insidious, infecting the world like yeast spreads through bread. It spreads like a cancer, and like a cancer, it is dangerous and harmful.
Keeping tradition pales in comparison to practicing the teachings of God.
People who promote tradition over the way of God are liars.
Such people not only do not follow the way of God, they keep others from doing so.
It is not buildings or objects or even offerings that are inherently sacred, but the God behind such things.
Justice, mercy, and faith are the essential aspects of the way of God. It is only while living out justice, mercy, and faith that keeping other commands has any meaning.
Faith is impossible for those who seek the approval of such religious hypocrites.
Just like their ancestors, people who value tradition over the way of God persecute those who live out justice, mercy, faith over the keeping of traditions.
Those who keep only traditions and do not follow the way of God talk a good game, but their hearts are far from God.
The kingdom of heaven will include many who seem to be outsiders, while those who seem like they are part of it are excluded.
Righteousness consists not of keeping the traditions of people but in following the way of God.

Jesus’ teachings on the dangers of religion raise some questions:

What traditions does religion promote that have nothing to do with living out justice, mercy, and faith?

If dangerous religion consists of keeping traditions, what would healthy religion look like?

Who or what do Jesus’ warnings remind you of?

What will you do because of these teachings?

Have you had a good or bad experience with religion? Have you seen the effects of the dangers Jesus warns about? I’d love to hear about your experiences, good or bad, in the comments below.

>>>Like Church Without Boundaries on Facebook and follow @ChurchWOBounds on Twitter to catch the rest of the series!<<<

[1] I find I am increasingly disinterested in Christianity and continually enthralled by Jesus. This series is an attempt to focus on the teachings of Jesus on various subjects, inspired by The Words of Jesustranslated by Robert Lee Cantelon (New Haven: New Haven Press, 1995).

[2] All quotes adopted and adapted from the New Revised Standard Version. See Matthew 16:6; Mark 8:18; 7:7-9; Matthew 7:15; John 8:44; Matthew 23:13-28; John 5:44; Matthew 23:29-34; 15:7-8; Luke 16:15; Matthew 8:11-12; 5:20.

Theories of Religion: Julia Kristeva, Language, and Identity Creation

2013-12-11T14:48:00.000-06:00

Julia Kristeva

1941-Present

French Post-Structuralist

Born in Bulgaria.

Paris for doctoral research under supervision of top French intellectuals.

Influenced by Freud and Psychoanalysis.

Currently holds three professorships in France, Toronto, and New York.

“I usually call myself an adopted-American Frenchwoman of Bulgarian origin with a European citizenship.” –JK

26+ works of writing ranging from essays to novels between 1969-2011:

Politics and Science of Language – 1970s

Psychoanalytics – 1980s

Novels – 1990s

Monographs – 2000s

Class Notes:

Speaking subject – the subject gains subjectivity perhaps by speaking. “The self” suggests something fixed and self-contained.

Subjectivity is a process developed over time and is influenced by own’s culture, language, etc. Subjectivity deals with a sense of one’s self, a subject who can think and act of one’s own accord. Subjectivity is not a given for post-structuralists. Thus, identity/subjectivity is not a fixed phenomenon, but is always changing and being fashioned by outside forces.

Language is part of the process of becoming a subject. It is not a tool that a subject uses, but rather it is integral to the formation of a subject. Beings become self-aware through the use of language. Language is what marks and reinforces the separation between a child and her or his mother. The two components of language are Semiotic and Symbolic.

Key Terms:

Semiotic (feminine, rhythmic, tonal, extra-verbal way that energy and emotion enters into language, unconscious drives and desires, not dictated by linear logic, associated with dance, music, poetry, and infancy)

Symbolic (masculine, uses signs to represent ideas, exemplified by the language used in law and science, a mode of signifying with as little ambiguity as possible. masks unconscious drives and desires).

These two modes of language are both essential. They are intertwined in the process of making meaning. Meaning is often found in words accompanied by feeling, tone, pitch of the voice, etc.

Chora – psychic space of the infant; state of plenitude and satisfying oneness with the caregiver; pre-symbolic.

Use of language to identify other objects is the threshold of subjectivity. It is with language and the identifying of other people and things that an infant begins to recognize herself or himself. Abjection is the means of carrying out identity creation.

Abjection – rejection of what is other to oneself in order to maintain the tenuous boundaries of one’s self; bridge between plentitude and individuation. Includes the bodily repulsion of substances, including food loathing. Such substances are said to blur the lines of the symbolic and the symbiotic, between subject and object, making it both horrifying and interesting. In the world of religious terminology, abjection is captured in the word “sin.” This is also found in infancy, termed the “maternal abjection,” when an infant begins to see the mother as something other than her or his self.

The Mother also desires the Other (agape). This love for the Other gives the infant space to recognize the difference between her or his self and the Mother. The Mother’s love for the Other triggers abjection in the infant. Kristeva then introduces the concept that, for the infant, “God” becomes the replacement for the Mother.

Theory of Religion:

What most defines religion for Kristeva is religion’s ability to purify the abject. Religion maps out the boundaries of the self and protects it from that which is abject. Religion attempts to identify and repel that with which one should not associate. Religion offers a system for establishing identity by abjecting that which is revolting to or threatens the identity of the self.

Critiques:

Kristeva has been criticized by some who say she defines complete subjectivity in terms of motherhood.

Sources:

Stephen Berkwitz, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, November 19 and 21, 2013.

Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection and Semiotics of Biblical Abomination,” “Credence-Credit and Credo,” “Stabat Mater,” “Psychoanalysis – a Counterdepressant and Holbein’s Dead Christ,” “The Chosen People and the Choice of Foreignness,” and “Reading the Bible” in French Feminists on Religion: A Readered. by Morny Joy, Kathleen O’Grady, and Judith L. Poxon (New York: Routledge, 2002), 83-171.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

Freud and Neurosis
Durkheim and the Social as Sacred
Otto and the Numinous
Weber and Religion's Influence on Culture
Interlude: Max Weber and the Influence of Religion
Mircea Eliade and Religion as Response to the Sacred
Clifford Geertz and Religion as Worldview and Ethic
Claude Levi-Strauss and the Structure of Myth
Ninian Smart and Religion as Worldview
Interlude: Ninian Smart and the Worldview of Religions
Bruce Lincoln and Religious Discourse
Catherine Bell, Ritual, and Body
Luce Irigaray, Subjectivity, and Religion
Julia Kristeva, Language, and Identity Creation

Theories of Religion: Luce Irigaray, Subjectivity, and Religion

2013-12-10T20:00:00.000-06:00

Luce Irigaray

1930-Present

Feminist, Philosopher, Linguist, Psychoanalyst, Sociologist, and Cultural Theorist

Two Doctorates: Philosophy and Linguistics.

Active participant in women’s movements in France and Italy.

Influenced by Derrida, Freud, Heidegger, and Lacan.

Primarily concerned with philosophy and psychoanalysis.

3 Phases of Work: 1) demonstrate the masculine perspective that as dominated Western discourse, 2) sketch possibilities for the construction of a feminine subject, and 3) aim to develop the social, legal, and ethical conditions necessary for relationship between two differently sexed subjects.

Class Notes:

Feminism - “Feminism refers to all those who seek to end female subordination.” Alison Jaggar. Women do not need to be subordinate to men, but they generally are.

Sex/Gender – Sex is biological; gender is social. Gender refers to norms of thoughts and behaviors that are [often] attributed to one’s sex. Irigaray doesn’t discuss sex and gender, but instead discusses “sexual difference” or the elaboration of the social aspects of gender.

“Liberal Feminism” is the most dominant kind heard about in the U.S. It seeks to achieve equality of women with men in society. It seeks to remove the barriers that block the access of women to every area of society.

“Radical Feminism” is less common in the U.S. Radical Feminism disavows the goal of equality because it implies that women must become like men, that they need to conform to the values and models that men present in society. It acknowledges that patriarchy is a given, and thus women are subjected to male control in the areas of culture, politics, language, and religion. The goal of Radical Feminism is not equality but the overturning of patriarchy. Instead of equality, Radical Feminists seek some form of autonomy over who they are and how they are.

Irigaray appears more like a Radical Feminist in her critique of society.

Religion is important to Irigaray because religion has a profound effect on peoples’ lives. Irigaray has discussed religion particularly as it relates to sexual difference.

Sexual Difference is something deeper and more influential than Sex or Gender. Sexual Difference consists of the meanings and symbolic associations given to what it means to be male and what it means to be female. These are cultural differences that effect how people “inhabit their own skin.” Religion plays a crucial role in encoding sexual difference. Religion can thus be a source of patriarchal domination or a transformation into a divine being. For Irigaray, religions tend to put taboos on women, and thus function to sustain patriarchy and dominate and control women. Irigaray thinks we much critique religion in order to develop new modes of thought.

Maleness, according to Irigaray, is autonomous, and seen as the default. Femaleness is seen in relation to men, dependent and subordinate. Because women are seen as the “other,” they lack the basis for their own subjectivity and are disempowered. Without a positive recognition of sexual difference, women lack a means of being recognized who they are, as they are.

Phallologocentrism is the understanding of the world on masculine terms (third person plural as masculine, etc.). Under phallologocentrism, the basis for understanding “truth” is fundamentally masculine. Masculine ideals are taken as normative. From such a perspective, women cannot be anything but the “other,” subordinated, secondary, imperfect.

Irigaray’s goal is to move away from a single model of the One to a dual model, the Two, where women are subjects and men are subjects, where there is difference and difference is good.

When the Ideals are only male, there is no space for sexual difference.

Quotes from Divine Women:

“If women have no God, they are unable either to communicate or commune with one another. They need, we need, an infinite if they are to share a little.”

“Woman has no mirror wherewith to become a woman. Having a God and becoming one’s gender go hand in hand.”

“Women, not having recourse to a divinized feminine, have had their identities dictated to them by the rule of man, God as other/Other…as virgin mother, or as property of the male, women have played a part in the proceedings, but have not been able to claim a fully autonomous identity or subjectivity.”

Theory of Religion:

Before theorizing about religion, we must question and rethink femininity, masculinity, the Divine, and the relationships between them, as well as our conceptual understandings of ideals, gender, and embodiment.

Religion is a tool that men and women can use to define themselves and find autonomy.

Religion is a force within society by which ideas about the Ideal and the goal of a person’s life are expressed and maintained. Religion confers subjectivity upon individuals. It is a means by which people come to understand who they are.

Critiques:

Irigaray has been criticized for casting sexual difference in an overly essentialist manner.

Irigaray has been criticized for overemphasizing sexual difference as otherness, instead of also including race, gender/sexual orientation, etc, and for focusing exclusively on heterosexuality.

Sources:

Stephen Berkwitz, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, November 12 and 14, 2013.

Luce Irigaray, “Plato’s Hystera,” “La Mysterique,” “Divine Women,” “When the Gods are Born,” “Sexual Difference,” “The Forgotten Mystery of Female Ancestry,” “Practical Teachings: Love – Between Passion and Civility” in French Feminists on Religion: A Reader ed. by Morny Joy, Kathleen O’Grady, and Judith L. Poxon (New York: Routledge, 2002), 13-81.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

Theories of Religion: Catherine Bell, Ritual, and Body

2013-11-21T11:06:00.000-06:00

Catherine Bell

1953-2008

Theorist of Ritual, Power, and Body

Trained in Chinese Religions and earned Ph.D. at University of Chicago.

Ritual Theory, Ritual Bodyis Bell’s revised dissertation project.

Basic Understandings:

Ritualization as a strategic social activity embedded in particular social contexts.

Indeed, ritualization is the strategic manipulation of ‘context’ in the very act of reproducing it…ritualization cannot be understood apart from the immediate situation, which is being reproduced in a misrecognized and transformed way through the production of ritualized agents…even the exact repetition of an age-old ritual precedent is a strategicact with which to define the present, then no ritual style is autonomous.[1]

People do not take a social problem to ritual for a solution. People generate a ritualized environment that acts to shift the very status and nature of the problem into terms that are endlessly retranslated in strings of deferred schemes. The multiplication and orchestration of such schemes do not produce a resolution; rather they afford a translation of immediate concerns into the dominant terms of the ritual. The orchestration of schemes implies a resolution without ever defining one.[2]

The body is of great significance in Bell’s theory.

It appears we are now reappropriating the image of the body: no longer the mere physical instrument of the mind, it now denotes a more complex and irreducible phenomenon, namely, the social person.[3]

Social practices structure the body, thereby constructing “social beings” via the internalization of basic schemes and values.[4]

Bourdieu explores the mediation of the body via a “dialectic of objectification and embodiment” that makes it the locusfor the coordination of all levels of bodily, social, and cosmological experience.[5]

The molding of the body within a highly structured environment does not simply express inner states. Rather, it primarily acts to restructure bodies in the very doing of the acts themselves. Hence, required kneeling does not merely communicate subordination to the kneeler. For all intents and purposes, kneeling produces a subordinated kneeler in and through the act itself.[6]

Ritual Mastery is the adaptation of ritual into the wider social context.

The specific strategies of ritualization come together in the production of a ritualized social body, a body with the ability to deploy in the wider social context the schemes internalized in the ritualized environment…Ritual mastery implies that ritual can exist only in the specific cultural schemes and strategies for ritualization…embodied and accepted by persons of specific cultural communities.[7]

Misrecognition is seeing the actions performed in ritual, and why they are done, but not the implications of performing the actions.

According to our Althusserian model, ritual practices are produced with an intent to order, rectify, or transform a particular situation. Ritualized agents would see these purposes. They would not see what they actually do in ritually ordering, rectifying, or transforming the situation. Foucault implies a similar principle when he notes that people know what they do and they knew why they do what they do, but that do not know what what they are doing does.[8]

What does ritualization see? It is a way of acting that sees itself as responding to a place, event, force, problem, or tradition. It tends to see itself as the natural or appropriate thing to do in the circumstances. Ritualization does not see how it actively creates place, force, event, and tradition, how it redefines or generates the circumstances to which it is responding. It does not see how its own actions reorder and reinterpret the circumstances so as to afford the sense of a fit among the main spheres of experience – body, community, and cosmos.[9]

Ritualization is a strategy for constructing power relationships.

Ritualization is first and foremost a strategy for the construction of certain types of power relationships effective within particular social organizations.[10]

For Foucault, power is contingent, local, imprecise, relational, and organizational…For Foucault, power does not exist as a substantive entity that can be possessed or wielded, nor is it some ‘thing’ that exists in historical forms and causal effects. Since these qualities are all implied in a ‘theory’ of power, Foucault is determined to avoid theories in favor of an “analytics of power.” Only by staying free of the substantive approach, he implies, can one truly analyze power in terms of human relations. He chooses a different language to interpret power as a matter of techniques and discursive practices that comprise the micropolitics of everyday life.[11]

Foucault consistently chooses the nomenclature of ‘ritual’ to evoke the mechanisms and dynamics of power.[12]

It is in ritual…that we can see a fundamental strategy of power. In ritualization, power is not external to its workings; it exists only insofar as it is constituted with and through he lived body, which is both the body of society and the social body. Ritualization is a strategic play of power, of domination and resistance, with the arena of the social body.[13]

Power relations are a part of any society, both from the top down and the bottom up.

Power relations are deeply embedded in the network of social relations and basic, therefore, to any society…Foucault argues that relations of power are not simply engendered from the top down, but from the bottom up as well.[14]

Public school graduation exercises, congressional hearings, and AA meetings – all ritualize to a strategic degree. As a way of acting that can be put to different purposes, ritualization will sometimes be used to the point of creating certain impressions, but then stop short of provoking a controversy about its appropriateness.[15]

Resistance to ritualization is inherent in Bell’s theory

It is crucial to demonstrate that the efficacy of ritualization as a power/strategy lies not only in the domination it affords, but in the resistance as well.[16]

Catholicism is a consent to papal power and a resistance to it at the same time.[17]

Theory of Religion:

“Rituals” are social practices that structure the body and redefine space and time. Rituals create structure to reality in which problems find meaning and explanation.

Critiques:

Belief really has no place or treatment in Bell’s theory. Belief is important enough to deserve comment when discussing ritual, power, and the body.

Sources:

Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 94-117, 197-223.

Harrison King, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, November 5 and 7, 2013.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 100-101.

[2] Bell, 106.

[3] Bell, 96.

[4] Bell, 97.

[5] Bell, 97.

[6] Bell, 100.

[7] Bell, 107.

[8] Bell, 108.

[9] Bell, 109.

[10] Bell, 197.

[11] Bell, 199.

[12] Bell, 201.

[13] Bell, 204.

[14] Bell, 200.

[15] Bell, 206.

[16] Bell, 215.

[17] Bell, 214.

Theories of Religion: Bruce Lincoln and Religious Discourse

2013-11-19T12:37:00.001-06:00

Bruce Lincoln

1948-Present

Contemporary Indo-European Religious Theorist

Earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under Eliade.

Currently professor at University of Chicago.

Comparativist.

Major Works:

Myth, Cosmos, and Society

Death, War, and Sacrifice

Discourse and the Construction of Society

Theorizing Myth

Researches religions of pre-Christian Europe and pre-Islamic Iran.

Has a “notoriously short attention span.”

Basic Understandings:

“Critical Inquiry” approach to studying religion.

The failure to treat religion “as religion”…may be regarded as heresy and sacrilege by those who construct themselves as religious, but it is the starting point for those who construct themselves as historians.[1]

Social Construction is the focus of Lincoln’s study of religion.

Internal affinity (affection, loyalty, mutual attachment, and solidarity) and external estrangement (detachment, alienation, and hostility)…constitute the bonds and borders that we reify as society.[2]

It is precisely through the repeated evocation of such sentiments via the invocation of select moments from the past that social identities are continually (re-)established and social formations (re-)constructed.[3]

Myths are a means by which religions evoke internal affinity and external estrangement and in so doing construct and deconstruct social ties.

For myth most precisely signifies, in its pejorative and condescending usage, a story that members of some other social group (or past era) regard(ed) as true and authoritative but that the speaker and members of her or his group regard as false…In my view we would do better to classify narratives not by their content buy by the claims that are made by their narrators and the way in which those claims are received by their audience(s)…Myth – by which I designate that small class of stories that possess both credibility and authority…myth is not just a coding device in which important information is conveyed, on the basis of which actors can thenconstruct society.[4]

Discourse is a particular kind of social performance that religions use to construct or deconstruct society. It is authoritative speech that is neither persuasive (because its authority is assumed and unquestioned) nor forceful (because it is not coercive, although the threat of force lies behind it). Authority asserts itself; it does not need to explain itself.

If authority involves the willingness of an audience to treat a given act of speech as credible because of its trust in the speaker, then under the sway of authority an audience acts as if it had been persuaded, when in fact it has not, while accepting the fact that its regard for the speaker obviates the need for persuasion. In contrast, when authority is asked to explain itself and responds to the request by arguing in earnest rather than simply reasserting itself, it ceases to be authority for the moment and becomes (an attempt at) persuasion.[5]

Lincoln is interested in religious myth and discourse precisely because it has unrivaled ability to construct and destroy social bonds.

Ultimately I want to suggest that discursive authority is not so much an entity as it is (1) an effect; (2) the capacity for producing that effect; and (3) the commonly shared opinion that a given actor has the capacity for producing that effect. More precisely, I take the effect to be the result of the conjuncture of the right speaker, the right speech and delivery, the right staging and props, the right time and place, and an audience whose historically and culturally conditioned expectations establish the parameters of what is judged “right” in all these instances. When these crucial givens of the discursive situation combine in such a way as to produce attitudes of trust, respect, docility, acceptance, even reverence, in the audience…”authority” is the result.[6]

Religious claims are the means by which certain objects, places, speakers, and speech-acts are invested with an authority, the source of which lies outside the human.[7]

Theory of Religion:

“Religion is that discourse whose defining characteristic is its desire to speak of things eternal and transcendent with an authority equally transcendent and eternal.”[8]

Critiques:

“Scholarship” is simply myth with footnotes. Scholarship functions with “credibility” and “authority” in ways similar to religion, and must also be critiqued.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, October 29 and 31, 2013.

Bruce Lincoln, Authority: Construction and Corrosion(Chigaco: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 1-13, 103-113.

Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 15-37.

Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 17 (2005), 8-10.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 17 (2005), 10.

[2] Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Mthy, Ritual, and Classification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 20.

[3] Lincoln, Discourse, 23.

[4] Lincoln, Discourse, 24-25.

[5] Bruce Lincoln, Authority: Construction and Corrosion(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 6.

[6] Lincoln, Authority, 10-11.

[7] Lincoln, Authority, 112.

[8] Lincoln, “Theses,” 8.

Theories of Religion Interlude: Ninian Smart and the Worldview of Religions

2013-11-13T09:06:00.001-06:00

The Scots-Episcopalian-reared Ninian Smart’s numerous writings in the field of the academic study of religion have been immensely beneficial in the progress of understanding what religion is and how it functions. While sometimes oversimplified as the creator of the “six dimensions of religion,”[1] Smart’s contributions to understanding religion include many major world religions and worldviews in general, which include economic Marxism and civil-religious nationalism. While it is easy to oversimplify Smart’s theory, it is difficult to overstate the breadth of his knowledge of religious studies or the number of religions and worldviews his theory takes into account.

Smart views religion as a subset of “worldview.” Worldviews are the means by which people make sense of their world and orient themselves to their surroundings. For Smart, religions function as such orienting and sense-making worldviews, but are characterized as having six distinct dimensions: 1) doctrinal/philosophical, 2) mythic/narrative, 3) ethical/legal, 4) ritual/practical, 5) experiential/emotional, and 6) social/institutional.[2] According to Smart, all religions have a set of set of doctrines, a set of origin stories that give meaning to the group, and a set of ethical values or a full legal system. These three categories form a web of beliefs that is foundational to the religion. In addition, three other categories that function as ritual beliefs that “convey their meaning to believers in a concrete way.”[3] These three categories are ritual acts, including sacraments; personal experiences and emotional responses of adherents; and the social gatherings or institutions that perpetuate the religion. Smart states that religion is important because of the power it exerts over people and society, regardless of the truth of the religion itself.[4]

Smart approaches religion phenomenologically. He claims that part of his theory of religion is influenced by the tradition of philosophical phenomenology in the vein of Husserl. This tradition is characterized methodologically by naming what is manifested, bracketing phenomena for the purpose of empathizing, comparing and contrasting structures, and using objectivity by “letting the facts speak for themselves.”[5]This phenomenological approach to religion allows Smart to observe religions as they occur, without making value or truth judgments, and adopt a level of objectivity that was not assumed by many of the theorists that came before him.

One of the greatest strengths of Smart’s theory of religion is that it takes into account many of the concepts and theories of religion that came before. For instance, Smart discusses and incorporates Eliade, Marx, Freud, Jung, Durkheim, Levi-Strauss, Otto, and Husserl in just a few of his many books.[6] In addition, Smart takes great care to ensure that his theory of religion is applicable to a variety of religious traditions and peoples.[7] His broad vision of studying worldviews, of which religion is a part, enables him to also discuss other worldviews like nationalism and Marxism that are not thought of as religions, but still function in similar ways.[8] Smart’s theory obviously emerged in a time after many scholars have theorized about religion, and so his theory takes into account their work. His work is based on and expands beyond the scholarship that has come before him, and as such has a level of accuracy that few scholars would be able to deny. Smart’s theory values a wide range of applicability and enjoys an understanding of a number of religious worldviews, and so creates a feeling of objectivity within his theory. Smart solves the problem of reductionism and essentialism by offering a complex view of religion that also values personal experience and emotion. As Smart himself demonstrates, his theory of religion is applicable and testable with a wide range of belief systems, giving it credibility.

Smart’s theory does pose some problems, though. The most glaring issue is with Smart’s insistence that “objectivity” can be a vantage point in which scholars can observe religion. It is reasonable to object and say that perfect objectivity is impossible, and this might be the greatest flaw in Smart’s method of approaching religions. In addition, Smart seems to deviate from the phenomenological approach he supposedly adopts from Husserl and the philosophic phenomenology tradition. His version of phenomenology, according to Charles Courtney, is “largely his own creation.”[9] That said, his understanding of phenomenology seems to stand on its own.

Smart’s incorporation of religion into the broader understanding of worldviews gives students of religion a means by which comparing and contrasting various religious traditions and worldviews is possible, while at the same time valuing the experiences and emotions of the religious adherents themselves. Discussing and incorporating many of the theorists of religion who have come before him, Ninian Smart has crafted a theory of religion that is both credible and functional in a variety of traditions. While his six dimensions of religion may seem too neat for some scholars of religion, they account for both beliefs and practices that reside within religious traditions, and place importance on both. While there are a number of religious theorists that come after him, it is difficult to imagine one that incorporates the contributions of so many of those who have come before him. Regarding theories of religion, Smart certainly lives up to his name.

Works Cited

Courtney, Charles. "Phenomenology and Smart's Philosophy of Religion." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9, no. 1 (1978): 41-52.

Magee, Penelope. "Roderick Ninian Smart - A Biographical Sketch." In Aspects of Religion: Essays in Honor of Ninian Smart, edited by Peter Masefield and Donald Wiebe. New York: Peter Lang, 1994.

Smart, Ninian. A Dialogue of Religions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1960.

—. "Beyond Eliade: The Futre of Theory in Religion." In Concept and Empathy: Essays in the Study of Religion, by Ninian Smart, edited by Donald Wiebe, 131-142. London: MacMillan Press, 1986.

—. Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilation. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981.

—. Religion and the Western Mind. Albany: State Universtiy of New York Press, 1987.

—. The Phenomenon of Religion. New York: Herder and Herder, 1973.

—. Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

—. Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] For a lengthy biographical sketch that I have direly shortchanged, see Penelope Magee, “Roderick Ninian Smart – A Biographical Sketch” in Aspects of Religion: Essays in Honor of Ninian Smart ed. By Peter Masefield and Donald Wiebe (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 3-16.

[2] Smart’s distinctions as found in Worldviews: Crosscultural Exploration of Human Beliefs, third ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000), 8-10. I recognize that Smart has added a seventh dimension, the material, but it was not described or listed in any of the sources I found.

[3] This division and description of the four dimensions into two groups of three, as well as this particular explanation, comes from the earlier edition of Worldviews that we read in class. See Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Exploration of Human Beliefs (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983), 7-8.

[4] Smart describes the power of religion, particularly of religious speech, as a performative act, in Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilization (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981) 60-61.

[5] Smart addresses phenomenology in many of his works, but a thorough discussion proceeds in “Religion as a Phenomenon,” chapter 2 in The Phenomenon of Religion (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973), 53-78. This quotation is from page 53.

[6] See Worldviews (2000) for a treatment of Marxism and Husserl’s “phenomenology” (12-14), Beyond Ideology for thorough discussion of Otto and the numinous (51-54), and chapter six, “On Some Theories of Religion” in Ninian Smart, The Philosophy of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 167-188 for discussion of Freud, Jung, Durkheim, and even Levi-Strauss. See Smart, “Beyond Eliade: The Future of Theory in Religion” in Concept and Empathy: Essays in the Study of Religion (London: MacMillan Press, 1986), 131-142 for a discussion of Eliade’s “history of religions.” Smart was quite aware of the scholarship that preceded his.

[7] In Ninian Smart, A Dialogue of Religions (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1960), Smart includes a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist from Ceylon, and a Japanese Buddhist in his discussion of religion. He also recognizes the importance of the experiences of Muhammad, the Buddha, and St. Paul, in particular (11).

[8] Smart discusses Marxism in a number of places, as previously noted. For discussion of how nationalism functions as a religion, see Religion and the Western Mind (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 69-82.

[9] Charles Courtney, “Phenomenology and Ninian Smart’s Philosophy of Religion,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 9/1 (1978), 51.

Theories of Religion: Ninian Smart and Religion as Worldview

2013-10-28T16:22:00.000-05:00

Ninian Smart

1927-2001

Leading Proponent of the Scientific Study of Religion in the 20^th Century

Scottish; born in Cambridge

Worldviews are central to Smart’s theory, and consist of both religious and secular ideologies.

Basic Understandings:

Smart’s approach is phenomenological and anti-reductionistic.

[For instance], the numinous is pervasive, important; but it is not, as [Otto] describes it, everything…I propose, then, a theory of religion which goes beyond Otto, and seeks plurality of patterns of basic religious experience. As a preliminary distinction there is the polarity between the numinous and the mystical.[1]

Reductionism is harmful because it devalues the force of religion, whether or not it is a human creation…Reductionism tends towards the fallacy that what we do not believe in can have no independent power, for other people.[2]

Worldviews consist of both religious and secular ideologies. They map how people think about the world. Worldviews perform an important function for people – orienting and locating them in a particular identity, in a particular location. They are what people use to understand who they are.

The modern study of religion helps to illuminate worldviews, both traditional and secular, which are such an engine of social and moral continuity and change; and therefore it explores beliefs and feelings, and tries to understand what exists inside the heads of people.[3]

A main part of the modern study of religion may be called “worldview analysis” – the attempt to describe and understand human worldviews.[4]

This is one place where religion tends to differ from secular worldviews. The latter do not have such a vital concern with this sense of the Other, this feeling of divine presence, this perception of unseen Power. But even so there are parallels to traditional religion.[5]

Religions, as worldviews, are important because they are powerful.

The reason is simple: human beings do things for the most part because it pays them to do so, or because they fear to do otherwise, or because they believe in doing them. The modern study of religion is about the last of these motives: the systems of belief which, through symbols and actions, mobilize the feelings and wills of human beings.[6]

Religion has six, nay, seven dimensions: doctrinal, mythic, ethical, ritual, experiential, social, and the material. Smart’s theory originally had only the first six dimensions. The seventh was added in 1998(ish).

Unlike Eliade, Smart’s comparative study of religion is not so concerned with highlighting only similarities, but also accepts differences among religions.

Empathy is a means by people can gain understanding of another person’s religion/worldview on the religion/worldview’s own terms.

Theory of Religion:

Religions are observed phenomenologically as consisting of doctrines, myths, ethics, rituals, experiences, social organizations, and materials. They are worldviews – part of how people see the world.

Critiques:

Promoting complete “objectivity” presumes that such a thing exists.

Charles Courtney notes that Smart’s version of phenomenology is different than that of those from whom he claims to adopt it.

True empathy might not be as easy as Smart suggests. A person is more complex than just their religious beliefs and practices, and a scholar can never understand a person’s entire history and experience.

Smart’s “theory” might be less of a theory of religion and more of a method of studying religions/worldviews.

Smart never really defines what a religion is. He seems to take “religion” for granted.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, October 22 and 24, 2013.

Charles Courtney, “Phenomenology and Smart’s Philosophy of Religion” in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9, no. 1 (1978): 41-52.

Ninian Smart, Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilization (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 46-68.

Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Exploration of Human Beliefs (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983), 1-36.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Ninian Smart, Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilization (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 52-53.

[2] Smart, Ideology, 55.

[3] Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983), 1.

[4] Smart, Worldviews, 5.

[5] Smart, Worldviews, 25.

[6] Smart, Worldviews, 1.

Theories of Religion: Claude Levi-Strauss and the Structure of Myth

2013-10-17T22:28:00.000-05:00

Claude Levi-Strauss

1908-2009

Social Anthropology

Social anthropology through “structuralism”

Rejects phenomenology and existentialism

Structuralism is a name applied to the analysis of cultural systems (kinship, myths) in terms of the structural relations among their elements (understanding the social leads to understanding the mental)

“The Story of Asdiwal” shows structuralism in relationships between physical and political geography, economic life of natives, and social and family organizations.

The Savage Mindshows that totems, like myths, are not about content, but a method for assimilating content. Patterns in cultural behavior are universal because they are produced by universal psychological structures.

Basic Understandings:

Instead of describing origins or creation like Eliade, Levi-Strauss discusses myth as relating to how people think, how their society functions, economics, and related social issues.

Instead of understanding totems as representing society like Durkheim, Levi-Strauss understands totems as having significance by distinguishing between groups. Totems/symbols have no innate meaning, but are given meaning by society.

Structuralism seeks to describe society’s rules and the activities of individuals.

Myths and totems do not refer to anything sacred, but instead are parts of an underlying framework that is used to structure people’s thoughts and experience. Myths and totems reveal social structures and mental frameworks. It is only when elements of a myth are related to other elements that they begin to have meaning and become comprehensible.

The mythmaker is a bricoleur, a handy-man who makes repairs with the items readily available. The mythmaker uses elements within a culture or people group to convey meaning, which is found in the structure rather than the details. The elements have no special meaning in and of themselves, but rather gain meaning based on their use within the structure of the myth.

Binary Oppositions are a method Levi-Strauss uses to describe culture (east-west, peak-valley, land-sea, etc.). Levi-Strauss believes binary oppositions are used by all people to understand the world. Binary oppositions reveal how people make sense of their surroundings.

In structuralist thought, it is the form that is more important than the content. Myths are always in a state of transformation, but have the same basic structure. The details may change, but the form of the story remains largely the same.

Theory of Religion:

Religious myths function to explain political, economic, social, and cosmological aspects of the world for a given people. This is accomplished through a myths structure rather than its particular details. Myths then reveal how a group of people think about and structure their world.

Critiques:

Derrida, as a poststructuralist, critiques Levi-Strauss.

Levi-Strauss neglects incorporating power and hierarchy (a la Michel Foucault).

Individual beliefs and differences are downplayed compared to social differences or group differences.

Structure can be found/created from almost anything, so Levi-Strauss’ theory might appear more beneficial than it actually is.

Levi-Strauss’ connections between supposed “binary opposites” may in actuality be contrived, and have no particular relationship in reality.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, October 15 and 17, 2013.

Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 75-108.

Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, vol. 1, (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 146-197.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

Theories of Religion: Clifford Geertz and Religion as Worldview and Ethic

2013-10-15T12:53:00.001-05:00

Clifford Geertz

1926-2006

Anthropology of Religion

Basic Understandings:

Religion is the result of culture.

Culture…denotes an (sic) historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.[1]

…the conception of human culture as consisting not so much in customs and institutions as in the sorts of interpretations the members of a society apply to their experiences, the constructions they put upon the events through which they live; not just how people behave, but how they look at things.[2]

Symbols are conveyers of meaning (attitudes, ideas, beliefs, etc.). They are also the foundations of a religious system. And all of these symbols have a deep, underlying meaning that explains the moods and motivations of the culture.

Meanings can only be “stored” in symbols: a cross, a crescent, or a feathered serpent. Such religious symbols, dramatized in rituals or related in myths, are felt somehow to sum up, for those for whom they are resonant, what is known about the way the world is, the quality of the emotional life it supports, and the way one ought to behave while in it.[3]

It is a cluster of sacred symbols, woven into some sort of ordered whole, which makes up a religious system. For those who are committed to it, such a religious system seems to mediate genuine knowledge, knowledge of the essential conditions in terms of which life must, of necessity, be lived.[4]

The force of a religion in supporting social values rests, then, on the ability of its symbols to formulate a world in which those values, as well as the forces opposing their realization, are fundamental ingredients. It represents the power of the human imagination to construct an image of reality in which, to quote Max Weber, “events are not just there and happen, but they have a meaning and happen because of that meaning.”[5]

“Ethos” and “World View” are fundamental facets of culture. They help people make sense of the world.

The moral (and aesthetic) aspects of a give culture, the evaluative elements, have commonly been summed up in the term “ethos,” while the cognitive, existential aspects have been designated by the term “world view.”[6]

Theory of Religion:

“A religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, persuasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”[7]

Critiques:

Geertz’ approach privileges the here-and-now and seems to ignore history (where the symbols came from, or if there has been change in symbols, etc.).

Presumes that the motivations for peoples’ lives rest in the meanings behind symbols.

Assumes cultural homogeneity.

Difficult to verify.

Ignores politics, history, sociology, and more.

See Talal Asad for more critiques.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lecture and discussion, Missouri State University, October 8, 2013.

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: BasicBooks, 1973), 126-141.

Daniel L. Pals, “Clifford Geertz” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 341-372.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Daniel L. Pals, “Clifford Geertz: Religion as World-View and Ethic” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

[2] Pals, 363.

[3] Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures(New York: BasicBooks, 1973), 127.

[4] Geertz, 129.

[5] Geertz, 131.

[6] Geertz, 126-127.

[7] Pals, 349.

Theories of Religion: Mircea Eliade and Religion as Response to the Sacred

2013-10-08T14:59:00.002-05:00

Mircea Eliade

1907-1986

Popularizer of “History of Religions”

Background:

Born in Bucharest, Romania

Raised in an Orthodox Greek family

Studied philology, philosophy, and comparative religion

Influenced strongly by Rudolf Otto, but also by Emile Durkheim and E. B. Tylor

Much of what happens in the current academic study of religion is a reaction to Mircea Eliade

Eliade’s “History of Religions” approach is 1) anti-reductionistic and 2) phenomenological.

Major Works:
The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History

Patterns in Comparative Religion
The Sacred and the Profane

Myths, Rites, Symbols

Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries

Images and Symbols

Basic Understandings:

Sacred and Profane – the sacred is other-worldly and eternal, and the profane is changeable and this-worldly

“The first possible definition of the sacredis that it is the opposite of the profane.”[1]

“The sacred manifesting itself in something profane…in fact, this paradoxical coming-together of sacred and profane, being and non-being, absolute and relative, the eternal and the becoming, is what every hierophany, even the most elementary, reveals.”[2]

Hierophany – the manifestation of the Holy in an earthly form

“To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophany. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply anything further; it expresses no more than is implicit in its etymological content, i.e., that something sacred shows itself to us.”[3]

“Each must be considered as a hierophany in as much as it expresses in some way some modality of the sacred and some moment in its history; that is to say, some one of the many kinds of experience of the sacred man has had…the fact that a hierophany is always a historical event (that is to say, always occurs in some definite situation) does not lessen its universal quality.”[4]

“A thing becomes sacred in so far as it embodies (that is, reveals) something other than itself…it only becomes a hierophany at the moment of stopping to be a mere profane something, at the moment of acquiring a new ‘dimension’ of sacredness.”[5]

Sacralized Cosmos – not all places are equal; some are more holy, and some are more profane

“For religious man, space is not homogeneous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others…For profane experience, on the contrary, space is homogeneous and neutral; no break qualitatively differentiates the various parts of its mass.”[6]

The Center of the World – the axis mundi that functions to connect Heaven and Earth

“A system that may be called the ‘system of the world’ prevalent in traditional societies: (a) a sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; (b) this break is symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa; from earth to the underworld); (c) communication with heaven is expressed by one or another certain images, all of which refer to the axis mundi [pillar, ladder, mountain, tree, vine, etc.]...(d) around this cosmic axis lies the world…To us, it seems an inescapable conclusion that the religious man sought to live as near as possible to the Center of the World.”[7]

Theory of Religion:

Religion is the way in which homo religiosis orients him/herself to that which is most real (the Sacred). The study of religion is the examination of the different forms and places in which the sacred is manifested.

Critiques:

General Criticisms:

He overgeneralizes, oversimplifies complex ideas.

Does not have empirical support for the basic category of “the sacred” (Gregory D. Alles).

Ignores social aspect of religion.

Eliade’s history of religion is not reliably historical.

He does not define “symbol” well.

Eliade was reputedly anti-Semitic.

Geoffrey Kirk (1921-2003)

Lack of empirical evidence for Aboriginal understanding of and even words for many categories Eliade insists they have.

“Eternal return” is nostalgic.

Alice Kehoe (1934-present)

Critical of Eliade’s work on Shamanism, stating he is a historian, not an anthropologist.

He never did fieldwork or contacted any indigenous groups that practices Shamanism.

Wendy Doniger (1940)

Eliade’s successor at the University of Chicago.

States that Eliade’s works on myths is not beneficial for understanding myths across the board.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lectures and discussions, Missouri State University, October 1 and 3, 2013.

Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1958), 1-37.

Daniel L. Pals, “Mircea Eliade: Religion as Response to the Sacred” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 271-308.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Daniel L. Pals, “Mircea Eliade: Religion as Response to the Sacred” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 275.

[2] Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1958), 29.

[3] Pals, 275-276.

[4] Eliade, 2-3.

[5] Eliade, 13.

[6] Pals, 279-280.

[7] Pals, 284-285.

Theories of Religion Interlude: Max Weber and the Influence of Religion

2013-10-03T08:56:00.002-05:00

Max Weber and the Influence of Religion

The terse phrase “work ethic” may be all that exists in public memory from Max Weber’s theory found in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. However, much more reflection and discussion of Weber’s work remains in the fields of sociology and religious studies. Taking a new and revolutionary approach to understanding the relationship between religion and economics, Weber believed that it was the Calvinist layman’s “calling” to practical asceticism via tireless labor that allowed the birth of capitalism in Western society.[1] While both respected and controversial, Weber’s theory of religion threw into upheaval several well-accepted ideas about the nature of religion and elicited respect in its own right.

Weber’s approach to religion is both functionalist and complex. Looking at Calvinists of the seventeenth century, Weber stated that the Protestant focus on diligence in work was correlated to, if not a primary contributing factor in, the rise of capitalism. Weber outlines his reasoning carefully, explaining why Calvinists had such a value and what purpose it served them religiously. Calvinist believers have a doctrine of predestination, which states that a person’s eternal destiny is foreknown and even potentially assigned by God before their birth. No actions in their lives, whether good or bad, can sway their predestination either way. Practically, this led Calvinists to have a fundamental insecurity about their eternal destiny, as certainty about their eternal state was impossible. Eventually, as a means of comfort and reassurance, Calvinists developed the belief that, in accordance with one’s calling and paired with humility and self-control, success in business and economic prosperity was unofficial evidence of a person being numbered among the elect. So while economic prosperity did nothing to gain one’s eternal salvation, it served as a potential marker for it.[2] This belief generated within Calvinists scrupulous economic practices, a propensity to save and invest, and a penchant for gaining and maintaining wealth. Weber theorized that this doctrine of predestination and its effects among Calvinists was the primary factor that led to the rise of capitalism. Weber states that economic environments similar to the seventeenth century had existed before in other times and places, but capitalism did not develop. He theorized that the only differing factor was the Protestant ethic that focused their attention on morality and financial accumulation.

Weber’s theory is categorically different from the theorists who had come before, most notably Freud, Durkheim, and Marx. While their theories reduced religion to other factors - psychology, society, and maintaining class structure, respectively - Weber concluded that religion was in fact a causal agent in society. Instead of religion being the result of another factor, economics and society are influenced by religious thought and practice. Weber’s theory stands almost as a direct inversion of Karl Marx’s theory.[3] According to Marx, religion functions as a product of a class-based society that reinforces the status-quo methods of production, preventing revolutionary change. The ideas found in religion, family structure, and politics are the result of a class-based production method, reinforcing the system that produced them. Similarly, comparing Weber and Durkheim reveals instructive differences. Durkheim almost completely subsumes the individual within society. Society as a whole is what exerts power and influence over individuals, while individuals themselves exert no influence except as a portion of society. Weber diverges from Durkheim on this point, identifying within individuals and their ideas with the power to radically reshape society.[4] Society itself still exerts great influence in Weber’s theory, but the individual also plays an agential role that cannot be denied. In comparing Freud and Weber, both seem to view religion as progressive, but Weber indicates that religions are fundamentally different from one another. For Weber, religion is more than a delusion, having observable influence based on its beliefs and the corresponding actions they elicit from adherents. So while Weber is generally considered to be an influential figure in the study of religion along with Marx, Durkheim, and Freud, a comparative analysis of their thoughts reveals many important points of divergence between Weber and the others.

As a theory of what religion does, Weber’s theory gives a great amount of agency and importance to religion as an affective force. His thesis is based on his observation of European societies and economies and seems to make sense of the data he observed. However, several weaknesses surface when applied to other times and places. For instance, Weber’s “Protestant ethic” fails to account for Catholic economic successes, or of economic successes in Asia and other non-Protestant societies.[5] It seems to have a bias toward only seeing Protestant religion, which is alleviated in subsequent works on other world religions. As a theory of religion, it does solve the reductionist dilemma of describing religion as really just something else. Instead it affords a great deal of agency to religion, a category which had been previously devoid of the recognition of such power. Defenders have debated the accusation that Weber’s theory expounds a causal relationship between religion and economics, but such an interpretation seems evident in The Protestant Ethic. [6] Weber’s theory’s most glaring flaw maybe how Weber underplays the importance of other categories of society.[7] While Weber’s understanding of what constitutes economically valuable religion eventually expanded,[8] his foundational theory about Calvinist work ethic and the rise of capitalism seems lacking and short-sighted. Thankfully for Weber proponents, Weber’s vision grows as he continues his work of understanding the relationship between religion and society.

Weber’s theory of the Protestant ethic of work and the rise of capitalism is undeniably an important contribution to the study of the sociology of religion. Weber revolutionized the study of religion, economics, and sociology with his thought-provoking theory. While the original thesis may have some noticeable flaws and short-comings, his work on the sociology of religion did not stop with The Protestant Ethic. Subsequent entries in his world-wide analysis of religion expanded his thought beyond Protestantism and into the realm of the “rational.”[9]Such an expansion of Weber’s thesis may be why his work continues to remain so influential in the fields of sociology and religious studies.

Works Cited

Bakker, J. I. (Hans). “Elective Affinity,” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. February 15, 2007. http://www.sociologyencyclopedia.com/subscriber/uid=679/tocnode?query=affinity&widen=1&result_number=1&from=search&id=g9781405124331_chunk_g978140512433111_ss1-27&type=std&fuzzy=0&slop=1 (accessed September 24, 2013).

Berger, Peter L. "Max Weber is Alive and Well, and Living in Guatemala: The Protestant Ethic Today." The Review of Faith and International Affairs 4 (2010): 3-9.

Goldstein, Warren S. "Patterns of Secularization and Religious Rationalization in Emile Durkheim and Max Weber." Equinox Publishing, 2009: 135-163.

Pals, Daniel L. "Max Weber: Religion and Culture Interwoven." In Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists, by Daniel L. Pals, 237-270. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Schmalzbauer, John. “Max Weber in America.” Class presentation. REL 390 – Religion in America, Fall 2013.

Weaver, Dorothy Chandler, and Phyllis Fry. "Weber Was Right: Death, Taxes, Wroking Capital, and the Excessive Propensity ofr Accumulation." Sociological Forum 27, no. 3 (2012): 780-787.

Weber, Max. Ancient Judaism. Translated by Hnas H. Gerth and Don Martindale. New York: The Free Press, 1952.

—. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.

—. The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism. Translated by Hans H. Gerth. Glencoe: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1951.

—. The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism. Translated by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale. New York: The Free Press, 1958.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Reading only The Protestant Ethic might yield some confusion as to exactly what Weber was saying. Scholars tend to agree, though, that his thesis was that capitalism is the result of Protestantism. Sociologists observe the accumulation and hoarding of wealth, and some even agree with Weber’s thesis. See Dorothy Chandler Weaver and Phyllis Fry, “Weber Was Right: Death, Taxes, Working Capital, and the Excessive Propensity for Accumulation” in Sociological Forum, 27(3), 2012, 780-787 for a concise overview of Weber’s thesis and observations in the field.

[2] Daniel L. Pals highlights the relevant passages explaining the somewhat complex rationale that Calvinists had regarding the reason for their focus on work and economic prosperity. See Pals, Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 244-249.

[3] For a helpful visual comparison of Weber and Marx, see John Schmalzbauer’s class presentation on “Weber in America,” particularly slide 26, from REL 390 – Religion in Society, Fall 2013.

[4] For a lengthier comparison between Weber and Durkheim, see Warren S. Goldstein, “Patterns of Secularization and Religious Rationalization in Emile Durkheim and Max Weber,” Equinox Publishing, 2009, 135-163. Of special note is that Durkheim saw religion as having a unifying effect on society, whereas Weber saw it as pushing society forward.

[5] Later, Weber does seek understanding of Asian and non-Protestant societies, and he judges them based on the “level of rationality” each exhibits, which is based on “the degree to which the religion has divested itself of magic” and “the degree to which it has systematically unified the relationship between God and the world.” See Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism translated by Hans H. Gerth (Glencoe: Free Press of Glencoe, 1951), 226.

[6] Weber’s defenders have latched on to his use of the word walverwandschaft (“affinity”) in defense of his thesis, claiming his theory is not about causation but linkage between Protestantism and capitalism. See Peter L. Berger, “Max Weber is Alive and Well, and Living in Guatemala: the Protestant Ethic Today,” The Review of Faith and International Affairs, Winter 2010, 3-9, and J. I. “Hans” Bakker, “Elective Affinity,” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online, accessed September 24, 2013 <http://www.sociologyencyclopedia.com/subscriber/tocnode.html

?id=g9781405124331_chunk_g978140512433111_ss1-27>

[7] R. H. Tawney notes that Weber “is careful to guard himself against the criticism that he underestimates the importance of the parallel developments in the world of commerce, finance, and industry. It is obvious, however, that, until the latter have been examined, it is not possible to determine the weight to be assigned to the former” – the Protestant ethic. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism translated by Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 6-7.

[8] Weber observes a mystical, non-rational practical ethic developed among Hindus which acknowledges the Durheimian categories of the sacred and the profane, but one which developed in a completely different way. See Max Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism translated by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York: The Free Press, 1958), 336-338.

[9] Gerth and Martindale give an excellent overview of the expansion of Weber’s thesis beyond capitalism to include the rational and irrational processes in society in Max Weber, Ancient Judaism translated by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York: The Free Press, 1952), ix-xi. Also see the development of Weber’s understanding of “rational” in his later work, “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” accessed September 24, 2013 <http://web.archive.org/web/20120728094529/http:/www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/world/sect/sect_capitalism.html>

Theories of Religion: Weber and Religion's Influence on Culture

2013-09-28T08:08:00.000-05:00

Max Weber

1864-1920

Pioneer in the Sociology of Religion

Background:

German Cultural Theorist

Pioneer in the areas of economics, sociology, and religion

Main Works on Religion:
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905)

The Religion of China (1916)

The Religion of India (1917)

Ancient Judaism (1919)

Basic Understandings:

Verstehen (Understanding)

Importance of understanding the relationship between social facts

Relating individuals to institutions – how the worldviews of individuals can shape institutions, and vice versa.

Ideal Types

Generic individuals who occupy certain roles, shaped by and shaping their surroundings (eg. prophet, priest, magician)

Explain how individuals are related to institutions

Can be studied anywhere, in any culture

Yield insights into thesis in Protestant Ethic

Predestination is the impetus of the Protestant Ethic.

“If we now ask further, by what fruits the Calvinist thought himself able to identify true faith? The answer is: by a type of Christian conduct which served to increase the glory of God…Thus, however useless good works might be as a means of attaining salvation…they are indispensable as a sign of election. They are the technical means, not of purchasing salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnation…In practice this means that God helps those who help themselves.”[1]

Christian asceticism active in the world was a marker of election.

“The religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we here have called the spirit of capitalism.”[2]

“In our introductory comments we contrasted, as abnegations of the world, the active asceticism that is a God-willed actionof the devout who are God’s tools, and, on the other hand, the contemplative possession of the holy, as found in mysticism.”[3]

Theory of Religion:

Religions influence the development and progress of societies, and vice-versa. Protestantism, in particular the Calvinist work ethic, made society ready for the growth of capitalism.

Critiques:

Andrew Greeley

“The Protestant Ethic: Time for a Moratorium”

Weber’s theory represents “an oversimplification of history, an ignorance of the pluralistic nature of Catholicism, and a refusal to be persuaded by empirical data.”

Daniel Bell

The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Weber “dealt primarily with the origins of capitalism, but not with its structural transformation.”

Christie Davies

“The Protestant Ethic and the Comic Spirit of Capitalism”

Capitalism has progressed beyond the Protestant ethic that supposedly birthed it.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lectures and discussions, Missouri State University, September 24 and 26, 2013.

Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 18-27, 48-65.

Daniel L. Pals, “Max Weber: Religion and Culture Interwoven” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 237-270.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Pals, Daniel. “Max Weber: Religion and Culture Intertwined” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 248-249.

[2] Pals, 252.

[3] Pals, 267.

Theories of Religion: Otto and the Numinous

2013-09-20T08:45:00.003-05:00

Rudolf Otto

1869-1937

Phenomenological Approach to Religion

Background:

German theologian and historian of religions

Born in Peine, Germany (near Hanover)

Raised as a devout Protestant

Influenced by Friedrich Schleiermacher

Interested in the nature of religious experience (phenomenology)

Main Work:
Das Heilige (The Idea of the Holy)

Tries to describe how people experience an objectively-real sacred power.

Basic Understandings:

The Holy: External, objective, autonomous, a priori reality

The Numen: Philosophical term that is synonymous with “the Holy”

The Numinous: Human experience and feelings generated by encountering the Holy

“This mental state is perfectly sui generis and irreducible to any other; and therefore, like every absolutely primary and elementary datum, while it admits of being discussed, it cannot be strictly defined.”[1]

“We find, that is, involved in the numinous experience, beliefs and feelings qualitatively different from anything that ‘natural’ sense-perception is capable of giving us. They are themselves not perceptions at all, but peculiar interpretations and valuations, at first of perceptual data, and then – at a higher level – of posited objects and entities, which themselves no longer belong to the perceptual world, but are thought of as supplementing and transcending it.”[2]

“The numinous is thus felt as objective and outside the self.”[3]

Characterized by two feelings, awe-fullness and overpoweringness (or dread and desire or fear and fascination), as well as by energy (or urgency) and other-ness.

“Tremor is in itself merely the perfectly familiar and ‘natural’ emotion of fear.But here the term is taken, aptly enough but still only by analogy, to denote a quite specific kind of emotional response, wholly distinct from that of being afraid, though it so far resembles it that the analogy of fear may be used to throw light upon its nature. There are in some languages special expressions which denote, either exclusively or in the first instance, this ‘fear’ that is more than fear proper. The Hebrew hiqdish(hallow) is an example. To ‘keep a holy thing in the heart’ means to mark it off by a feeling of peculiar dread, not to be mistaken for any ordinary dread, that is, to appraise it by the category of the numinous.”[4]

“It will be felt at once that there is yet a further element which must be added, that, namely, of ‘might,’ ‘power,’ ‘absolute overpoweringness.’ We will take to represent this the term majestas, majesty – the more readily because anyone with a feeling for language must detect a last faint trace of the numinous still clinging to the word. The tremendum may then be rendered more adequately tremenda majestas, or ‘aweful majesty.’”[5]

“There is, finally, a third element comprised in those of tremendum and majestas, awefulness and majesty, and this I venture to call the ‘urgency’ or ‘energy’ of the numinous object…vitality, passion, emotional temper, will, force, movement, excitement, activity, impetus.”[6]

“Taken in the religious sense, that which is ‘mysterious’ is – to give it perhaps the most striking expression – the ‘wholly other’…that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the ‘canny,’ and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment.”[7]

Religion is comprised of the Rational and the Non-Rational

“So far from keeping the non-rational element in religion alive in the heart of the religious experience, orthodox Christianity manifestly failed to recognize its value, and by this failure gave the idea of God a one-sidedly intellectualistic and rationalistic interpretation.”[8]

“By the continual living activity of its non-rational elements a religion is guarded from passing into ‘rationalism.’ By being steeped in and saturated with rational elements it is guarded from sinking into fanaticism or mere mysticality, or at least from persisting in these, and is qualified to become a religion for all civilized humanity. The degree in which both rational and non-rational elements are jointly present, united in healthy and lovely harmony, affords a criterion to measure the relative rank of religions – and one, too that is specifically religious.”[9]

Theory of Religion:

Religion requires both experience of the Numen (a non-rational experience) and rational morality.

Critiques:

Otto’s theory does not seem to encompass several different faiths/beliefs/religious systems.

The Idea of the Holyseems not to line up with South or South East Asian religions, and seems to lean toward Judaism and Christianity.

Otto’s Protestant background seems to affect his theory of religion.

The Holy’s a priori existence and religion as sui generis are not especially defensible.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lectures and discussions, Missouri State University, September 17 and 19, 2013.

Rudolf Otto, translated by John W. Harvey, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 108-135.

Daniel L. Pals, “Rudolf Otto: Religion and the Sense of the ‘Numinous’” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 205-235.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Pals, Daniel L. Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 211.

[2] Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 113.

[3] Pals, 214.

[4] Pals, 216.

[5] Pals, 219.

[6] Pals, 221.

[7] Pals, 223.

[8] Pals, 209.

[9] Pals, 235.

Theories of Religion: Durkheim and the Social as Sacred

2013-09-14T20:35:00.001-05:00

Emile Durkheim

1858-1917

“Father of Scientific Sociology”

Background:

Grew up in northern France.

Father was a Rabbi.

Wrote Division of Labor, Rules of the Sociological Method, Suicide, and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Basic Understandings:

All social facts should be investigated by the most objective scientific methods available.

Society is the fundamental, basic nature to which Durkheimian thought can be reduced. Religion is an expression of society.

“’The god of the clan the totemic principle, can therefore be nothing else than the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem.’”[1]

“Religion’s true role is not to bring people to a god or offer them salvation in a realm beyond; it is rather to anchor them, here and now, in the clan, the community that shapes and sustains their lives.”[2]

Two fundamental categories in Durkheim’s theory of religion: Beliefs and Rites.

“Religious phenomena are naturally arranged into two fundamental categories: beliefs and rites…All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all the things, real and ideal, of which men think, into two classes or opposed groups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by the words profane and sacred.”[3]

Rites fall into three categories which help delineate the profane and the sacred: the negative cult, the positive cult, and piacular rituals.

“Since their function is to prevent undue mixings and to keep one of these two domains from encroaching upon the other, they are only able to impose abstentions or negative acts. Therefore, we propose to give the name negative cult to the system formed by these special rites…or as is commonly said by ethnographers, of taboos…There is no religion where there are no interdictions.”[4]

“The religious ceremonies…put the group into action; the groups assemble to celebrate them. So their first effect is to bring individuals together, to multiply the relations between them and to make them more intimate with one another…the rhythm which the religious life follows only expresses the rhythm of the social life, and results from it.”[5]

“The foundation of mourning is the impression of a loss which the group feels when it loses one of its members. But this very impression results in bringing individuals together, in putting them into closer relations with one another, in associating them all in the same mental state, and therefore in disengaging a sensation of comfort which compensates the original loss.”[6]

The idea of the soul is described by Durkheim as the totemic principle applied to the individual. This belief leads to belief in immortality, and eventually to gods.

“In a general way, the soul is nothing other than the totemic principle incarnate in each individual…Individuals must die, but the clan survives. So the forces which give it life much have the same perpetuity…Now, though the great gods are certainly superior to these, still, there are only differences of degree between them…a great god is himself an ancestor of especial importance.”[7]

Theory of Religion:

“’A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.’”[8]

Critiques:

Hans Mol (1979)

Totems tend to divide rather than unite (sexual, individual)

“Relation between individual and group is dialectical rather than subsidiary.”

Territory, society and the rise of religion – ignored by Durkheim

Rodney Stark, et. al. (1983)

“Pluralistic does not equal weakly integrated.”

Correlation between church membership and suicide is only a modest reduction

Three options: Durkheim was right at the time, he was wrong, or he’s right now. We aren’t sure.

Rene Girard via E. T. Graham (2007)

Drukheim’s effervescent positivity vs. Girard’s curative violence

“Ritual violence ‘cures’ runaway violence…[it can] ‘cure’ the community of potentially destructive violence.”

Failure to recognize the injustice of such violence creates moral relativism

Matthew Day (2009)

Durkheim: “Human nature is indeterminate matter which the social factor fashions.”

Evolutionary Psychology: “False.”

How does grouping occur? By society (Durkheim) v. Without society (Evolutionary Psychology)

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lectures and discussions, Missouri State University, September 10 and 12, 2013.

Matthew Day, “Constructing Religion without the Social: Durkheim, Latour, and Extended Cognition” in Zygon, 2009, vol. 44 (3), 719-737.

Emile Durkheim, “Concerning the Definition of Religious Phenomena” in Durkheim on Religion (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 74-99.

E. Tyler Graham, “The Danger of Durkheim: Ambiguity in the Theory of Social Effervescence” in Religion, 2007, vol. 37 (1), 26-38.

Hans Mol, “The Origin and Function of Religion: A Critique of, and Alternative to, Durkheim’s Interpretation of the Religion of Australian Aborigines” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1979, vol 18 (4), 379-389.

Daniel L. Pals, “Emile Durkheim: The Social as Sacred” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 99-142.

Rodney Stark, Daniel P. Doyle, and Jesse Lynn Rushing, “Beyond Durkheim: Religion and Suicide” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1983, vol. 22 (2), 120-131.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Pals, Daniel L. Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 101.

[2] Pals, 102.

[3] Pals, 102-103.

[4] Pals, 125-126.

[5] Pals, 132.

[6] Pals, 135.

[7] Pals, 121-123.

[8] Pals, 106.

Theories of Religion: Freud and Neurosis

2013-09-05T17:11:00.001-05:00

Sigmund Freud

1856-1939

“Father of Psychoanalysis”

Background:

Initially pursued medicine as field of study

Pioneering figure in the rise of psychology as a field of scientific inquiry

Ground breaking work: Interpretation of Dreams, 1900

Basic Psychoanalytic Understanding of the Self:

Id (unconscious, basic bodily desires – food and sex)

Ego (tries to balance Id and Superego)

Superego (socio-cultural expectations and ideals)

Three main works dealing with religion:

Totem and Taboo, 1913 – prehistoric patricide resulted in totemism and the categorization of murder and incest as taboo. Basic religious regulations like “don’t murder” and “don’t sleep with your mother” are founded on this ancient, prehistoric instance.

“At bottom God is nothing other than an exalted Father…At the conclusion, then, of this exceedingly condensed inquiry, I should like to insist that its outcome shows that the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus complex. This is in complete agreement with the psycho-analytic finding that the same complex constitutes the nucleus of all neuroses, so far as our present knowledge goes.”[1]

Future of an Illusion, 1927 – religion is an expression of a childlike need for security. People desire a father that will always protect and provide for them, despite the fact that this is not the case.

“We prefer the certitudes of childhood, when there was always a father present to give comfort in the dark of night and reassurance amid the dangers of the storm. As adults, we continue to crave that childhood security, though the world does not in fact offer it. Religion, however, pretends we can return to childhood; it invents a Father God who assures us of victory over every hardship, even death itself. It offers us an illusion – a form of belief arising merely from the immature wish that it be true. So, for humanity to persist in religious belief is to regress to its childhood, a condition that psychoanalysis can identify as neurotic.”[2]

Moses and Monotheism, 1939 – monotheism is borrowed directly from Egypt. Moses introduced monotheism to the ancient Hebrews. He was overturned, but eventually monotheism was revived among the Israelites.

“Under the influence of the priests of the sun-god at On (Heliopolis), strengthened perhaps by impulses from Asia, the idea arose of a universal god Aten to whom restriction to a single country and a single people no longer applied…This is the first and perhaps the clearest case of a monotheist religion in human history.”[3]

Theory of Religion:

Religion is a symptom of a neurosis founded on the oedipal desire to kill the father and marry the mother.

It is a way to release guilt and anxiety, allowing people relief and control over their frustrations.

Religion is holding humanity back. We must embrace reason as a means of progress.

Critiques:
Based on two fledgling, largely untested theories about the origins of society – one of which is that sacrifices are found in all primitive tribes (A. L. Kroeber, 1920)

Freud makes contradictory statements regarding clan solidarity (A. L. Kroeber, 1920)

Based on two very different definitions of “culture” (J. E. Turner, 1931)

If one calls religion, which is wrapped up in human thought and ideas, an illusion, one must also call science, art, and ethics an illusion (J. E. Turner, 1931)

The Oedipus complex is criticized, and therefore not a good foundation for a theory of religion

Reconstruction of historical events is not well done (J. Philip Hyatt, 1940)

Psychoanalysis is scientifically dubious. Existence of “mind” is unprovable.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lectures and discussions, Missouri State University, September 3 and 5, 2013.

Freud, Sigmund, The Future of an Illusion (New York: Norton, 1961), 47-73.

Daniel L. Pals, “Sigmund Freud: Religion as Neurosis” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 71-97.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Pals, Daniel L. “Sigmund Freud: Religion as Neurosis” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 79, 82.

[2] Pals, 73.

[3] Pals, 89-90.

Theories of Religion: Tylor and Primitivism

2013-08-29T20:55:00.001-05:00

This series represents a cliff-notes style look at various theorists in the academic study of religion.

Feel free to add your thoughts or critiques to each theorist as you see fit.

E. B. Tylor

1832-1917

“Father of Anthropology”

Born in London, England

Studied culture among the Native Americans in Mexico and Central America

“The savage state in some measure represents an early condition of mankind, out of which the higher culture has gradually been developed or evolved, by processes still in regular operation as of old, the result showing that, on the whole, progress has far prevailed over relapse.”[1]

Cultures move on a scale from savagery to barbarism to civilization.

“’The savage philosopher,’ he writes, was intrigued by two common occurrences: death and dreams. In the one case, the life within a person appears to separate from the physical body; in the other, a kind of phantom, or image, appears able to do the same. These two things can be accounted for if we make a next and natural step in logic and combine them into one – into the idea of a personal soul that mirrors the body and animates (from the Latin anima: spirit) it from within.”[2]

Unable to explain the leaving of breath at death and the appearance of other beings during dreams, the “savage” philosopher tied these two things together in the concept of souls and spirits, with souls being the person within the body and spirits being the essence or life force of other things.

“The theory of Animism divides into two great dogmas, forming parts of one consistent doctrine, first, concerning souls of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after the death or destruction of the body; second, concerning other spirits, upward to the rank of powerful deities.”[3]

This belief in souls and spirits eventually lead to the concept of angels, demons, and gods. The idea of gods led to a hierarchy, eventually leading to monotheism.

“There are always some people who hold beliefs that others have discarded. These things fall under the ‘doctrine of survivals’; they are beliefs and practices which linger on well after the day of their truth, or value, has passed.”[4]

In Tylor’s estimation, belief in souls, spirits, and even God are “survivals” of mankind’s primitive states, and should be discarded.

Tylor’s core question:

Where does religion come from?

Tylor’s answer:

Religion does not come from God, but human development, thought, and practice.

Belief in souls and spirits represent the seed of religious thought.

Tylor’s theory is intellectualist, meaning it explains religion on a purely intellectual level. Emotion and experience are not part of Tylor’s equation.

Tylor’s theory relies heavily on comparative religion and its assumptions, including uniformity of mind (that different peoples create similar explanations for the same kind of phenomena) and cultural universals (that there are universal features found in all cultures). These assumptions privilege the universal and ignore the peculiar.

Critiques:
Linear and simplistic theory – tries to explain too much, and instead explains too little.

“Survivals” actually do serve functions in real time.

Hostile toward religion, observed by both the religious and not religious.

Progress is not universally occurring.

As a substantive theory of religion, this theory fails to explain how religion functions.

Sources:

Stephen C. Berkwitz, class lectures, Missouri State University, August 27 and 29, 2013.

Daniel L. Pals, “E. B. Tylor: Animism and the Origin of Religion” in Introducing Religion: Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1-35.

Edward Burnett Tylor, “Animism” in Religion in Primitive Culture, vol 2 (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 1-59.

Theories of Religion:

Tylor and Primitivism

[1] Daniel L. Pals, “E. B. Tylor: Animism and the Origin of Religion” in Introducing Religion, Readings from the Classic Theorists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5.

[2] Pals, 3.

[3] Pals, 11.

[4] Pals, 2.

40 Reasons Why I Am Not An Evangelical Christian

2013-08-24T20:39:00.001-05:00

Recently I've been the subject of a sustained attempt at evangelism by someone I know. I find this situation...distasteful.

I thought of the following list while mowing lawns today. I also thought of several alternate titles:

"40 Reasons to Love/Hate Me More/Less" (This one is fun because the reader gets to choose - 40 Reasons to Love Me More, 40 Reasons to Love Me Less, 40 Reasons to Hate Me More, or 40 Reasons to Hate Me Less. In reality, I expect no one will like or dislike everything on this list.)

"Why You Should Stop Telling Me I Should Be Like You" (Kinda Hostile. Didn't like it.)

"40 Reasons I Don't Fit In Your Box" (I have since realized that any number of the following will only aid people in putting me in their boxes.)

"You Are Not Alone" (I think there will be some people out there who really relate to what I write. I want them to know they aren't the only person out there who thinks such things.)

Hopefully, though, the title I landed on ("40 Reasons Why I Am Not An Evangelical Christian") is seen in light of the evangelism attempts that prompted it, is not hostile, and opens conversation rather than closing it. Because, really, during the repeated attempts by this other person to make me like them, all I really wanted was a good conversation (and maybe I'll figure out a way to turn it into one and share it later on).

But without further ado, here are the 40 Reasons Why I'm Not an Evangelical Christian:

1. I find attempts to evangelize me, both from Christians and other religious groups, insulting. It fails to take into account my personal research, education, experience, and life.

2. I find the prospect of evangelizing others insulting to their intelligence, education, experience, and lives.

3. I want to follow the life and teachings of Jesus.

4. I have known many evangelical Christians, but not many of them who look, act, or sound much like Jesus.

5. I have been to many evangelical congregations. There isn't enough Jesus there.

6. I don't want to hate or demonize people who disagree with me about matters of faith.

7. I find discussing religious beliefs and practices extremely fulfilling and enjoyable, especially with people of different religious backgrounds.

8. I have studied religion, what it is, and how it works, and I see common themes among all religions.

9. I have read the Christian Bible (well, a translation of it). Parts of it are amazing. You should read it sometime.

10. I have read the Hebrew Bible (well, a translation of it). Parts of it are amazing. You should read it sometime.

11. I have read the Tao Te Ching (well, a translation of it). Parts of it are amazing. You should read it sometime.

12. I have read the Bagavad Gita (well, a translation of it). Parts of it are amazing. You should read it sometime.

13. I have read the Lotus Sutra and the Heart Sutra (well, translations of them). Parts of them are amazing. You should read them sometime.

14. I have seen Buddhists and Muslims and Freethinkers and even Catholics (gasp!) who are better followers of the teachings of Jesus than I am. I want to be more like them.

15. I have been introduced to textual criticism.

16. I have been introduced to literary criticism.

17. I have been introduced to rhetorical criticism.

18. I find systematic theology...disingenuous.

19. Proof-texting makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

20. I don't believe the Bible has all of the answers to life's questions.

21. I don't think God cares about our petty, selfish desires, and I think we should stop equating selfish desires with prayer.

22. I think prayer can change the world.

23. I think meditation can change the world.

24. I think selfless love is the epitome of the teachings of Jesus and his life example, and the truest expression of the Divine.

25. I think our expressions of the Divine are lacking and short-sighted.

26. I don't think I'll ever stop pursuing a fuller, better understanding of God.

27. I am comfortable with paradox and unanswered questions and doubt.

28. I have met evangelical Christians who confidently claim that selfless love does not exist, even in God. They make this claim both philosophically and using parts of the Bible for support. They claim God does not love us selflessly, and neither do they love their spouse or children selflessly. I pity these people most of all.

29. I don't think God is angry with you. I don't think God hates you. I think those images of God are more reflections of the people who purport them than of the Divine.

30. I believe God will send few people to hell. By "few" I mean "none."

31. I believe God doesn't care about your sex, drug, alcohol, or caffeine addiction, but I think it will affect your life in ways you don't like.

32. I believe living a kind, loving, and courageous life is more important than professing certain doctrines.

33. I think having a drink with friends is one of life's simple pleasures.

34. I think how we live among our fellow humans Monday through Saturday is more important than where we are Sunday morning.

35. I recognize a difference between "truth" and "fact."

36. I think I might be wrong about some matters of faith.

37. I'm willing to listen to other points of view on these matters of faith.

38. If I am convinced I'm wrong, I will change my mind about these matters of faith.

39. I love Pope Francis. He makes me wish I was Catholic.

40. If you disagree with me about any of these, I'd still love to be friends.

The Path to the Light Side

2013-07-22T15:41:00.001-05:00

Not too long ago, I was driving back from summer vacation and talking with some of my favorite people about political parties, racism, sexual orientation, and a host of other interesting topics. Someone mentioned that on both sides of a number of issues stand people who are quite angry. Remembering the famous quote from Yoda, I mentioned that it may be because they are afraid. Why? Because

“Fear leads to Anger.

Anger leads to hate.

Hate…leads to the Dark Side.”

It occurs quite regularly that science fiction moments and quotes pop into my head, but not as often when I am discussing questions of politics, morality, and motives. The idea that many people respond in fear, anger, and hatred makes a lot of sense to me when standing back and viewing any number of political topics over the last year. I’m sure some cases or overturned rulings pop into your mind, too. Trayvon/Zimmerman, Paula/the “N” word, or DOMA/Equal Rights, anyone?

These responses from fear, anger, and hatred, though, are not helpful. I think they really do lead to the Dark Side, or at least a dark side. I’m reminded of the often-forgotten quote, “perfect love drives out fear,” and of the theme of the movie Tree of Life about the choice between the Way of Nature and the Way of Grace. Fear does lead to Anger, which leads to Hate. I see it play out in the media often.

I for one don’t want to turn to the Dark Side, so my immediate thought was “what is the path to the Light Side?”

I thought it would be appropriate, maybe, if the path to the Light Side was an equal-yet-opposite path from that of the Dark Side. What, then, is the opposite of Fear? Of Anger? Of Hatred?

Here’s what I came up with:

Courage leads to Kindness.

Kindness leads to Love.

Love…leads to the Light Side.

I thought and thought and thought some more about this, for almost a month. I thought of potential synonyms (Compassion for Kindness?), of words that might be misunderstood (what kind of Love?), and of instances where Fear might be healthy or Kindness potentially unhealthy (exceptions exist, I admit). But I think this path is true. I think this is the path to the Light Side, or at least a light side.

When faced with a difficult or unexpected situation, we have the option of responding with fear or with courage. From there we continue on a path of anger or kindness (I thought strongly about using the word compassion here, which includes the idea of understanding the other person and thinking about their needs). The path then continues on to hatred or love. One path leads to self-focus, and the other to “us” focus.

This theme keeps resurfacing in my life lately, and I think this Light Side/Dark Side comparison once again helps illustrate how our beliefs, revealed through our choices and made manifest in our actions, are publically evident in our lives. They also lead to very different places.

To me, this also speaks to the concept of being the Church both inside and outside the institution of Christianity. I have found that attending a congregation is not a guaranteed marker of someone living out the Way of Grace, the Light Side, or Jesus’ Way that Leads to Life. Instead, it takes an intentional choice to choose the selfless way, to respond not in fear, but with courage and kindness.

Have you practiced such an intentional choice? What were the results? How might your life be different if you practiced the selfless Way of Grace?

What are the hazards of living your life in this way? How can Courage, Kindness, and Love let you down?

Try this experiment: Think of one person who you find exceptionally unlovable. Muster all of the courage you can, and intentionally choose to treat that person with kindness. Think about life from their point-of-view, and try to understand their fears, needs, and desires. Then, respond with compassion and kindness. I bet you a shiny new quarter you will change not only your relationship and feelings about that person, but that they might even grow to count you among their friends. Try it.

The way of fear, anger, and hatred is seductive, so they say.

I have found the way of courage, kindness, and love so immensely freeing.

Welcome to the Light Side!

Bailey, Brock, and Steve Talk About Hell

2013-06-30T20:46:00.001-05:00

Bailey: Alright, perhaps we can start out on a topic that we spoke about in which I found the differing answers very interesting.

That would be the subject of hell. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn.

Brock: I will start out philosophically. If God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, infinite deity, then he must also be divinely just. To be divinely just he must judge humankind in equal likeness. Hell (in conservative Christianity) represents the place where separation from God is made eternal. A just God must allow separation from him, for humans who go to hell deserve eternal separation from decisions in life. Now the determinist view might also be considered here, saying that God must "send" people to hell so that the few who might follow him could have salvation (irresistible grace) in a divine plan that is not comprehensible to humans. These are only philosophical options (and narrow ones at that). It is difficult to comprehend the justness of God if he would damn some before they were born. That is, unless hell is not "fire and brimstone." In scripture there are two Greek references to hell: Gehenna and Tartarus (spelling?). Most of the references are to Gehenna (the "trash heap" in Jerusalem) but one in 2 Peter 2:4 is of Tartarus (the Greco-Roman place of the dead). For many (conservative and moderate) scholars the reference to Tartarus is problematic, as is the entirety of 2 Peter. There are many who would question this book as canonical. This being said, the multitude of references are of Gehenna. I think this is a good start. =)

Bailey: Here are my feelings about this topic at the moment.

Growing up in a church of yelling, spitting, Evangelical Christians, I heard about hell quite a bit. Mostly “save the poor, misled souls from the fiery depths of eternal hell.” Even in my teenage years, something didn’t sit right about Christians condemning the approximately 66 percent of the world who are non-Christian. I found it especially confusing that I was told that “God has a plan for all of us” and “God maps out everyone’s life and knows what will happen to us.” So God WILLS people to go to hell? He predestines their life for eternal torture. RUDE.

Here’s my view of hell: It’s a scare tactic. Giving a non-Christian an option of whether they would like to have eternal damnation or sit on a puffy cloud on top a mansion made of gold is not fair. I think that is the easy way out.

Don’t get me wrong, not all Christians believe this, but I grew up with people who did, and so I’m only responding to what I know. I’ve been to a few churches who state their beliefs that everyone gets to heaven, and I like that idea very much. Conversion should not be about fear, but about knowing in your heart where the truth lies.

If there is a God, I hope he is more loving than making a world where 66 percent of the population is doomed to suffer in hell. If there is a God, I think He would care about the people he created much more than that.

Steve: You two bring up good points.

In response to Brock, there are 4 words, three in Greek (Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus) and one in Hebrew (Sheol), that are translated into the one English word "Hell." Interestingly, Sheol is not always translated into "Hell," but sometimes into "Death." I have a list of these references in the Bible, if anyone is interested in it.

Of these references, there are five Biblically-supportable views of Hell/Afterlife: 1) Exclusivist, in which only a minority of people "make it" to heaven, and everyone else that doesn't believes the right things goes to hell; 2) Inclusivist, in which everyone who believes the right things (namely, Christianity) and also some outside the faith who live the way of Jesus make it to heaven, with a smaller number going to hell; 3) Annihilationist, in which people who go to hell are destroyed there, not tortured for all eternity; 4) Purgatory, in which hell is a temporary assignment, the fire of which purifies people. Once purified, people then move to heaven; and 5) Universalism, in which hell is reserved only for satan and his angels, and everyone else is saved by God.

In response to Bailey, it sounds like the view of hell you grew up with (and probably so did all of us) is the exclusivist view. And I agree, I find a God who would damn most of the people he supposedly loves untenable. I hope the Universalist view is correct - I hope God is so loving that all wrongs are made right and in the end everyone knows love and peace. If Universalism is not correct, then I hope one of the conditionalist views, either Purgatory or Annihilationism, are correct.

I also agree with you: hell is a scare tactic. Fear is a lousy motivator, and I think many congregations have relied on it for too long. I think love and purpose and peace are better motivators. You don't love someone because if you don't they'll torture you forever - that's not love. If we are to truly love God, fear cannot be our motivation. It reminds me of that verse, "Perfect love drives out fear."

Brock: Thank you for the names and definitions Steve. I would like to have a list of references if they are attainable. I did not know that Sheol was used in the NT, and I completely forgot about Hades. I need me some Greek! Very true that peace and love are so often driven away for the purpose of mission and evangelism. There do seem to be a number of groups that make Christianity very exclusive. But isn't this true of any religion? I have no desire to try and define religion (we might leave that to Tweed), but it seems that "religion" must be exclusive, almost to define its followers. Perhaps this is folly, because "true" religion might (should?) define its deity (whether God, gods, or self). Maybe the Christian scriptures inject too much follower and not enough deity...if that makes sense.

Also, I am wary to fully rely on world statistics, though I will not deny that the "Christian" population is a lesser one. It's very difficult to define "Christian" in itself anyway. Just a thought...

Bailey: Brock, the statistics thing wasn't very politically correct of me, oops! Sorry, you're very right.

What does Jesus have to say about hell? I'm interested in knowing his take on things. =)

Also, how did the concept of hell become so important in the Christian faith? This is part of the reason I'm asking about what Jesus has to say about it. I know Jews look more at the present moment than they do at what happens in the afterlife, so was Jesus the one that made the topic of hell so important among his followers or was it others who came after him that made it an important aspect among Christians?

Steve: All right, you asked for it. Here's what I've got on Sheol, Gehenna, Hades, and Tartarus:

The word Sheol is used 65 times in the Bible. Only 31 of those times is it translated “hell.” 31 times it is translated “grave,” and 3 times it is translated “pit.” In Hebraic understanding, all people, good or bad, went to Sheol, the place of the dead (See Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 44:29; 44:31; Num. 16:30; 16:33; Deut. 32:22; 1Sa. 2:6; 2Sa 22:6; 1Ki. 2:6; 2:9; Job 7:9; 11:8; 14:13; 17:13; 17:16; 21:13; 24:19; 26:6; Ps. 6:5; 9:17; 16:10; 18:5; 30:3; 31:17; 49:14; 49:15; 55:15; 86:13; 88:3; 89:48; 116:3; 139:8; Pr. 1:12; 5:5; 7:27; 9:18; 15:11; 15:24; 23:14; 27:20; 30:16; Ecc. 9:10; SoS 8:6; Isa. 5:14; 14:9; 14:11; 14:15; 28:15; 28:18; 38:10; 38:18; 57:9; Eze. 31:15; 31:16; 31:17; 32:21; 32:27; Hos. 13:14; Am. 9:2; Jon. 2:2; Hab. 2:5). When Job was suffering, he asked God to hide him in Sheol. If Sheol meant an eternal place of hellfire, why would Job ask to be taken there?

The word Gehenna is used 12 times. The Valley of Hinnom, to which the word refers, was the landfill and “burial” ground for the very poor and for criminals. Trash and those unburied were burned here (See Mt. 5:22; 5:29; 5:30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15; 23:33; Mk. 9:43; 9:45; 9:47; Lk. 12:5; Jas. 3:6).

The word Hades is used 11 times. Ten times it is translated “hell”; 1 time it is translated “grave.” In Greek understanding, all people, good and bad, went to Hades as the place of the dead. It is the Greek equivalent of “Sheol” (See Mt. 11:23; 16:18; Lk. 10:15; 16:23; Acts 2:27; 2:31; 1Co. 15:55; Rev. 1:18; 6:8; 20:13; 20:14). By observing how Jesus uses this word and Gehenna, it is plain that he used them in different contexts – not interchangeably.

The word Tartarus is used only 1 time. It is probably the closest to our understanding of “Hell,” the place where the wicked go. In the Bible, it is used to describe the place where “angels that sinned” are banished. In Greek thought, this was the realm below Hades where the vilest people went (See 2Pt. 2:4). As you said, Brock, it is also one of the poorest-attested books in the New Testament.

I just finished a lengthy paper on the influence of Zoroastrian thought on Judaism and Christianity, and it seems like the concept of an afterlife place of punishment is an import from other ancient near east religions like Zoroastrianism. There is no similar thought in Judaism up to the time in which Zoroastrian thought influenced Judaism and Christianity, and even after encountering Zoroastrianism, Judaism rejected the concepts of Hell, the Devil, and to a large degree an apocalyptic messiah. Christianity, however, shows a lot of common themes with Zoroastrian thought.

Bailey, hopefully those references will steer you to Jesus' thoughts on the subject. I definitely don't think Jesus had in mind one single place of torture since he used two different words for the afterlife.

Hope these references help everybody.

Brock: That is extremely helpful. Thank you Steve. You saved me a lot of time. This definitely makes hell seem more like the scare tactic for sure. Quite honestly, I need to do a LOT more NT studies. I am very familiar with Sheol and OT, but I am lacking in NT theology.

How would you join in the conversation? What do you think about hell and the afterlife? Is hell just a scare tactic or does it represent reality? Which of the five views of hell best represents your thoughts? Join in the conversation in the comments! We'd love to hear from you!

Bailey, Brock, and Steve Talk About:

Things

Hell

Bailey, Brock, and Steve Talk About Things

2013-06-28T07:41:00.000-05:00

Near the end of 2012, four friends and academic colleagues got together over sushi in the outskirts of Chicago and spontaneously had the most delightful conversation about religious beliefs that has ever been had, ever, throughout all time. It was that good.

With each member coming from different religious background and having varying areas of focus toward degrees in religious studies, the topics were wide and the insights were deep.

Steve had the crazy idea that you might like to catch a glimpse of such a conversation, and Bailey and Brock have agreed to help recreate it. The series that follows will do the impossible: attempt to recreate that interactive dialogue for you to overhear.

So imagine that you’re at the table behind us, eating sushi and drinking tea or whatever you like to eat or drink, and eavesdropping on we three as we chat about deeply meaningful topics among friends. And feel free to jump in on each post.

First, though, some introductions, because these posts will mean more if you know a bit about the players.

I am Bailey Wiles and I am 21 years old.

This morning I went with my friends to Gailey’s Breakfast Café and, of course, it was awesome because “Gaileys” is just one letter away from “Bailey” so you know it has to be good.

In general, I like talking with people about their experiences with life. Hearing other peoples’ opinions, (as long as they’re not telling me what to believe), is something that I will always enjoy and appreciate.

A book I’m currently reading is entitled the Sex Lives of Cannibals. Before you judge me as being someone into some weird, kinky stuff, it is a book assigned in a creative writing class I’m taking over the summer. So far there has not been a lot of sex or cannibals, but hopefully that will come up later on, because I’m thoroughly intrigued.

If you were wondering to yourself what my favorite word might be, you would be right if you guessed antidisestablishmentarianism or the word pumpernickel (how cute does that word sound?).

I happen to have quite a few pets, including four horses, three dogs, and one cat. I once had a pet owl. Yes, I do live out in the country in Ozark with my family, in my parent’s basement. My parents keep talking about how excited they are to use my room for workout equipment when I move out. Jokes on them, I’m going to live there FOREVER. I hope they don’t mind that I’ll soon start acquiring several dozen cats as I warp from young, vibrant college student to old stuffy cat lady in the next couple of years.

If I could play anyone in any movie it would definitely be Lord Voldemort. I would love the chance to murder the character that plays Edward Cullen. That would be really great.

The beverage I most often consume (along with the majority of other Americans) is coffee. I used to work at a coffee shop and since then, I cannot survive without having consumed a full pot at least once a day. You think I’m joking, but I drink a very, very unhealthy amount. However, I drink it black, so it can’t be that bad for me, right? Hasn’t there been studies done that it decreases the risk for a bunch of different calamities? I’ll probably live forever. Or, at least, I’ll die happy having had a full pot of coffee in my belly.

If money were no object, I would not be typing this right now. I would be traveling the world in my own private jet, wearing the most gorgeous wardrobe you’ve ever seen. I would also be on the phone calling all my enemies and telling them that money is now not an object for me Ha. Ha. Ha. YOU LOSE. But, really, I would love to just be constantly traveling, seeing the world, and meeting oodles and oodles (another one of my favorite words) of people and hopefully looking fabulous while doing so.

Well, I am Brock A. Whisler and I am 23 years old.

This morning I had Steak n Shake breakfast for the first time...well worth it, especially since I live about 4 blocks from one!

I like molding minds. To me, watching a learning process in another individual is fascinating. I hope to help shape minds in university in the not so distant future.

I have started the City of Bones series, but am also dabbling in a Hebrew exegetical study of the Book of Judges, using the Harper Collins Study Bible and the New Cambridge Bible commentary.

I am quite fond of the word flabbergasted. It's a seldom used expression for either anxiety or flattery.

I now have two pets: a 13 year old cat named Kitley and a 9 week old boxer mix puppy named Remy LeBeau.

I love movies, but I have recently got into the show Fringe and would like to be Joshua Jackson's character Peter Bishop for his wit, intellect, and drive to do what is necessary when it's necessary.

Though I do like a good Dr. Pepper, I drink a lot of water.

If money did in fact grow on trees, I would pay off my parents' and my debts, buy a sensible house with a basketball goal and pool, and find some good charities to help out. I would fish every weekend, but still work and volunteer. There would be steak and traveling and steak.

My name is Steven Fouse and I am 33 years old.

I have not yet had breakfast. It’s currently 6:50am, a time well before my stomach is awake and telling me I need food. I do plan on eating in the coming hours, though, and I will have bacon, which is really the only thing that I really ever want for breakfast, and a cup of coffee, which is the beverage I like to start my day with, not for the caffeine, but for the flavor. I will probably have a pancake or waffle or something just to make the breakfast more legit. I don’t know if pancakes or waffles validate a bacon and coffee breakfast, but that’s probably what will happen anyway.

I love thoughtful conversations about just about just about anything, provided the players are not hostile or speaking from a position in which they think they know everything. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I and everyone else really know about particularly subjects outside our fields of study. So honest, thoughtful, humble conversations are the bees knees in my book.

I’m currently reading Dune by Frank Herbert, that classic science fiction novel from the 60s. I remember having seen the movie adaptation of the book, and didn’t really like it, but someone told me “the book was better,” which is true of all book/movie adaptations, so I decided to read it this summer. It has not disappointed. I’m only one page 281, and I recommend it.

My favorite word? I have to pick just one? Who made these rules of introduction?!? Well, the word that pops into my brain right now is tomfoolery. I love words, though, so this is just a random happenstance. Happenstance is a good word, too. Sometimes, when I probably should be doing other things like working or interacting with humans, I think about words, and how weird they are (like the word “weird”), and why they sound the way they do, and various synonyms, which, of course, are never perfect synonyms, but have slight shades of meaning. Yeah, I’m one of those people.

I have a dog named Georgie, but I call him George because it sounds more masculine. George is a dachshund, which I just spelled correctly without the aid of spellcheck. I’m not sure if George is my dog or I am George’s human. We have a mutual-admiration thing going on. I like George, and he likes me.

If I had to be a character in my favorite T.V. show or movie, I would have trouble picking. I wouldn’t mind being a character in Battlestar Galactica, debating the philosophical implications of working with the Cylons or continuing a war with them. I wouldn’t mind being Dexter, except that his life is really stressful in that he’s a serial killer and all, but I like the questions about life and morality that come up in that show. I could handle being Batman or Spiderman or one of the Avengers, too. That’d be okay. Oh, who am I kidding. You can call me the Doctor. Just the Doctor.

My most often consumed beverage would either be coffee or tea, both very lightly sweetened. Unsweet tea is good, too, though, but black coffee just reminds me of the void of outer space too much, and the overwhelming despair that arises from complete isolation (not really, I just like my coffee with cream and maybe a touch of sugar).

If money was no object, I would probably be a writer, discussing matters of faith and practice, but I’d also have a manual labor gig or two, mowing lawns or waiting tables, because physical labor is so rewarding and results-apparent. And also fun. But most of all I like thinking and writing about spiritual and religious beliefs and practices.

So there you go. Bailey, Brock, and Steve are set to talk about the Church, Hell, Theodicy, Homosexuality and Religion, and more.

So order some sushi and some wontons, and get ready for some interesting eavesdropping.

And if you have any subjects you'd like to suggest, type them out in the comments or message us at fb.com/ChurchWithoutBoundaries.

Bailey, Brock, and Steve Talk About:

Things

Hell

The Single Most Important Thing Jesus Ever Said

2013-06-19T22:20:00.000-05:00

Recently I saw the fantastic movie “Tree of Life.”

At the beginning of the movie, one of the main characters addresses the major theme of the movie with this introduction:

The nuns taught us there are two ways through life:

The way of nature and the way of grace.

You have to choose which one you’ll follow.

Grace doesn’t try to please itself.

Accepts being slighted,

forgotten,

disliked.

Accepts insults and injuries.

Nature only wants to please itself.

Get others to please it too.

Likes to lord it over them.

To have its own way.

It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it.

And love is smiling through all things.

Throughout the film that follows, the main character, a boy, is faced with the choice to learn and live the way of grace or to learn and live the way of nature. The boy’s mother exemplifies the way of grace, and the boy’s father, while having grace towards his son, feels that the way of nature will best serve his son in life, protecting him from harm and securing for him what he wants.

This poetic introduction reminds me of several passages from the New Testament. The first is a quote from Jesus:

Enter by the narrow gate.

For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction,

and those who enter by it are many.

For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life,

and those who find it are few.

And another passage, probably much more familiar:

Love is patient and kind;

love does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things.

Love never ends.

When I was a child,

I spoke like a child,

I thought like a child,

I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man,

I gave up childish ways.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;

but the greatest of these is love.

What The Tree of Life calls the Way of Grace and the Way of Nature, Jesus calls the Way that leads to Life and the Way that leads to Destruction. Paul calls it the Way of Love or the Way of Maturity and the Way of Selfishness or the Way of Childishness.

Grace, Life, Love, Maturity.

Nature, Destruction, Selfishness, Childishness.

We get to choose.

Not only do we get to choose as an overarching theme for our lives, but we get to choose with every person, in every situation, everywhere we go.

The choice is ours.

Elsewhere, Jesus is quoted as saying:

By this all people will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

If we claim to follow Jesus, the surest way people will be able to know is if we love each other.

One time someone told me this verse means we only have to love other believers, and not just whoever happens to be around us.

Yes, they actually said this.

That would be one interpretation of this quote if Jesus hadn’t also said this:

You have heard that it was said,

‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

But I say to you,

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,

and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

If we only love those who love us, we are not choosing the way of grace, of life, of love, of maturity. We’re in fact no different than any other naturally-inclined person. Our way is imperfect.

We, as followers of the way of Jesus, are to love everyone we encounter, whether they agree with us or are kind to us or ignore us.

This is difficult.

This way is narrow and hard.

It’s so much easier to retaliate, to object to being slighted, to demand attention.

If, however, we are serious about following Jesus, not just for a few hours a week, but everywhere, all the time, with everyone, this is the crux that sets Jesus followers apart.

This is the one.

The way of self-abandonment, of love for the other, of grace without boundaries.

I must choose to love that selfish person at work who slights me.

I must choose to care for those that would not care for me.

I must surrender my need to be right and admired and protected.

I may be injured, ignored, or passed over.

But I have found this way leads to life.

Enemies start to put you in the friend category.

The unreliable begin to rely on you.

And through service you are seen as great.

It often feels counterintuitive, but I am convinced it is the single most important teaching of Jesus, and the surest way to change the world.

If I could pick one spiritual exercise, one form of worship, for the rest of my life, it would be this:

to live a life of grace without boundaries.

I hope it is a life you will experience, too.

In a Church Without Boundaries

2013-05-27T09:20:00.000-05:00

Not long ago I realized that I would never again be at home in a congregation.

Here's why.

Boundary: Congregations
As a paid minister, I was often confused by the nature of evangelical congregational Christianity, specifically in how our stated beliefs could be almost identical to the stated beliefs of the congregation down the road, and yet "those people" are outsiders, in need of the "truth," and surely bound for hell.

It seemed a bit awkward that they thought we were as wrong as we thought they were.

Sometimes I would mention that "those people" think we are as lost as "we" thought they were. I thought the idea was kind of funny, pointing to an obvious flaw in thinking. No one else seemed to find it as strange or funny as I did.

Boundary: Denominations
In time I found myself a part of a home Bible study where people from other denominations got together once a week to share a good meal and discuss the Bible and following Jesus. It was a great community, probably one of the best I have ever been a part of. It was a highlight of my week, and you know what? "Those people" were there, those people that my denomination told me were wrong/lost/bad/damned. But they were following Jesus, too, and they shared their food with me and played with my kids and genuinely cared for me, for each other, and for the community.

These people were not "those people." "These people" were just "people." They soon became "my people."

This further heightened the discord on Sunday mornings, where it occasionally was mentioned how wrong/bad/lost/damned those people were. Hogwash. Those are Jesus-followers.

Boundary: Walls
My encounter with "outsider" Jesus-followers got me thinking about the nature of our institutional congregations. We seemed to be fixated on meeting in a particular building once a week and calling that "the church," when in fact "the Church" was us people, and we in fact didn't need a building of any kind. By this time I had been a part of three or four groups of Jesus-followers who met in homes. Some people called them "Bible study." Some people called them "simple church." More people called them "house church." My understanding of the Church now grew in this direction, and I was excited to see what this different form of Church meeting would look like, and I wanted to be a part of it.

It was at this time that I resigned from paid, professional, congregational ministry, and set out to explore a more free, more interpersonal expression of the Church.

That was only the beginning.

Boundary: Belief Systems
Pretty quickly after leaving congregational Christianity we figured out that "house church" was not the newest, greatest, freest thing ever. In fact, house churches suffered from all of the same limitations and problems (other) institutional congregations did, with only a few minor improvements.

Disappointedly, I realized that house church was not the answer to all of the Church's problems.

Still, I had grown beyond the exclusivist views of rightness being contained in a building, or in a denomination, or in a congregation. So I kept searching for what the Church would look like for me in the future.

I tried more theologically and politically liberal congregations, and I tried more liturgical congregations and more casual ones. All of them were basically the same, with almost identical insider/outsider positioning and vastly overstated superiority complexes. The format of all of these congregations restricted people from developing interpersonal relationships, and all of them limited the number people actually doing anything during meetings to only a few.

They were not what I was looking for.

As I continued reading, and thinking, and working, and living my life, I had some great interactions with many different people. I discussed following Jesus with a Buddhist. I discussed holy living and the institutional church with an agnostic/former Catholic. I listened to people from a number of denominations and spiritual states discuss their dissatisfaction with the current model of organized religion and their deep abiding respect for the person and teachings of Jesus...

In addition, I began to actually try to live out, in my everyday walking around life, the teachings of Jesus. At work I decided to live out Jesus' teaching to love my enemies. There was this angry, mean person I worked with, and I decided to love her, to actively go out of my way to help her, to listen to her, and to be kind to her, no matter what, and just see what happened. I decided to live out Jesus' teaching to look out for "the least of these," and opened my eyes to the widow living right next door. I decided to practice the openhandedness Jesus taught, and opened my home and my pantry to whoever would come for a good meal and good conversation. At first I thought it was all crazy, but then my life started to change...

...and all of this took place, well, just in life. Not in a church building. Not as a part of a religious service. Not even part of a house church meeting. This was just my life, and this was where I was being the Church.

In fact, if I had been involved in a congregation, particularly in paid ministry, I wouldn't have gotten to live out following Jesus in these ways at all. I would have missed out on mowing my neighbor's lawn, on loving my explosive fellow table-waiter, on conversing openly and non-defensively with secularists, and humanists, and agnostics, and Catholics - all the people I was told to defend against - because I would have been too busy playing church instead of being the Church.

And one day I realized that the Church was all the time, everywhere, with everyone.

Boundless

When the Church became all the time, everywhere, with everyone, several noticeable changes happened to me. No longer was my life divided into the sacred and the profane. My life was now unified. There were no holy days, because every day was holy. There were no sacred spaces, because everywhere was sacred. There were no holy people, because every person was holy, and every person was capable of teaching me about following Jesus, and I was capable of helping them, too.

Everywhere. All the time. Everyone.

Church, for me, became boundless.

Now thoughts of attending a congregation generate a mixed reaction from me. I'm excited about the prospect of meeting new people, of interacting with them, of loving them, of learning from them. But the setup of a congregation does nothing to allow that to happen. Do I really have to sit through an hour-long service just so I can talk to someone for a few minutes before or after? Do I really have to do this for one or two or ten years before I will be recognized as a part of the congregation? Why can't we just hang out, and tell our stories, and discuss following Jesus, and help one another?

Thoughts of never attending a congregation generate similar mixed reactions. I'm excited about the freedom to live the way of Jesus, of meeting and interacting with a variety of people from all different belief systems, and sharing what we've learned in our paths through life. But I would miss the commonality found among fellow Jesus-followers, of having similar goals and dreams for the world. Can there not be some way Jesus-followers can meet and discuss, regardless of denomination or theological persuasion, in a format that doesn't by its nature limit interaction and who can serve and when and how? Can we all focus more on living out Jesus' teachings and less on arguing over whose theology is righter or sounder? Instead of having a church service, can't the Church just serve?

I am committed to finding out how the Church can live without boundaries, without all of the social constructions that separate us from other people and limit when and how we can live out our faith.

A new way is coming, and it is almost here.

So I invite you to come and join us, we who are homeless and always at home, in a Church without boundaries.

It is (going to be) amazing.