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, Chapter 1 RELIGIOUS RESPONSESChapter Overview
The sense that there is something or someone, some truth beyond our everyday experience of
reality, seems to be common to all cultures throughout history. How people worship or respond to
this universal presence, deity, or ultimate reality, sometimes termed “the sacred,” varies greatly
throughout the world.
Pictured as a tapestry, religion illustrates that many diverse forms of expression or threads
can be distinguished in the fabric underneath the surface of life. The word “religion,” (which
probably comes from the Latin religio meaning “to tie again” or “to tie back”) suggests a
connecting or a tying back to ultimate meanings and purposes. Humankind’s yearnings to engage
a greater reality have taken, and continue to take, a plurality of expressions. Many religions have
some or all of the following dimensions: 1) ritual 2) narrative and mythic 3) experiential and
emotional 4) social and institutional 5) ethical and legal 6) doctrinal and philosophical 7)
material. Despite common elements, religions are complex systems of belief and culture that
often stand outside institutional expression, making “religion” itself difficult to define,
nevertheless, all religions seem to share a common aim: connecting people back to something
greater which lies behind the surface of life, or invisibly permeates the tangible world of our five
senses.
Fisher notes the controversies concerning the term “religion” and its applicability, as well
as the limitations of applying names or labels to religions. Fisher points out that not all
religious behavior takes place within an institutional context; it would be useful to ask students
to think of examples of behavior and experiences which might seem religious (or “spiritual” in
current parlance) despite not occurring within the framework of one of the major religions.
This chapter is foundational to the entire book. It may be helpful to students to outline the
chapter and think through how each section in the chapter relates to the chapter title and the
other sections in the chapter. Students may consider questions such as: Why are there religions?
How have various thinkers sought to explain the origin and continuation of religion throughout
human history? How do the different examples of explanations of religion help us understand
and refine our own approach to the study of religion?
Additionally, students should be prompted to pay attention to key terms and names as they
work through each section. Fisher has interwoven significant terminology and identifications of
important figures that appear in later chapters in this first fundamental chapter. Thus, Chapter
One introduces the reader to emphases that will appear throughout the work.
Students should find several sections particularly interesting. Fisher provides examples of
different ways of understanding the relationships between religion and science. Students may
wish to discuss their own views in the context of the perspectives presented here; this issue
also provides the basis for a discussion of how the academic study of religion is different from
the study of science.
Often forgotten feminine approaches to the sacred, which have been buried under centuries
of patriarchal interpretations not only in the West but in much of the East as well, are discussed
in the section “Women in Religions.” Students may find it useful to discuss the roles of men and
women in their own experiences.
Another neglected topic in the study of religion is also explored, the negative side of
organized religion. That aspect of the religious response may be difficult to examine but must be
addressed in any honest effort at interpreting the impact of religions on cultures. Most students
will have some awareness of the lives that have been lost through witch-burnings, inquisitions,
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
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,crusades, terrorist acts, and international wars conducted in the name of religion. While many of
these unfortunate incidents were fought over issues of power and domination, religion has often
carried the banner for the cause. Students might here dialogue about the challenging aspects of:
religious charisma, guilt, escapism, political applications of faith, and falsehoods.
Subsequent chapters study specific characteristics of particular religions. This
chapter lays the foundation for the rest of the text.
Attempts to define religion
This section briefly introduces the difficulty we encounter in naming religions, which may fall
outside institutional definition. This section also discusses “spirituality” and the complex, elusive
nature of religious belief systems.
Why are there religions?
This section briefly introduces a range of theories of religion in three broad groupings, which
are not mutually exclusive. First, the materialistic perspective asserts that humans invented
religion. For scientific materialists, the supernatural is imaginary; only the material world exists.
Feuerbach argued that deities are projections of human qualities. Karl Marx saw religion as
derived from economics and the longings of the oppressed, and argued that religion could be used
as a tool of oppression.
Some approaches to religion seek to assess religion’s benefits to people without necessarily
evaluating the truth claims religions make. The functional perspective holds that religion is
useful for individuals and society. Durkheim, for example, saw religion as a glue which holds
human societies together. John Bowker has argued that religion serves a biological purpose in
protecting gene replication and the nurturing of children. Various studies of prayer and other
forms of religious practice demonstrate that faith may have positive physiological effects.
Similarly, psychologists have argued that religion is beneficial to psychological wellbeing. People
who find security in specific answers may find dogma and absolute faith comforting.
Finally, the faith perspective is that some form of ultimate reality exists. Some religious
people accept belief in a sacred reality on the basis of holy books; others come to their own
conclusions. There are two basic ways of apprehending reality: rational thought or reason and
non-rational modes of knowing; religious practitioners may use both methods.
The experience of direct perception of truth, beyond the senses, may be called mysticism.
Enlightenment, realization, awakening, and gnosis are some of the terms used for
encounters with the supreme, unseen, or ultimate reality; many religions have techniques to
bring about such encounters. In ordinary experience, people perceive themselves as separate
from the material world, but mystical experience may challenge this typical dualistic form of
experience so that the practitioner’s sense of ultimate reality and his or her awareness of it are
one. Otto defined this experience of being grasped by reality, or numinous, as the basis of
religion; Wach argued that religious experience followed predictable patterns.
Understandings of sacred reality
That which has been experienced as the sacred has many faces. Eliade helped develop
comparative religion which compares religious patterns found throughout the world. Eliade
used the terms sacred and profane; however, not all cultures make a clear distinction between
the two.
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
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, A vocabulary exists in the study of religions to help us understand the different ways,
culturally and historically, in which ultimate reality has been approached and defined.
Sacred reality can be envisioned as immanent, which means present in the world. Reality can
also be conceived as transcendent, that is, as existing above and outside the material world.
Religions that understand the sacred to be a personal reality and which are based on one’s
relationship to the personal sacred are called theistic. In these religions, if ultimate reality is
worshiped as a single being, the religion is called monotheistic. On the other hand, if a religion
maintains that there are multiple attributes and forms of the divine, then it is designated
polytheistic. Religions which maintain that behind the plurality of apparent forms there is one
underlying substance are termed monistic. Nontheistic views assert a sacred reality that is not in
the form of a personal God. Some religions believe that sacred reality can be manifested in
human form or events called incarnations.
Exclusivist religious authorities claim that they worship the only true deity and that all others
are pagans or nonbelievers. In contrast, universalism is the view that it is possible different
religions are talking about the same thing in different languages, or referring to different aspects
of the same unknowable whole.
Atheism is the belief that there is no deity. “New Atheism,” promoted by thinkers such as
Richard Dawkins, argues that religious faith is not just wrong, but evil, because it can be used
to support violence. Agnosticism is the view that it is impossible for humans to know with
certainty about the existence of the sacred. It is important to emphasize to students that these
categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Religions that conceive of a personal sacred
reality may think of that reality as simultaneously immanent and transcendent. It is also
possible that at times some of these distinctions may blur. Finally, secularism describes the
manner in which people go about their daily lives with reference to any religion. Here the
emphasis is exclusively on material life.
Ritual, symbol, and myth
Worship seeks to express reverence and may also be used to request help with problems.
Rituals, sacraments, prayers, and spiritual practices are used to create a sacred atmosphere or state
of consciousness, to bring some human control to situations normally not under human power, to
mark key life stages, and provide spiritual instruction. Predictable and repeated worshipful
actions are known as rituals. Students should be encouraged to think about their own impressions
of rituals and the functions they serve. High school graduation is a helpful example of a ritual that
students most likely will have already experienced themselves, and it may be fruitfully compared
to life stage religious rituals.
Symbols are images borrowed from the material world that are similar to ineffable spiritual
experiences. There are many similarities among symbols used in different cultures. Jung posited a
collective unconscious, which contains a store of archetypal symbols.
Also relevant are allegories, narratives which use concrete symbols to convey abstract ideas.
A set of symbols together may become the basis for myths, symbolic stories that explain
the universe and people’s place within it. Myths may explain how things came to be, perhaps
incorporating historical truth, but are treated as sacred reality. Joseph Campbell suggested that
myths serve mystical, cosmological, sociological, and psychological functions and are thus not
simply falsehoods or the work of primitive imaginations.
Absolutist and liberal responses to modernity
Copyright © 2014, 2011, 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.
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