The term ”religion” is an Occidental word which has been thrust upon all of the institutions which our western culture has deemed to be ”religious”. Stephen Prothero believes that a perennial view of religion is dangerous. In God is Not One, he states, “there is not one truth for all religions.” [Prothero 2]. Prothero believes making all religions the same leads to conflicts, is unfair to various groups, and is in a word, false. He is correct, however, I will go further and postulate that there is not even religion for different cultural institutions. From the Igbo, and Yoruba’s practices in Africa. To the Hindu’s and Sikh’s practices in India. To all reaches of the globe, western hegemony has controlled the discourse of what gets considered a religion, and out of this pigeonholed category, which ones are to be deemed the ”great” religions. These foreign cultural groups never believed what they were doing as being religious, but instead felt they were just part of their every day routines. In Sanskrit, the language of the Hindu Vedic text, there is not even a word for “religion”. For Indians, what we translate as religion is “dharma”, which is more akin to doing ones duties or obligations. For Muslims, what we call their religion is a submission to Allah, not what the Christian world thinks of as religion. Where soteriology is concerned, one would find a plethora of disparateness when compared to Christianity, as almost all the other religion’s goals have zero to do with salvation. As Prothero points out, “In Hinduism, dharma means duty. Here it refers primarily to teaching (as in a “Dharma talk”). But dharma has also been translated as “the way it is,” since Buddhist teachings aim at nothing grander than “to know things as they are.” [Prothero 181]. To Buddhists, salvation is not their goal, and hence they are not concerned with how to achieve it. If we were allowed the agency to do away the word “religion”, I do not believe we would need another word to replace it. We could simply refer to what we deem as “religious”, to be “cultural actions”, as the two are inseparable, and religion is nothing more than a created category within culture.
In referring to these institutions and practices as simply outgrowths of different cultures, we would be enabled to overthrow the world religions paradigm, and could simply refer to different practices based on the region where those practices reside. For instance, India is so diverse, we would come up with a multitude of various societal practices there.
We could speak of the cultural practices of North India as having many different cultural beliefs, with many emphasizing Ganesh, Hanuman, Shiva, Vishnu and a plethora of other deities.
In the Punjab district we would be able to reference the Guru Nakak, the Ari Granth, and many more as well.
“Buddhism conjures up the Dalai Lama and his Nobel Peace Prize, but Islam conjures up Osama bin Laden and his assault rifle.” [Prothero 25]. This quote is painfully honest, and represents a minuscule portion of Islam. The majority of Muslims worldwide practice peace. This is especially true of most Sufi Muslims in India who never believed their way of life to be religion before British colonialism.
We could speak of the Parsi community in Mumbai, and the followers of Zoroastrian. There are so many more we would be able to incorporate if we ignored the common understandings of great religions, and just considered them as people in their communities living their lives. (Note: We have only discussed India, and haven’t even scratched the surface of the world outside of south Asia!)
In eliminating the way we categorize world religions, which leaves many people and groups marginalized, we would be able to incorporate practices of Native Americans, such as The Native American Church. Also practices they incorporate such as the ghost dance, and the use of peyote in rituals. Followers of Guru Nanak (Sikhs) would no longer be left on the fringes, of whether to include them or not in “religious” discussions. We would include the way of the gods (Shinto) practices in Japan. Buddhism would no longer be referred to as such, and the very different practices of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana would be three different cultural practices. Any practice we refer to as ”folk” religion, would be described as what that culture “does” within their society, and they would no longer be ostracized from “religious” discussions. The so called “great” ”religions”, that is Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, would still be included, but on equal footing with every other institution’s practices. In essence, we would be able to speak about all groups practices across the entire globe, since we would simply be speaking about what people “do” within their cultures.
We could form a new map to incorporate these cultural institutions, and do away with the current westernized version we have, which only includes institutions we deem worthy of inclusion. Our new map would be…..the entire world.
Is this new way to think about the different institutions of the world, which we commonly refer to as “religions”, a perfect model? The short answer is, nope! One problem with this model would be in separating different practices by region, we are still left with boundaries, which are detrimental. What about Parsi’s in Europe, or America? Or Christians in Japan whom want nothing to do with the way of the gods? Also, by establishing boundaries, which are not real anyways, but merely constructs, we further categorize people and create an ”us” and ”them” mentality. Another problem with this model is that it would ultimately not be very different than the current model. If we are studying “religions”, time restraints will always be an issue. Life is not Pokemon, and we will never be able to “catch ’em all”. In studying, or even talking about “religions” we will be limited in which ones we will be able to include due to this.
If Dr. Who could fly her Tardis, back to a time before European invasions and colonizing of the rest of the world, she and her companions could have fixed this paradigm before it ever had the opportunity to begin. The good Doctor would have learned about all of the different cultures of the world, how they are forever fluid, and how “religion” was never separated outside of communities in these locations. She, and her companions, would explain all of these nuances to all of the Europeans who would become the explorers of the world, and would make them listen and learn, because she is really good at that, before they ever set their ships out to sea. If this were to happen, we would be calling cultural practices in India dharma. Submission to Allah would be Islam. Followers of Guru Nanak would still be Sikhs, since it basically means student. What Christians “do” would still be religion, but it would be specific for them, and would not apply to other cultural practices.
Soup Steve’s Religious Studies Blog 