Religion and Culture

Religion and Culture
By James Santucci

ABSTRACT

Of all the disciplines in the humanities, religion offers a unique problem in definition.
It is generally conceded that no universally satisfactory definition of religion exists due to a
number of factors: failure to delimit religious experience from non-religious experience;
failure to agree whether a religion is purely an internalized experience or a predominantly
behavioral experience; the tendency to define religion through differing disciplines, thereby
interpreting religion in accordance with the disciplines limited role in knowledge. This paper
will discuss these problems by reviewing some of the more important definitions over the past
two millennia: Cicero, Lactantius, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Clifford
Geertz. In addition, the relation of religion to culture will be addressed, how culture is viewed
by the likes of E. B. Tylor, B. Malinowski, M. Mead, Ward Goodenough, and others.

Religion

The most significant accomplishment of higher mental functions is the ability
to capture and make sense of the outside world, including the objective self. We only
need to investigate the various neural processes that illustrate linguistic encoding and
decoding to ascertain the complexity of such procedures and to realize that we
understand the world primarily through indirect means, i.e., through linguistic
symbolism. This form of symbolism, in order to be in a real and meaningful
relationship with the non-symbolic realm, must be based upon a direct and non-
linguistic experience with the world. The variables that arise are such that only
general agreements can be realized. A specific and detailed comprehension of the
world will more likely reveal an intrusion of personal interpretations that will less
likely be understood by others. As such, opinion, interpretation and perception
will have taken on added importance in this light.
One means of understanding the outside world is through definition.
Definitions are the outcome of mental processeslinguistic, logical, semanticthat
capture an understanding of other concepts often related to objectsinternal or
externalin nature. Yet, as much as we think that definitions describe the outer
world, what they actually indicate are other concepts, other mental constructs.
Definitions can never directly capture the extra-linguistic realm, so it is pointless to
equate definitions with extra-linguistic reals; rather, they only capture symbols or
words. With this in mind, the question arises, what are we really defining when we
examine words and concepts such as culture and religion? Of the many
definitions of religion, for instance, are we content with defining merely its function
or behavior? One such example by Peter Williams in his Popular Religion in America
defines religion as a:

System of symbolic beliefs and actionsmyths, rituals, and creeds and their
supporting social structureswhich provides its adherents with a coherent
interpretation of their universe. Religion is a process of cosmo-construction: it
Hsi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism
creates order out of chaos, and informs its constituency with a sense of
meaning, purpose and significance that would otherwise be lacking. Religion
creates order, an order which, ideally, is exhaustive and personally satisfying.
Religion is, moreover, a social phenomenon.
1

In this definition, certain componentmyths, rituals, and creedsare
required as building blocks to create an order that has an effect upon the individual
(personally satisfying). As an afterthought, religion is said to be a social
phenomenon and not, one would surmise, an individual enterprise. This definition
falls partially under the rubric of operational definition, that is, a definition that
includes a recognizable set of actions that will manifest the phenomenon.
2
An
operational definition also encompasses more functional definitions of religion,
usually suggesting that religion must affect the individual and community in some way
or other. Perhaps the quintessential functional description of religion is that set forth
by Marx:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real
suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.

There is an underlying assumption in Marxs definition that religion has a
function in society: to alleviate distress in an alienated and unhappy humanity. The
means of overcoming this suffering is equated to an opiate overcoming pain.
Overcoming pain does not mean ending pain, however; it merely camouflages it.
While the alleviation of pain and suffering is good; while the belief in the supernatural,
joyous world that ends all sorrows is good, there is no denying, from Marxs
perspective, that the source of all this comfort is strictly delusional.
3
He therefore
makes the following observation:

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand
for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their
condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The
criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears
of which religion is the halo.

Marx turns religion on its head. It is not the font of truth detailing the human
condition but rather its opposite; consequently, it is the role of history to establish
worldly truth and of philosophy to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once
the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked.
4

William James concurs, to a point, with Marxs view that religion is a
palliative, when he writes, Religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the
entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its
life.
5
For Marx, however, religion as a medication resembles a placebo; James, on
the other hand, views religion as a highly effective medication, with its principal
ingredient being the act of prayer.
6

These examples give but a hint to attempts that are made to define religion: Is
it a group or individual impulse or activity? Is it to be portrayed as primarily
interiorized or exteriorized? Is it governed solely by faith or may reason play a part?
2
Does it have distinguishing features separating it from philosophy, ideology, magic,
and spirituality? If so, what are these features? Is there a reality behind the linguistic
symbol religion or is the reality a construct from the symbol?
These questions arise mainly in academic circles, but what is even more
important is the issue whether religion is a sui generis dimension of human
experience, recognizable cross-culturally and not to be analytically reduced to other
categories such as culture, economics, and power.
7
Philosophically, this view echoes
a Platonic perspective, a perspective that is tenacious in its durability, having already
undergone two rebirths: born in ancient Greece, resurrected during the Renaissance,
and now reborn surreptitiously into the academic mainstream. The problem in defining
religion lies in the difficulty of understanding its true place in the human condition as
well as the ongoing debate revolving around the question of reality. Furthermore
religion is a uniquely Western concept. It was introduced to convey specific
practices and ideas that developed in classical Roman society and culture and Christian
dogma. Whether it is a local phenomenon or scan be exported to other parts of the
world is another story. Thirdly, it did not represent an abstraction until fairly recently.
It most definitely represented specific practices and attitudes within a limited
framework. Finally, there is the common mental exercise to broaden, to generalize,
and to expand the boundaries of the terms denotative attributes.
The Western foundations of the term religionin this case I am discussing
only definitions and not a phenomenon existing outside of languageare enunciated
by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 43 BCE) in his De Natura Deorum.
8
Therein, his
definition of religion is perhaps the first extensive discussion of religion, and it is
of interest that it is discussed in the context of Stoicism through the Stoic Quintus
Lucilius Balbus. He discusses the topic under four headings: (1) that the gods exist;
(2) their nature; (3) that they govern the world; and (4) that they care for the fortunes
of humans.
9
On the first point, proof of the gods existence is determined by the
heavenly bodies and the sky. The second point concludes that the world is god.
10
It is
under this second heading that religion comes into play. Balbus argues that the
regularity in the stars, this exact punctuality throughout all eternity is
incomprehensible without rational intelligence and purpose.
11
Knowing the world
and the heavenly bodies reveals also the gods, who strive to preserve and to protect
the universe.
12
After a discussion of the gods and their names, we come to the basis
of the argument that Cicero is making: that there is a true and valuable philosophy of
nature that has evolved into an imaginary and fanciful pantheon.
13
The popular
stories of the gods, such as those of the epics of Homer, carry little weight, but
though repudiating these myths with contempt, we shall nevertheless be able to
understand the personality and the nature of the divinities pervading the substance of
the several elements.
14
Cicero then concludes that the best way to worship the gods
is to venerate them with purity, sincerity and innocence both in thought and in
speech.
15
It is in this context that religion is contrasted with superstition. According
to the etymology of the latter, those who are superstitious wish their children to
survive them, for the term derives from superstes survivor (of anothers death).
16

People, on the other hand, who are careful (relegerent) in undertaking all items
involving worship of the gods are termed religious (religiosi): a term deriving from
being careful, retracing, and selecting (relegendo). Words such as selective,
discriminative, and mindful seem to capture the sense of relegere, with the root
leg- also incorporated in intellegere (to understand) and neg-legere (to neglect).
17
In
a previous section of De Natura Deorum, religion and superstition are described in the

3
following manner: superstition implies a groundless fear of the gods, but religion
consists in the pious worship of the gods.
18
This is a view of the Academic skeptic,
Cotta, who states, in answer to Valleius Epicurianism, the question as to why worship
is owed the gods if the gods do not respect humans. If piety (pietas), i.e., the sense of
responsibility, and loyalty, is defined as justice towards the gods (iustitia adversum
deos), and religion the pious worship of the gods (religionem quae deorum cultu
pio continetur), he protests, then how can any claims of justice exist between us and
them, if god and man have nothing in common?
19
And so the argument goes. What is
learned from this discussion are the following:

1) Religion is characterized by worship.

2) This worship is directed toward the godsnot the gods trivialized
in Homerbut rather the gods who are known through the
regularity of the heavenly bodies, thereby revealing an intelligence
and design behind this regularity.
3) Not only do the gods reveal the order, the intelligence and design
of the universe, they also preserve and protect the universe from
disorder.
4) The worship of the gods must be correct and pious, implying a
sense of duty.
20

5) Worship that is not proper, but rather is based upon the fear of the
gods or ignores the gods by wishing merely to be survived by the
worshippers children is not classified as religion but as
superstition.
6) Religion as conceived by Cicero is more subjective due to his
emphasis on the correct intellectual and emotional stance towards
the gods.
7) In sum, religion is the responsible and proper worship of the
gods.

The mention of a fear of the gods may reflect also the attitude of the
Ciceros contemporary, the poet Lucretius (99 55 BCE), who personifies Religion
as a malevolent force.
21

In late antiquity, another etymology was proposed by Lactantius (260 - 340
CE) in his Divinae Institutiones (Divine Institutes), IV, xxviii that connects religio to
re-ligare, the latter having the connotation of reconnecting. The importance of this
definition is to demonstrate the central act in Christianity, the death and resurrection of
Jesus in order to reestablish that special relation to God that was severed by the Fall of
Adam. Since Lactantiuss understanding of religio is so clearly in tune with Christian
doctrine, it is not surprising that his definition is by far the more popular.
22

Religion continued to be discussed in the ensuing centuries, but the important
point to be made in Ciceros and Lactantius interpretation is that there is a
realization of the More, of something beyond human power and experience
and that humans strive to make positive contact with it. The essential
ingredients of the popular view of religion are already present:

1) The More, the Beyond, sometimes the Transcendent;
2) The Means of making contact with the More;
4
3) The intension to do so;
4) The underlying assumption that the above is unfailingly true
and real.

These ingredients derive mostly from Lactantius etymology, but it is clear too
those other developments arise that are important in the growth of the term. For one,
Smith points out that the Christian life was far more comprehensive than the other
cultic practices
23
since it included the moral, liturgical, intellectual, and social
dimensions in addition to the purely ritual dimension. Secondly, during the
Renaissance, Marsilio Ficino introduced the notion, in keeping with Plato, that religio
is natural to humanity, an instinct divine in its source allowing us to perceive and
worship God.
24
This is a very powerful argument that no doubt makes a great deal of
sense among the participants of the religious life. What he introduced that was unique
was the notion that one member of a genus may be the full representative of the
essence of that genus.
25
This natural tendency of humans is to seek good, to seek
God and to respond to His presence.
It is a tendency that seems normal and reasonable to many. One such example
appeared in the New Straits Times of October 7, 2001.
26
Entitled The Essence of
Religion, the author, Appa, writes that every religion has a set of principles that are
universal in natureand eternaland a set of rules and codes derived from these
principles, with too much emphasis on the latter and too little on the former.
Religion is a deliberate and conscious effort to reach God, he continues, much in the
same vein as Ficino. Although various paths and methods are devised to do so, none
may be considered invalid. This is also hinted at in Appas article:

I think whatever name we give Him; Her/It makes no difference. As the
saying goes, a rose by any other name smells as sweet. What is important is
that we are agreed that God is love, God is peace. And we know that love is a
fire with transforming power.

This, he says, is the essence of religion. We should not argue over externals
but rather look to the internal and towards the eternal. Again, this echoes Ficino: all
opinions of men, all their responses, all their customs, changeexcept religio.
27

Appa also makes one further observation regarding the missing ingredient in
religion as it is practiced todayconsciencea notion that is reminiscent of
Immanuel Kant (1724 1804), who offers one definition of religion as the
recognition of all duties as divine commands.
28
This emphasis on duty is evident in
the definition of conscience:

a state of consciousness which in itself is duty. Hence the consciousness
that an action which I intend to perform is right is unconditioned duty. The
understanding, not conscience, judges whether an action is really right or
wrong. But concerning the act which I propose to perform I must not only
judge and form an opinion, but I must be sure that it is not wrong; and this
requirement is a postulate of conscience, to which is opposed probabilism, i.e.,
the principle that the mere opinion that an action may well be right warrants its
being performed. Hence conscience might also be defined as follows: it is the
moral faculty of judgment, passing judgment upon itself.
29

5
Kants discussion of religion is intriguing: in one sense, a product of the
Enlightenment; in another sense, timeless. The above quote reflects the importance of
reason, the organon of the age,
30
and explains why Kant chose to identify true
religion as laws.
31
In one passage, this is partially explained through the idea of the
association of the highest good with the purely moral disposition, and that the
impulse to the highest good is achievable through the cooperation of a moral Ruler of
the world.
32
True religious belief accepts the existence of God as the source His laws
and, as Judge, speaks to our conscience according to the holy law which we know.
33

The contribution of Kant to understanding Religion is significant. Based upon
his emphasis on reason, morality, conscience, and law, the goal of a religion of reason
is the moral improvement of the individual. If there is only one religion, there are
many faiths. Whereas an ecclesiastical faith is external, religion is hidden within and
has to do with moral dispositions,
34
and a moral religion lay within reason.
35

We come now to the modern day. The Enlightenment and scientific enquiry
predominant (despite a postmodern challenge that seems to be taking hold of segments
of academia, namely, the humanities and social sciences) and religion is no longer
considered as serious a subject and as mainstream as it once was in earlier decades.
Religion is viewed by its investigators as a phenomenon, not a noumenon. Nowadays,
with the presence of thousands of religions functioning throughout the world, it is
highly unlikely that their common traits will be isolated. It is equally doubtful that
religion possesses an essence, but attempts to find one are not lacking. One of the
first to question this possibility was Emile Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life.
36
He makes a number of interesting points:

1) There are no false religions.
37

Mention has already been made of those practices that do not qualify,
such as Ciceros superstition
38
or, within the last century, the use of
the terms cult and sect. False may not even apply to another or
second religion but rather within the same religion. Thus Zwinglis De
Vera et Falsa Religione Commentarius
39
is a good example of the
latter. Such an example appears in literature, a specific example being
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, where the Anglican priest, Thwakum,
confides: When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and
not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only
the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.
40
Obviously, it is
the species and not the genus that is considered most meaningful in this
quote.

2) All religions possess a sense of the supernatural, i.e., the world of the
mysterious, of the un-knowable, of the un-understandable.
41
Yet,
mysteries were not always so profound nor removed nor unexplainable.
Furthermore, the concept of the supernatural is merely the negation of
natural order, that the phenomena of the universe are bound together
by necessary relations, called laws.
42

Indeed, the gap between faith and reason does not appear to be as
ancient as we might assume. The scholasticism of the Middle Ages,
especially that of St. Thomas Aquinas is based upon the St. Anselms
motto, fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding.
43

6
3) Divinity is not present in all religions, so it is not surprising that the
assertion of a bond between the human mind and the mysterious
mind, as proposed by M. Rville (Prolegomena to the History of
Religions, 25)
44
does not hold up for the reason stated above.
4) Not all rites are religious, yet religious phenomena are based upon rites
and beliefs.
45
And here we find that magic also shares many of the
same ingredients. Yet, there is an opposition between the two,
according to Durkheim. The basic difference, according to Durkheim,
is that a religion comprises a determined group adhering to a common
body of beliefs. The key term here is that it is a society with a common
faith, i.e., a Church.
46
Magic, on the other hand, does not manifest
itself in a Church but through the magician, who in turn has a
clientele.
47
From this discussion comes Durkheims definition 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.

This definition, as well as the definitions preceding it, is guideposts to the
thoughts of some of the great philosophers and scholars on this subject. As insightful
as they are, none are fully satisfactory for a number of reasons that need not be dealt
with in this paper. This includes the one that follows, that of Clifford Geertzs
definition in his article, Religion as a Cultural System,
48
perhaps the most
significant and influential definition from the 1960s to 1990s:

(1) A system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful,
pervasive, 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.

This definition has been criticized in the influential and stimulating essay by
Talal Asad, The Study of Religion in the Current Political Moment.
49
First, Asad
takes the position that there cannot be a universal definition of religion.
50
He
reasons that this is the case because religions constituent elements and relationships
are historically specific and that definition is itself the historical product of
discursive processes.
51
As I understand these observations, the definition of
religion as opposed to a religion is not of a concrete phenomenon but rather
an abstract concept that presupposes an unchanging order. Furthermore, the concept is
itself product of discursive processes over time. We have, therefore a definition of a
concept in a timeless realm that bears little or no resemblance to the actual functioning
phenomenon.
52

Another problem with Geertzs definition involves what Bruce Lincoln
describes as the locus of the religious (as symbols, moods, motivations,
conceptions).
53
For Lincoln, this works well with certain types of religiosity that
form more oriented towards orthodoxy and belief, such as fundamentalist
Protestantism; it does not work well with orthopraxic religions such as Catholicism

7
and Islam.
54
What Asad asks is this: What are the conditions in which religious
symbols can actually produce religious dispositions? Or, as a nonbeliever would put
it: How does (religious) power create (religious) truth?
Power is the operative word, and Asad reaches back over the centuries to an
idea conceived by St. Augustine, who sums up the need for power as disciplina.
Disciplina is the active process of corrective punishment, a softening-up process, a
teaching by inconveniences.
55
Power, therefore, is the corrective that held evil
tendencies in check. Indeed, although religious truth was eternal, the means for
securing human access to it were not.
56

What, then, can we conclude about religion? Assuming it cannot be
adequately defined to meet the satisfaction of all its investigators, existential
phenomena are recognized to exist within the individual and society that are identified
as religious. If abstracted, it can be defined in a way that is satisfactory to a portion of
the human community but not the whole community. One cannot argue that there is
no religious phenomenon because there is no universally accepted definition.
Definitions are like photographs. Both indicate existents beyond the words or
photographic images. Both reflect but are not equivalent to the existent(s). The
question arises, however, whether the existent is to be located solely in the behavior of
the individual or group or within the brain-mind of the individual. We may speculate
that religious behavior is somewhat akin to language behavior. We can observe
specific actions connected to the two although admittedly it is easier to determine
linguistic rather than religious behavior. Both may be said to function according to a
deep structure that provides the architecture of the two. It is possible to locate
specific areas of the brain that processes language activity whether it is language input
or output. So too is it entirely likely that a deep structure exists for religious behavior
in the neuro-biological sphere. The work of Andrew Newberg and the late Eugene
dAquili in their books, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious
Experience (1999) and Why God Wont Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of
Belief (2001) as well as a number of other publications
57
suggest that there may be
neural paving stones leading to God.
58
Whether or not it is the brain responding to
a supernatural, transcendent entity or whether the brain is creating this entity out of
some need is a matter of debate and further research.

Culture

The heart of anthropological research is culture, a term that was first
employed in 1871 in its modern sense by E.B. Tylor in his influential study, Primitive
Culture. It is a term borrowed from German Kultur and is defined by Tylor as:

Culture or civilization . . . is that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Over the decades, dozens of definitions have been advanced enough to lead to
anthropologists, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, to publish a monograph devoted
to this topic in 1952. Titled Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions,
164 definitions were included and organized in 7 major groupings. Some of these
definitions range from learned behavior to ideas in the mind, a logical construct,
a statistical fiction, and a psychic defense mechanism. It is revealing that the
8
authors preferred the definition to be an abstraction from behavior because it were
simply behavior, it would come under the rubric of psychology.
59

If we examine a wide range of definitions, certain ingredients are revealed:

1) Culture has content:
This originates from Tylor and carries over into more recent
definitions. For instance, Kluckhohn and Kelly
60
define culture in part as
that complex whole which includes artifacts, beliefs, art, all the other habits
acquired by man as a member of society, and all products of human activity as
determined by these habits.

2) Culture involves transmission of content:
This notion appears in Malinowskis definition
61
: Culture comprises
inherited artifacts, goods, technical processes, ideas, habits, and values.
Margaret Mead concurs
62
: Culture means the whole complex of
traditional behavior which has been developed by the human race and is
successively learned by each generation.

3) Culture is rule-governed:
Culture is the sum total of the ways of doing and thinking, past and
present, of a social group. It is the sum of the traditions, or handed-down
beliefs, and of customs, or handed-down procedures.
63

4) Culture is habit:
. . . culture, the traditional pattern of action which constitute a major
portion of the established habits with which an individual enters any social
situation.
64

5) Culture is learning:
culture is the sociological term for learned behavior, behavior which
in man is not given at birth, which is not determined by his germ cells as is the
behavior of wasps or the social ants, but must be learned anew from grown
people by each new generation.
65

These components do not exhaust the possibilities and varieties of definitions,
but there is one component that cannot be ignored, and that is knowledge. The
cognitive view of culture involves a sharing of like views of the world. Such is the
view of Ward Good enough in his Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics
66
:

...a societys culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or
believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members,
and do so in any role hat they accept for any one of themselves.
Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their
biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning:
knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term. By
this definition, we should note that culture is not a material
phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior, or
emotions. It is rather an organization of these things. It is the

9
forms of things that people have in mind, their models for
perceiving, relating, and otherwise interpreting them.

Since the time of Tylor, the concept of culture has for the most part
appropriated all areas of investigation. Somewhat facetiously, perhaps, may be the
argument that two areas of inquiry exist: anthropology and history. Anthropology
claims to investigate the totality of human experience from the synchronic perspective
of present day experience; history claims to investigate the totality of human
experience from the diachronic perspective of development of the culture. All other
categories of investigation are subsets of these areas. Religion, therefore, may be
viewed as a cultural phenomenon, and as such is limited to the investigative
constraints of anthropologists. This, and the imposition of the scientific method to
explain religious phenomena require a limitation upon what can be investigated in the
area of religion. It is not by oversight that Geertz ignores the position of the
supernatural in his definition of religion, for science investigates nature, not
supernature. What anthropologists and other scientific investigators assume is that
culture is a human phenomenon, so that all activity and phenomena must of necessity
originate only from humans. This is explicitly stated by Rodney Stark and William
Sims Bainbridge in their study, A Theory of Religion,
67
who set forth a deductive
analysis based on a series of axioms, propositions, and definitions. Unlike most other
studies, the authors provide a more sophisticated approach to the issue of culture and
religion that reflect the variety of real life that often are ignored in other studies. First,
the authors take on the issue of culture and society, the latter defined as a closed
structure of social relations,
68
the former as the total complex of explanations
exchanged by humans.
69
This complex of explanations add up to form a cultural
system,
70
of which a religion is considered to be. The proposition that is set forth by
the authors, then is that [a]ny culture contains a number of cultural systems,
71
of
which religion
72
is one such example. In addition to cultural systems, there is the
instance of cultural specialization, defined as the tendency of individuals to master
parts of their culture and to engage in exchanges with others who have mastered
different parts.
73
Since such specialties divide cultural systems, we may say that
religion as a cultural system, i.e., a Church or formally organized structure, may be
defined as systems of general compensators based on supernatural assumptions.
74

This definition is connected with the proposition that certain explanations may prove
valuable enough to convert cultural specialties into cultural systems. Such is the case
of a general compensator.
75
The definition of religion given above is primarily
assumed to be associated with a social organization, which is explained as a collective
enterprise that specializes in providing some particular kinds of rewards.
76

Stark and Bainbridges explanation of cultural, cultural systems, religion and
religious phenomena up to this point makes good sense. A problem arises, however,
with that part of the definition of religion mentioning supernatural assumptions. The
authors define supernatural as referring to forces beyond or outside nature which
can suspend, alter, or ignore physical forces.
77
Only the gods are mentioned since
[h]umans will tend to conceptualize supernatural sources of rewards and costs as
gods.
78
The only point that they are willing to concede is the opinion that as
societies become older, larger, and more cosmopolitan they will worship few gods of
greater scope.
79

This is an astounding statement that flies in the face of historical fact. First, it
eludes to evolutionism, a theory abandoned early in the 19
th
century. Second, the
10
move from polytheism to monotheism did not take place in older, larger, and more
cosmopolitan societies but in societies that were relatively homogeneous and
restricted in area. Age seems not to have been a matter of importance in this shift.
One need only turn to the Hebrew, Arab, and Iranian experience with their respective
religions: the Hebrew religionlater JudaismIslam, and Zoroastrianism. Third,
gods need not be active in the natural realm. What of the deus otiosus, the god who is
disengaged with this world? Fourth, the authors totally ignore the idea of a two-fold
meta-empirical tier: the realm of imagination or that realm where the gods who are
active in this world, and the transcendenttotally free of the imaginal, having no
involvement with this world, totally apart from this world, however it is interpreted.
Thus, the Upaniadic brahman-, the Buddhist nirva, the Christian and Muslim
God come to mind. The argument presented here strikes me as nave, yet it is a view
that might lead to a more plausible explanation, which I would like to propose in the
following section.

Conclusion

After all is said and done, the most sophisticated insights and interpretations of
religion have not added a great deal more to our sense of what a religion is. We
arrive at the conclusion that religion is a human enterprise, that it is part of culture, that
it reflects human insight about the human condition and that which lies beyond the
human. As a human enterprise, thought, word, and physical activities combine to form
a system comprising verbal patterns (prayer, myth), physical patterns (ritual, yoga,
dance), patterns of conduct (ethics and law), communities, and material monuments
(painting, sculpture, architecture, and symbolizing natural objects). None can be
called religious in and of themselves. Devoid of any relation to the More, they are
cultural expressions with no religious content. Art and music are only viewed
aesthetically without the More. Myths are fictions, prayers empty words, ethics are
arbitrary, law merely contractual. Their transformation from the non-religious to the
requires individual and communal intentions to establish and maintain a relationship
with the More. Although religions are cultural in expression, what distinguishes
religions from culture is that which lies outside the religious system and religious
phenomena: the More. It is not culture that creates the More; we as humans seem to
be disposed toward it. Our brains are hard-wired to consider it. Whether the brain,
because of the way it is wired, is the source of the More, or whether the More is
responsible for hard-wiring the brain, is a matter of irresolvable debate. Of course, our
reason and emotions may reject it but that is beside the point. When the More is
incorporated within a religion or in religious phenomena or spirituality, it is then
interpreted and articulated within the confines of the cultural system.
Another aspect of a religion that is fundamental to human disposition rather
than culture is desire in its most basic sense. Humans, because they are material and
mental beings, have needs and desires that must be fulfilled. The regulating principle
of a religion is primarily a system of exchange. It is a form of religious or spiritual
potlatch; in other words, the idea of do ut des I give so that you (will) give (in
return). Of course this assumes that someone some person will give in return. If
that is not so, there is the related idea that I work so that I get something in return.
No one gives in return in the latter statement, but the reward nonetheless comes. No
doubt this resembles capitalism, the Protestant Ethic, and karma. In the case of

11
12

Buddhism and Jainism, what is gained or achieved is not a relationship, fellowship, or
salvation, but rather perfection.
Without the More, minus the intentional process, we have the religious
systemall those elements that channel our thoughts and activities toward our goal,
the means of visualizing and explaining the More, which is culture-bound. The
religious system today, although a part of the culture of the community, affects the
community to the degree that it is taken seriously. There is no doubt that religion no
longer plays a significant role in European society, perhaps to the point that the
material religious culture of Europe is now more of an aesthetic rather than a religious
value, the same cannot be said in parts of the Muslim world or the Medieval Christian
world. Religion therefore can play a role that ranges from dominant to insignificant.
It can be a force for good or bad. It can be peace-loving or violent. It is important to
note that it is not the religious system that is important, but to that which it is directed.
Despite its failings and successes, the one consequence of its existence that uplifts
humans from the trivial and destructive is its proclamation of the More. We find this
aptly proclaimed in an oft-quoted remark by Albert Einstein:

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled
with books in many different languages. The child knows someone
must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not
understand the languages in which they are they are written. The child
dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but
doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the
most intelligent being toward God.

Endnotes

l
1
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980, p. 9.

2
On operational definition, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_definition.

3
Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right, Deutsch-
Franzsische Jahrbcher (Feb. 1844). Available on the Internet
at http://www3.baylor.edu/~Scott_Moore/texts/Marx_Contr_Crit.htm .

4
Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right.

5
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (NY: Modern Library Edition Random
House, 1994): 34-35. Quoted from the article by Christopher Stawski, Definitions and
Hypotheses: William James, Religion, and Spiritual Transformation, Cross Currents
(Sept.,22, 2003). Available through High Beam Research (http://www.highbeam.com).

6
James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 34-35.

7
Paul J. Griffiths, The Very Idea of Religion, First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion
and Public Life, May 1, 2000. (Available through High Beam Research).

8
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, with an English translation by H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press and London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1961). Cicero seems to reflect
much of the early Roman sentiment about religion, but through the lens of a version of

13

Stoicism as understood by Cicero. On an overview of the Latin term, see Wilfred Cantwell
Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991 [1962, 1963], 19
22.

9
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, with an English translation by H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press and London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1961), 124 and 125 (Book II,
3).

10
De Natura Deorum, 166 and 167: qua ratione deum esse mundum concluditur.

11
De Natura Deorum, 174: Hanc igitur in stellis constantiam, hanc tantam tam variis
cursibus in omni aeternitate convenientiam temporum non possum intellegere sine mente
ratione consilio.

12
De Natura Deorum, 181.

13

14

15
De Natura Deorum, 192 and 193: Cultus autem deorum est optimus idemque castissimus
atque sanctissimus plenissimusque pietatis ut eos semper pura integra incorrupta et mente et
voce veneremur.

16
Literally, to stand over and by extension: to outlive.

17
De Natura Deorum, 193 (Book II, 72): qui autem omnia quae ad cultum deorum pertinerent
diligenter retractarent et tamquam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi ex relegendo, ut elegantes ex
eligendo ex diligendo diligentes ex intellegendo intellegentes.

18
De Natura Deorum, 112 and 113 (I, 117 18): Horum enim sententiae omnium non modo
superstitionem tollunt in qua inest timor inanis deorum,sed etiam religionem quae deorum
cultu pio continetur.

19
De Natura Deorum, 112 and 113 (I, 116 17).

20
If divine beneficence and divine benevolence are extinguished, as Epicurus suggested
(according to Cotto), so too will religion be exterminated from the human heart.

21
De Rerum Natura, I, 62. On the Latin text, see De Rerum Natura by Titus Lucretius Carus,
III Intra Text Edition (Eulogos 2002): http://www.intratext.com/X/LAT0019.htm and On the
Nature of Things, translated by Wiliam Ellery Leonard, at
http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html.

22
The term is discussed by W.C. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, Chapter 2. See
also The Catholic Encyclopedia at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12738a.htm for a
discussion of the same.

23
Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, 25.

24
Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, 25. See also Peter Beyer, The Modern
Construction of Religions in the Context of World Society: A Contested Category in Light of
14

Modern Chinese History, a paper presented at the Second Conference (Religion, Ritual,
Myth) at http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~pbeyer/chinese%20history.htm.

25
Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, note 72, p.222.

26
This article derives from HighBeam Research.

27
Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, 33. The quote comes from Theologica Platonica
[Smith takes the text from the 1576 Basel edition of his works: Marsilii Ficini Florentini,
insignis Philosophi Platonici, Medici, atque Theologi clarissimi, Opera, 2 vol. Vol. I, 320:
Omnes himinum opinions, affectus, mores, excepta religione, mutantur. See Smith, notes 65
and 71 (pp. 221 and 222).

28
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen
Vernunft), trans., with introduction and notes by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson
(1934), reprinted with an essay by John R. Silber (NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 142 (Book
IV, Part I). Kants essay was written in 1794). A second definition occurs on p. 156: The one
true religion comprises nothing but laws, that is, those practical principles of whose
unconditioned necessity we can become aware, and which we therefore recognize as revealed
through pure reason (not empirically).

29
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 173 74.

30
Theodore M. Greene, The Historical Context and Religious Significance of Kants Religion,
in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, ix.

31
See note 28.

32
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 130.

33
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 130 31.

34

35

36
Translated from the French (Formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse) by Joseph Ward
Swain (NY, The Free Press, 1965). Reprinted from the 1915 edition (George Allen & Unwin).

37
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 15.

38
Or Kants religious superstition, described as the illusion of being able to accomplish
anything in the way of justifying ourselves before God through religious acts of worship
(Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 162).

39
Ulrich Zwingli, Commentary of True and False Religion, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson and
Clarence Nevin Heller (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth, 1981 (1929). Discussed in Smith, The
Meaning and End of Religion, 35.

40
Quoted in Paul J. Griffiths, The Very Idea of Religion, First Things: A Monthly Journal of
Religion and Public Life (May 1, 2000). The quote derives from Book 3, Chapter 3.


15

ies/anselm
41

42

43
For information on Saint Anselm, see the online Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entr .

44
As quoted in Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 44.

45

46

47
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 60. Durkheims view that magic is
divisive, immoral, and opposed to religion connects it with witchcraft and sorcery, i.e., black
magic, or magic viewed negatively. For an excellent overview of magic, see Murray and
Rosalie Wax, The Notion of Magic, Current Anthropology, vol. 4, no. 5 (December 1963):
495 503.

48
Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, in Reader in Comparative Religion: An
Anthropological Approach, 4
th
ed. Ed. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt (N.Y.: Harper &
Row, 1979), 78 89. See also Henry Munson, Jr., Geertz on Religion: The Theory and the
Practice, Religion 16 (1986): 19 32.

49
In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam
(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 27 54.

50
Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 29.

51
Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 29.

52
Jonathan Z. Smith has asserted that Religion is solely the creation of the scholars study. It
is created for the scholars analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and
generalization. Religion has no existence apart from the academy. This quote appears in
Map is Not Territory, in Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1978), 290.

53
Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2003), 1.

54
Lincoln, Holy Terrors,1. I added the adjective fundamentalist, which fits better the
description contained therein.

55
P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (quoted in Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 34.)

56
Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 35. In a recent publication, Dell deChant (The Sacred Santa:
Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture [Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2002], begins his
definition of religion in the following manner: Religion is about power. It mediates our
relationship with the source(s) of ultimate (sacred) power. The definition or working
description is quite involved and quite insightful.

16

57
NeuroTheology: Brain, Science, Spirituality, Religious Experience, ed. R. Joseph (San Jose,
CA: University Press, 2002, 2003); Matthew Alper, The God Part of the Brain.

58
A discussion of this subject appears in Exploring the Biology of Religious Experience,
reported by Rich Heffern, National Catholic Reporter (April 20, 2001). This article is located
on the Internet through HighBeam Research.

59
Leslie White, The Concept of Culture (1959).

60
The Concept of Culture (1945)

61
Culture, Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1931), IV: 621 46.
62
Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples, 1937.

63
E.S. Bogardus, Tools in Sociology, Sociology and Social Research, vol. 14 (1930): 332
41.

64
G.P. Murdock, Anthropology and Human Relations, Sociometry, vol. 4 (1941): 140 50.

65
Ruth Benedict, Race, Science and Politics (1947).

66
In Language in Culture and Society, ed. Dell H. Hymes, (NY: Harper & Row, 1964), 36
39.

67
Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion (New Brunswick, NJ,
1996 [originally published in 1987 by Peter Lang]).

68
Stark and Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion, 61.

69

70
Stark and Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion, 64: [S]ociety can do this job [of unifying
culture], but cohesion also results from the fact that when two rewards are added the result is
also a reward. Explanations are a class of reward. Therefore, two explanations can be added
together to produce another, greater explanation that is their sum. Indeed, explanations tend
to be composed of parts, like steps in the directions for assembling a model kit or in the recipe
of baking a cake. Related explanations are connected to form a cultural system.

71

72
A religion is this sense refers to well-developed manifestations of the religious
phenomenon (Stark and Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion, 73), that is a formally organized
religion. The authors make that point that religious phenomena may exist minus a religious
system or religion as a cultural system. In the public mind, this is what separates a religion
from spirituality.

73

74

75


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76

77

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