The influence of words on the study of religion

Published in the Towards a Unified Science Section in The Ecologist Vol 1 No 13 July 1971.

The terms which we use for classifying religious systems such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, etc, are so firmly entrenched in our minds that we do not consider the possibility that they might not provide us with the best means of classifying religious behaviour. A Christian is considered to be one who worships a particular God. To this God is attributed some sort of reality, or identity, which differentiates him from other Gods.

Thus the God worshipped by Christians is taken to be the same one previously worshipped by the Jews and in particular those of the Southern Kingdom of Judah and if one looks still further back, it is probable that he can be identified as the God of a tribe of Bedouin called the Kennites in the Sinai Desert. [1] However, it must be clear that this God meant something very different to the people who worshipped him. Thinking and perceiving involve building models and, as we have seen, an infinite number of models can be built to explain the same situation.

We must therefore expect different people to perceive a given symbol in a variety of different ways, in accordance with the different roles such a Symbol plays in their general systemic model. In this respect it is particularly interesting to note the different meanings attached to the symbol of the moon by the ancient Egyptians in terms of their Pantheon. According to Henri Frankfort [2], the moon could symbolise very different things, such as the eye of Horus; a manifestation of Osiris; the God Khonsu; Thot, the Scribe of the Gods; and the Goddess Nekhbet, according to the circumstances.

In the same way, "God" means something very different to different peoples. To a Japanese he is above all the supreme ancestor. To the early Christians, he was undoubtedly a big anthropomorphic father. To the Jews of the Old Testament he was a strict, cruel and jealous supertribal chieftain. To the educated Christian of today, he is an undefinable and abstract force. If people refer to their God by the same name and generally use the same terminology in describing their religious practices, the tendency will be to classify them all as belonging to the same religion. It is clear, however, that this would not provide one with any information that would be of use save in a strictly theological context. What is more interesting than the name given to a God, or to the religion of his adepts, is the psychological function fulfilled by his worship, and the sociological effects of worshipping him in this manner. It is in these functional terms that religions should be classified.

Thus if we examine the different groups that describe their religion as Buddhist, we find that they have very little in common. Hinayana Buddhism still represents today the closest approach to the Buddhist message as it was originally preached. When Buddhism spread to Japan, it had to be modified totally for it to correspond to the psychological requirements of the Japanese feudal state. Thus there developed a religion known as Zen Bushido which was very similar to the traditional religion of the Japanese but which maintained a Buddhist terminology.

Another form of Buddhism is Anidism, a sort of Messianic cult that fulfils the requirements of an oppressed and downtrodden proletariat particularly well. Tantric Buddhism is again totally different: it has particular mystical, magical and sexual practices which render it behaviourally very similar to the cults of Attis and Cybele during the third and fourth centuries of the Roman Empire. Tantrism is a form that Buddhism has taken in Mongolia and Tibet.

What do the different cultures have in common?

Behaviourally, the answer is - very little; but if one applies the subjective classifications which they themselves apply, quite a lot. They all consider themselves Buddhists and when the great Buddhist Council meets in Rangoon, each one of these diverse cultures is represented.

What we have said about Buddhism can just as easily be said about Christianity. The different religious sects that call themselves Christians have little in common save their terminology. The Anglicanism of the educated Englishman is behaviourally as distinct from the revivalism of the West Indian Holy Rollers or the Catholicism of the Sicilian peasants as it is from Chinese ancestor worship and Mahometan Sufism. Everywhere we find Christian religions fulfilling totally different psychological and social functions.

Thus Catholicism has been, particularly in the last century, the religion of the establishment in those countries officially labelled Catholic. It has embodied the doctrines justifying the status quo and has served as a strong force against social change.

Clearly this was not the role of early Catholicism, which was first developed in the Roman Empire as the religion of the starving city proletariat and the mass of alienated slaves.

In the kingdom of Rwanda, Catholicism was adopted for the purpose of providing a doctrine to hold together the Hutu revolutionaries against abusive Tutsi rule. Here Catholicism is again playing a different role as a Messianic cult more akin to its original one than present-day Catholicism.

In Burma we find the Karen and Shan minorities being converted to Protestantism to affirm their national existence against the Burman Buddhist majority.

In the 10th century certain tribes in west Mongolia were converted to Nestorian Christianity as a means of distinguishing themselves from their compatriots of the Central Plains and from the Muslim Arabs who were pressing them in the south.

However, perhaps one of the most illustrative cases is that of the conversion of the Chinese to Christianity in the 16th century when the Jesuits began to preach the gospel in China. [3]

To begin with they had absolutely no success with the educated Confucian Chinese who were particularly shocked by some of the basic dogmas of the Christian religion which just did not fit into their scheme of things. The notion of original sin they found absurd and even immoral; the low social status of Christ himself they also found unimpressive. After a period of open hostility, the Jesuits solved the problem by adapting the gospel to the Chinese requirements. A new gospel was written which made no mention of original sin. Christ suddenly became the son of a Prince, instead of a carpenter, and certain Confucian maxims were introduced into the New Testament. As a result, quite a large number of Chinese were converted to the new religion.

Let us consider what in fact occurred. Is it legitimate to say that the Chinese were converted to a new religion? The answer is "Yes" if by religion we mean a terminological system; and "No" if we mean a behavioural pattern, since it is clear that Confucian ideas of morality survived this conversion with only minor terminological modifications.

The question is why did they elect to be converted in the first place? In this case it is probably because they associated the Christian religion with certain characteristics of the Jesuits that they admired. For instance, the latter were very advanced in mathematics and technology, and it was due to them that the first imperial Artillery was built up which proved decisive in enabling the Chinese to stop the advance of the Russian troops in the Anour in the 17th century.

The Jesuits' ambition appeared to be to obtain an important political influence in China so as to lead the Chinese Empire to attack the Turks. In this respect they were thwarted by the Pope, who hearing of their "heresy" from certain Italian merchants returning from China, ordered them to renounce it forthwith. New missionaries were sent to replace them, and when the latter presented the normal Christian gospel, not only did conversion cease, but most of the Chinese converts reverted to their original religion.

To refer to middle class Citizens of Baltimore, the proletariat of the Empire, Sicilian peasants and Hutu revolutionaries as Catholics; to English country squires, and Karen and Shan revolutionaries as Protestants; to the 10th century west Mongolian tribes and the 17th century Chinese converts as Christians, conveys very little information about them.

The names they happened to give their Gods, and the terminology used to describe their religious practices are irrelevant to a behavioural context in which religious movements must be classified teleonomically in accordance with their function at different levels of complexity; i.e. the individual adept, the family, community, and eco-system.

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