Ant 9
RELIGION: RITUAL AND BELIEF
Chapter 17
Questions to Ponder
■ Why do people believe things so readily when there is no empirical evidence, and when they seem preposterous to others?
– No clear answer yet…
– Change what they do before changing what they believe
– Causal relationships between environmental, political, economic factors and religious forms?
■ Today, religion is a cultural universal. 5.8 billion people from 230 countries practice.
– 2.2 billion Christians
– 1.6 billion Muslims
– 1 billion Hindus
– 500 million Buddhists
– 14 million Jews
– 400 million practice traditional religious
• Religion? Spirituality?
Supernatural Beliefs?
Rituals?
• Identifying features?
• Functions?
• Different forms?
• Why do people believe
things that others
consider wrong?
How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?
■ Anthropologists study religion to understand people.
■ The range of religious belief encountered by 19th-century scholars made people
seem inexplicable.
■ Anthropologists studied societies with relatively simple lifeways and technology,
assumed that local religious beliefs were also simple
■ Deeper investigation gradually revealed the complexity and diversity of beliefs held
throughout the world—and the difficulty of cross-culturally defining religion.
Version 1.0: Tylor, Animism, and Evolution
■ Edward Tylor (1871) introduced animism:
an early theory that primitive peoples
believed that inanimate objects such as
trees, rocks, cliffs, hills, and rivers were
animated by spiritual forces or beings.
■ Tylor proposed that religion evolved in
stages from animism to polytheism to
monotheism.
■ “dreams misinterpreted”, fundamental
error in thinking
■ *doesn’t explain religion as a worldview
Version 2.0: Wallace and the Supernatural
■ Religion: “beliefs and rituals concerned with
supernatural beings, powers, and forces”
■ For Wallace, the characteristic that ties all
religious belief together is the supernatural
■ But he recognized the many different forms
of supernatural belief, from animism to gods
and spirits to more amorphous supernatural
forces like the mana of native Hawaiians: a
belief that sacred power inheres in certain
high-ranking people, sacred spaces, and
objects
■ *failed to explain why peoples beliefs were
held so passionately
Version 3.0: Geertz and Symbols
“Religion is…
1. A system of symbols which act 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” (1966, p. 4).
■ Religious symbols are a central part of a worldview
■ This definition emphasizes symbols that seem intensely real and factual to believers. What, to outsiders, appear to be mythological parables are, to insiders, historical fact.
■ Assumes a need for meaning
Version 4.0: Religion as a Social Phenomenon
■ Beliefs get power from being socially
enacted repeatedly through rituals and
social action.
■ By acting together, the community of
believers begins to accept the group’s
symbolic interpretations of the world as if
they were tangible, authentic, and real
rather than merely interpretation
■ Provides a world-view
So What Is Religion?
■ Religion: a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life, including these four elements:
1. The existence of things more powerful than humans
2. Beliefs and behaviors that surround, support, and promote the acceptance that those things more powerful than humans actually exist.
3. Symbols that make these beliefs and behaviors seem both intense and genuine.
4. Social settings, usually involving important rituals, that people share while experiencing the power of these symbols of belief.
Worldview
■ Religious symbols are a central part of a
worldview: a general approach to or set of
shared unquestioned assumptions about the
world and how it works.
– Symbols describe a ‘model of’ how the world
is and a ‘model for’ how the world should
be.
Religious Worldview or Myth
■ Myths are religious narratives or stories
that provide the framework for religious
beliefs and practices
■ Tell of the origins and history of the world
and creation of human beings
■ Prescribe the rules of proper conduct
■ Articulate the ethical and moral principals
of society
■ Exist as texts or oral narratives in
nonliterate societies
Rituals are the Myths in Action
■ Ritual is often based on myth
■ The myth provides the elements for the
development of the ritual
■ Ritual activities symbolize the particular
beliefs and values of that community
■ A ritual is the vehicle by which basic ideas,
such as the definition of good and evil and
the proper nature of social relationships,
are imparted to the group
■ Participation in the ritual signals a public
acceptance of the basic tenets of the
religion
What Forms Does Religion Take?
■ Today, anthropologists don’t rank people or religions on an evolutionary scale of
complexity.
■ But there are clear correlations between political organization, mode of subsistence,
and religious practices.
Animism
Polytheism
Monotheism
Totenism
■ A system of thought that associates
particular social groups with specific
animal or plant species called
“totems” as an emblem.
Shamans and Trances
■ Shaman: a religious leader who communicates the needs of the living with the spirit world
– Usually through some form of ritual trance or other altered state of consciousness
■ Trance: a semiconscious state typically brought on by hypnosis, ritual drumming and singing, or hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline or peyote.
■ In many cultures, altered states of consciousness (by various means) is a way to communicate with the spiritual world
– Yanomamo shaman attempts to heal ailing individuals by ingesting hallucinogenic snuff made from a local plant.
■ Shaman is supernaturally assisted by a spirit familiar
– In the peyote religion of the Huichol Indians, the hunt for and use of peyote provides social order.
– Pentecostal and charismatic Christian traditions engage in rituals like snake handling and speaking in tongues
Shared Identity and Social Hierarchies
■ In Benin, the Oba was considered divine and symbolized
by a leopard.
– The Oba’s palace was an architectural model of the
cosmos.
– Leopard imagery in the palace, arts, and festivals
depicted and maintained the social order.
■ Egyptian pharaohs were viewed as earthly manifestations
of the gods, along with many others in their polytheistic
system.
– Each god had to be appeased in its own way to
maintain the environmental conditions necessary
for agriculture.
Monotheistic World Religions
■ The ancient Hebrews diverged from the polytheistic norm
– Proclaiming Yahweh the one true God, prompting a long-term shift toward monotheism
■ The monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all became state religions
■ These three “Abrahamic religions” effectively share the same deity
– Each views itself as having the correct prophet.
Hinduism and Buddhism
■ Hinduism shares many traits with the polytheistic systems of the Middle East:
– Religious specialists and political leaders maintaining cosmic and social order by
seeking the intervention of local deities
■ Siddhartha Gautama challenged orthodox Hinduism.
– Taking the name Buddha (meaning “awakened one”), he taught a path of
compassion and selflessness
Non-Theists, Atheists, Agnostics, and Nonbelievers
■ These categories lack the “supernatural beliefs” of
most definitions of religion
■ People who identify with them could be considered
nonreligious.
■ However, they derive meaning and purpose from
natural symbols through a worldview, much like those
who practice religious ritual.
How Do Religious Rituals Work?
■ Magic is key.
■ Magic usually conjures up images of magicians, however, here we refer to that as in illusion.
■ Illusionists manipulation human perceptions, and not the supernatural.
■ From an anthropological perspective, magic refers to rituals used to compel behavior from supernatural sources.
■ In anthropology, magic refers to: an explanatory system of causation that does not follow naturalistic explanations, often working at a distance without direct physical contact.
– Magic: an explanatory system of causation that does not follow naturalistic explanations, often working at a distance without direct physical contact
■ Whether anthropologists believe in magic is irrelevant.
– We seek an emic understanding of magic and its role in our informants’ lives
Frazer and Sympathetic Magic
■ Two principles, Law of similarity and Law of contagion
– Frazer’s law of similarity (imitative magic) encompasses things like voodoo dolls
– Harming a representative object “contaminated” by a person is believed to harm the person via the law of contagion
– Catholic communion combines these with its symbolic wafer and wine
James G. Frazer (Photo: NPG x37001
Sir James George Frazer © National
Portrait Gallery, London)
Sympathetic magic: any magical rite that relies on the
supernatural to produce its outcome without working through
some supernatural being such as a spirit, demon, or deity.
Rites of Passage
■ Any life cycle rite that marks a person’s or
group’s transition from one social state to
another. These rituals are probably evident in
many of the events students have
experienced.
■ Rites of separation: remove individual from
society
■ Rites of transition: isolation after separation
■ Rites of incorporation: new status
Rites of Passage Apache Puberty Ritual https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Cx_9YDQEc
Ritual Symbols
■ Objects (wafer and wine)
■ Colors (white = purity or grief, depending
on context)
■ Actions (moving like an emu totem)
■ Events (rituals that reenact mythic
events)
■ Words (any number of ritual recitations
of sacred texts)
How Is Religion Linked to Political and Social Action?
■ Religious affiliation has remained stable and even
risen in some categories since 1966
■ Why is a secular worldview relatively rare in the U.S.?
– One factor is that science and reason have not
replaced religious belief, as Time speculated
they might.
Fundamentalism
■ The post-1960s rise in Christian fundamentalists in the United States was paralleled
by increasing Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East.
■ The term “fundamentalism” is sometimes used pejoratively to imply, at best,
scientific illiteracy and, at worst, violent extremism.
■ Here, we use fundamentalism to mean conservative religious movements that
advocate a return to fundamental or traditional principles.
The Fundamentalism Project (1990s)
■ Threatened by secularization
■ Perceive themselves as fighting to return to “proper” gender roles, sexuality,
education.
■ Derive meaning and purpose from political and military efforts to defend their
beliefs
■ Define themselves in relation to what they are not: outsiders, modernizers,
moderates.
■ They are zealous, committed, and convinced that they have been chosen to carry out
the will of a deity.
Religion and the Social Order
■ Fundamentalism differs from religious expression in smaller communities.
– In small-scale societies, religion often supports the existing social order.
– Fundamentalism in larger societies sets itself up in opposition to the social
order.
■ The process of belonging and the social action associated with group membership
are bolstered by important symbols.