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What Is Religious Studies?
History and religion are intertwined. When you take any type of history course, some aspect of religion is going to be covered. You cannot take World Civilization I without learning about the roots of the world's major religions. Religious studies can also be about the beliefs, rituals, emotions and experiences, sacred places, ethics and morals of a specific religion. Religious studies is not asking you to change your belief system but is explaining other religions to you so that you can understand other cultures.
The two articles below go into more detail about religious studies and the importance of studying religions.
· How and Why Did Religion Evolve?
The video below answers the question What Is Religious Studies?
https://youtu.be/4NnJo9iThZ0?si=36tEooov1zVkEmup
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Whatis religiousstudies?
by Professor David Thomas FBA
12 OCT 2019
Blog What is religious studies?
People carry on believing. Throughout recorded history and almost certainly before records
of any kind existed, people have believed in something bigger than themselves, if nothing
more definite than what has been called “the terrifying and fascinating Mystery”. There have
been times of great surges in religious belief among populations, and times when belief has
been in decline, as in western Europe through the course of the 20th century. But despite the
ups and downs, the allure of holy places and saintly figures has persisted, and even people
who say they have no faith will utter a prayer in times of difficulty or danger. Religious belief
is a fact of life, and it calls for understanding.
All the major religions of the world contain teachings about what is correct belief and action.
These can seem straightforward, as in the Hebrew Bible’s prohibition against working on the
Sabbath, or the Qur’an’s instruction to perform the five daily prayers. But there are problems
even here: the first causes Jews to ask what exactly is work (can turning on a light be called
work?), while the second causes Muslims to ask how to perform the prayers correctly (how
should you hold your hands as you stand facing the Ka’ba?). They can also be extremely
complicated, as in the Gospels’ suggestions that Jesus was both human and divine (how did
these two natures unite in the one person?), or in the Buddhist belief that the Noble Eightfold
Path can lead to liberation from the cycle of rebirth (exactly how can believers achieve this?).
Reflection on holy scriptures and the lives of saintly figures helps provide answers to
questions such as these. It involves close scrutiny of what has been written, said and done. It
is also concerned to define the character of the religion, to maintain the consistency of this
character through time, to prove that its teachings are logical and consistent with one
another, and to explain and justify these to believers and defend it against opponents. This is
the practice of theology.
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Students in Malaysia learn and memorise the Qur'an at an Islamic school outside Kuala Lumpur. Photo
by Mohd Rasfan / AFP / Getty Images
The result of this inside process of reflection is that what we can call the shape of the religion,
what its teachings stand for and what is performed by its believers, can be understood.
Another way of understanding a religion is to look at it from the outside, examining it
objectively without any requirement to accept the teachings and values as believers.
In this way of looking, the religion becomes an object laid open to scrutiny, like a body in a
laboratory. No account is taken of the claims about divine origins or involvement, because
what is important is to observe how the components that make up the religion function
together. The religion is regarded as a system, as it were, through which believers construct
the ways they perceive the world and their place within it. For example, Judaism, Christianity
and Islam all promote strong social responsibility. This is because believers in these three
religions accept the world as the creation of the one God, who has given it design and
meaning. The interconnected character of society pictured by these faiths is the product of a
fundamental teaching within each of them. This external approach to religions is known as
religious studies.
From the time of the first European universities, theology was among the major academic
disciplines followed – it was often called ‘the queen of the sciences’. In more recent times, it
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has been complemented or occasionally replaced by religious studies, which is perceived as a
more objective and academically sound means of understanding how religions ‘work’ within
the societies where believers live. This change has opened the way for sociology of religion,
psychology of religion and a host of similar disciplines. Each applies its own methods of
studying religion, but all work from the basic principle that the religion or religions under
examination are phenomena, systems, organisms or the like that exist in the world. Whether
the claims of any religion are true is not a matter for consideration.
David Thomas is Emeritus Professor of Christianity and Islam at the University of
Birmingham. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2018.
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DEEP CIVILISATION | RELIGION
How and why did religion evolve?
(Image credit: Getty)
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By Brandon Ambrosino 18th April 2019
Can the roots ofspiritual behaviours and feelings be found in other animals? In the first of a
two-partspecial, Brandon Ambrosino examines the evolutionary origins of religion.
Article continues below
“This is my body.”
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These words, recorded in the Gospels as being spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, are
said daily at Church services around the world before the communion meal is eaten. When
Christians hear these words spoken in the present, we’re reminded of the past, which is
always with us, which never goes away.
Just how much past are Christians reminded of? Certainly the last two millennia, which, in
addition to devout celebrations of the Eucharist, are rife with doctrinal disputes, church
splits, episodes of violence, excommunications, papal pronouncements, and various
metaphysical debates, all revolving around the communion meal.
But we can rewind further back, to the development of the oral traditions that got fixed into
texts that were incorporated into the canonical New Testament. We can also wonder about
the historical meal on which the various Last Supper texts are based.
We can travel further back still, long before even the emergence of Christianity. After all,
Jesus was a Jew, and so his act of breaking bread with the disciples reminds us of the entire
history of the Jewish people, including their harrowing escape from Egyptian slavery and
their receiving of the Torah at Sinai.
But we can go back even further. Any religious meal is, before it is anything else, a meal. It is
an act of table-sharing, certainly an important ritual in the ancient Near East. Seder, and
later communion, were “taken up” theologically and liturgically, but the positive feelings
around table-sharing were already in place. They’d already been in place since the
emergence of modern humans, about 200,000 years ago.
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The sharing of food is common in many world religions - and it may reflect some prehistoric
preoccupations (Credit: Getty)
And yet – Homo sapiens wasn’t the only species to discover the benefits of food-sharing.
Neanderthals certainly pooled their resources, as did the several other Homo species dating
back two million years.
“Think of uber pro-social hunter-gatherers having a meal,” one of my theology professors
told me when I wondered about the deep evolutionary history behind the Eucharist. “The
hunters feel proud to have done well and shared with their family; those who prepared the
food are recognised and appreciated; everyone’s belly is getting filled and feeling good; and
so many positive social interactions are taking place. No wonder so much mythological
content is built up around the meal.”
But food-sharing even predates our Homo ancestors, and is currently observed in
chimpanzees and bonobos. In fact, one recent paper even documented research of bonobos
sharing food with bonobos outside of their own social group. Barbara Fruth, one of the
study’s authors, told the digital magazine Sapiens that meal-sharing “must have its roots in
our last common ancestor”. Based on the molecular clock, the last common ancestor, or
LCA, of humans and Great Apes lived about 19 million years ago.
When I hear the words “This is my Body,” then, my mind immediately launches into a race to
the evolutionary starting line, if you will.
Deep religion
I begin with a discussion of the Eucharist because my particular religious tradition is
Christian. But the point I’m making – that religious experiences emerge from very specific,
very long histories – could be made with most religious phenomena. That’s because, in the
words of the late sociologist Robert Bellah, “Nothing is ever lost.” History goes all the way
back, and who and how and where we are now is the result of its winding forward. Any
human phenomenon that exists is a human phenomenon that became what it is. This is no
less true of religion.
If we’re going to think about the deep history of religion, then we need to be clear about
what religion is. In his book The Bonobo and the Atheist, the primatologist Frans de Waal
shares a funny story about participating in a panel hosted by the American Academy of
Religion. When one participant suggested they start with defining religion, someone was
quick to note that last time they tried to do that, “half the audience had angrily stomped out
of the room”. Quipped de Waal: “And this in an academy named after the topic!”
Still, we need to start somewhere, so de Waal suggests this definition: religion is “the shared
reverence for the supernatural, sacred, or spiritual as well as the symbols, rituals, and
worship that are associated with it”. De Waal’s definition echoes one given by sociologist
Émile Durkheim, who also emphasised the importance of shared experiences that “unite
into one single moral community”.
The importance of shared experience can’t be overstated since, in the story we’re telling,
the evolution of human religion is inseparable from the ever-increasing sociality of the
hominin line. As Bellah points out, religion is as a way of being. We might also view it as a
way of feeling, as a way of feeling together.
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Followers of the Nazareth Baptist Church climb the Nhlangakazi Holy Mountain. Religious beliefs
and rituals help to unite groups of individuals (Credit: Getty)
While much of the scientific study of religion is on theology-based doctrinal religions, the
evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar thinks this is a narrow way of studying the
phenomenon because it “completely ignores the fact that for most of human history
religions have had a very different shamanic-like form that lacks gods and moral codes”. (By
shamanic, Dunbar means religions of experience that commonly involve trance and travel in
spirit worlds.) While the theology-based forms are only a few thousand years old and
characteristic of post-agricultural societies, Dunbar argues that the shamanic forms date
back 500,000 years. These, he claims, are characteristic of hunter-gatherers.
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If we want to understand how and why religion evolved, Dunbar says we need to start out by
examining religions “with the cultural accretions stripped away”. We need to focus less on
questions about Big Gods and creeds, and more on questions about the capacities that
emerged in our ancient ancestors that allowed them to achieve a religious way of being
together.
Adaptation or by-product?
All societies, after all, seem to have religions of some sort. “There are no exceptions to this,”
de Waal told me over the phone.
Ifall societieshave religion,itmusthaveasocialpurpose–
FransdeWaal
There are two major perspectives on why this might be. One is called functionalism or
adaptationism: the idea that religion brings positive evolutionary benefits, which are most
often framed in terms of its contribution to group living. As de Waal puts it: “If all societies
have [religion], it must have a social purpose.”
Others take the view that religion is a spandrel, or by-product of evolutionary processes.
The word spandrel refers to an architectural shape that emerges as a by-product between
arches and ceiling. Religion, on this interpretation, is akin to a vestigial organ. Perhaps it was
adaptive in the environments it originally evolved in, but in this environment it’s
maladaptive. Or perhaps religious beliefs are the result of psychological mechanisms that
evolved to solve ecological problems unrelated to religion. Either way, evolution didn’t “aim”
at religion; religion just emerged as evolution “aimed” at other things.
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While folks on both sides of this debate have their reasons, it seems unhelpful to frame the
evolution of religion in such either/or terms. Something that was merely a by-product of a
blind evolutionary process could well be taken up by human beings to perform a specific
function or solve a specific problem. (Read about what the future of religion could be like.)
Muslim worshippers perform the evening (Isha) prayers at the Kaaba. Emotions such as awe,
loyalty, and love are central to many religious celebrations (Credit: Getty)
This can be true for many behaviours – including music – but religion presents a particular
puzzle, since it often involves extremely costly behaviours, such as altruism and, at times,
even self-sacrifice.
For this reason, some theorists such as Dunbar argue that we should also look beyond the
individual to the survival of the group.
This is known as multilevel selection, which “recognises that fitness benefits can sometimes
accrue to individuals through group-level effects, rather than always being the direct
product of the individual’s own actions”, as Dunbar defines it.
An example is cooperative hunting, which enables groups to catch bigger prey than any
members could catch as individuals. Bigger prey means more for me, even if I have to share
the meat (since the animal being shared is already larger than anything I could catch alone).
Such group-level processes “require the individual to be sensitive to the needs of other
members of the group”, says Dunbar.
There is no history of the religion of an individual creature. Our story is about us.
Feeling first
If we are to understand religion, then, we first need to look back into your deep history to
understand how human ancestors evolved to live in groups in the first place.
We are, after all, descended from a long line of ancestral hominoids with “weak social ties
and no permanent group structures”, says Jonathan Turner, author of The Emergence and
Evolution of Religion. That leads Turner to what he considers the million-dollar question:
“How did Darwinian selection work on the neuroanatomy of hominins to make them more
social so they could generate cohesive social bonds to form primary groups?” he asked me
on the phone. “That’s not a natural thing for apes.”
Our ape line evolved from our last common ancestor around 19 million years ago.
Orangutans broke away about 13-16 million years ago, while the gorilla line branched away
about 8-9 million years ago. The hominin line then branched into two about 5-7 million
years ago, with one line leading to the chimpanzees and bonobos, and the other leading to
us. We modern humans share 99% of our genes with living chimpanzees – which means
we’re the two most closely related apes in the whole line.
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Humanreligionemergesoutofourincreasedcapacityfor
sociality
The similarities between humans and chimps are well known, but one important difference
has to do with group size. Chimpanzees, on average, can maintain a group size of about 45,
says Dunbar. “This appears to be the largest group size that can be maintained through
grooming alone,” he says. In contrast, the average human group is about 150, known as
Dunbar’s Number. The reason for this, says Dunbar, is that humans have the capacity to
reach three times as many social contacts as chimps for a given amount of social effort.
Human religion emerges out of this increased capacity for sociality.
How come? As our ape ancestors moved from receding forest habitats to more open
environments, like the savannahs of eastern and southern Africa, Darwinian pressures acted
on them to make them more social for increased protection from predators and better
access to food; it also made it easier to find a mate. Without the ability to maintain new
structures – like small groups of five or six so-called nuclear families, says Turner – these
apes wouldn’t have been able to survive.
So how did nature achieve this socialisation process? Turner says the key isn’t with what we
typically think of as intelligence, but rather with the emotions, which was accompanied by
some important changes to our brain structure. Although the neocortex figures prominently
in many theories of the evolution of religion, Turner says the more important alterations
concerned the subcortical parts of the brain, which gave hominins the capacity to
experience a broader range of emotions. These enhanced emotions promoted bonding, a
crucial achievement for the development of religion.
Complex religious feelings are often the combination of many emotions. Awe, for instance, is a
heady mix of fear and happiness (Credit: Getty)
The process of subcortical enhancement Turner refers to dates to about 4.5 million years
ago, when the first Australopithecine emerged. Initially, says Turner, selection increased the
size of their brains about 100 cubic centimetres (cc) beyond that of chimpanzees, to about
450 cc (in Australopithecus afarensis). For the sake of comparison, this is smaller than later
hominins – Homo habilis had a cranial capacity of 775 cc, while Homo erectus was slightly
larger at 800-850. Modern humans, in contrast, boast a brain size much bigger than any of
these, with a cranial capacity of up to 1,400 cc.
Itis inthe storyofhowthese [subcortical]mechanisms
evolvedthat,ultimately,theoriginsofreligionare tobe
discovered–JonathanTurner
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But the comparably smaller brain size doesn’t mean that nothing was happening to the
hominin brain. Brain size is measured by an endocast, but Turner says these do not reflect
the subcortical enhancement that was occurring between the emergence of Australopiths
(around 4 million years ago) and Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago). “It is in the story of
how these [subcortical] mechanisms evolved that, ultimately, the origins of religion are to
be discovered.”
Although the neocortex of humans is three times the size of apes’, the subcortex is only
twice as big – which leads Turner to believe that the enhancement of hominin emotion was
well underway before the neocortex began to grow to its current human size.
Here’s how nature pulled it off. You’ve probably heard talk of the so-called four primary
emotions: aggression, fear, sadness, and happiness. Notice anything about that list? Three
of the emotions are negative. But the promotion of solidarity requires positive emotions –
so natural selection had to find a way to mute the negative emotions and enhance the
positive ones, Turner says. The emotional capacities of great apes (particularly
chimpanzees) were already more elaborate than many other mammals, so selection had
something to work with.
At this point in his argument, Turner introduces the concept of first- and second-order
elaborations, which are emotions that are the result of a combinations of two or more
primary emotions. So, for example, the combination of happiness and anger generates
vengeance, while jealousy is the result of combining anger and fear. Awe, which figures
majorly in religion, is the combination of fear and happiness. Second-order elaborations are
even more complex, and occurred in the evolution from Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago)
to Homo sapiens (about 200,000 years ago). Guilt and shame, for example, two crucial
emotions for the development of religion, are the combination of sadness, fear, and anger.
Kashmiri Muslims celebrate Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, the anniversary of the Prophet's birth (Credit:
Getty)
It’s difficult to imagine religion without the capacity to experience these emotional
elaborations for the same reason it’s difficult to imagine close social groups without them:
such an emotional palette binds us to one another at a visceral level. “Human solidarities
are only possible by emotional arousal revolving around positive emotions – love, happiness,
satisfaction, caring, loyalty – and the mitigation of the power of negative emotions, or at
least some negative emotions,” says Turner. “And once these new valences of positive
emotions are neurologically possible, they can become entwined with rituals and other
emotion-arousing behaviours to enhance solidarities and, eventually, produce notions of
power gods and supernatural forces.”
Not to jump ahead too far, but it’s important to understand how pivotal feeling is in the
evolution of religion. As far as Darwin was convinced, there wasn’t any difference between
religious feeling and any other feeling. “It is an argument for materialism,” he wrote in a
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journal entry, “that cold water brings on suddenly in head, a frame of mind, analogous to
those feelings, which may be considered as truly spiritual.” If this is true, then that means
the causes of religious feelings can be pinpointed and studied just like any other feeling.
Ritual
As selection worked on existing brain structures, enhancing emotional and interpersonal
capacities, certain behavioural propensities of apes began to evolve. Some of the
propensities that Turner lists as already present in apes include: the ability to read eyes and
faces and to imitate facial gestures; various capacities for empathy; the ability to become
emotionally aroused in social settings; the capacity to perform rituals; a sense of reciprocity
and justice; and the ability to see the self as an object in an environment. An increase in the
emotional palette available to apes would, according to Turner, result in an increase in all of
these behavioural capacities.
Though many if not all of these behaviours have been documented in apes, I want to
concentrate on two of them – ritual and empathy – without which religion would be
unthinkable.
In archival footage, primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall describes the well-
known waterfall dance which has been widely observed in chimpanzees. Her comments are
worth quoting at length:
When the chimpanzees approach, they hear this roaring sound, and you see their hair stands a
little on end and then they move a bit quicker. When they get here, they’ll rhythmically sway,
often upright, picking up big rocks and throwing them for maybe 10 minutes. Sometimes
climbing up the vines at the side and swinging out into the spray, and they’re right down in the
water which normally they avoid. Afterwards you’ll see them sitting on a rock, actually in the
stream, looking up, watching the water with their eyes as it falls down, and then watching it
going away. I can’t help feeling that this waterfall display or dance is perhaps triggered by
feelings awe, wonder that we feel.
The chimpanzee’s brain is so like ours: they have emotions that are clearly similar to or the
same as those that we call happiness, sad, fear, despair, and so forth – the incredible
intellectual abilities that we used to think unique to us. So why wouldn’t they also have feelings
of some kind of spirituality, which is really being amazed at things outside yourself?
Goodall has observed a similar phenomenon happen during a heavy rain. These
observations have led her to conclude that chimpanzees are as spiritual as we are. “They
can’t analyse it, they don’t talk about it, they can’t describe what they feel. But you get the
feeling that it’s all locked up inside them and the only way they can express it is through this
fantastic rhythmic dance.” In addition to the displays that Goodall describes, others have
observed various carnivalesque displays, drumming sessions, and various hooting rituals.
The roots of ritual are in what Bellah calls “serious play” – activities done for their own sake,
which may not serve an immediate survival capacity, but which have “a very large
potentiality of developing more capacities”. This view fits with various theories in
developmental science, showing that playful activities are often crucial for developing
important abilities like theory of mind and counterfactual thinking.
Play, in this evolutionary sense, has many unique characteristics: it must be performed “in a
relaxed field” – when the animal is fed and healthy and stress-free (which is why it is most
common in species with extended parental care). Play also occurs in bouts: it has a clear
beginning and ending. In dogs, for example, play is initiated with a “bow”. Play involves a
sense of justice, or at least equanimity: big animals need to self-handicap in order to not
hurt smaller animals. And it might go without saying, but play is embodied.
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Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men take part in the Tashlich ritual, during which sins are cast into the
water to the fish (Credit: Getty)
Now compare that to ritual, which is enacted, which is embodied. Rituals begin and end.
They require both shared intention and shared attention. There are norms involved. They
take place in a time within time – beyond the time of the everyday. (Think, for example, of a
football game in which balls can be caught “out of bounds” and time can be paused. We
regularly participate in modes of reality in which we willingly bracket out “the real world”.
Play allows us to do this.) Most important of all, says Bellah, play is a practice in itself, and
“not something with an external end”.
Bellah calls ritual “the primordial form of serious play in human evolutionary history”, which
means that ritual is an enhancement of the capacities that make play first possible in the
mammalian line. There is a continuity between the two. And while Turner acknowledges it
might be pushing it to refer to a chimpanzee waterfall dance or carnival as Ritual with a
capital R, it is possible to affirm that “these ritual-like behavioural propensities suggest that
some of what is needed for religious behaviour is part of the genome of chimpanzees, and
hence, hominins”.
Empathy
The second trait we must consider is empathy. Empathy is not primarily in the head. It’s in
the body – at least that’s how it started. It began, writes de Waal, “with the synchronisation
of bodies, running when others run, laughing when others laugh, crying when others cry, or
yawning when others yawn”.
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Buddhist monks launch a sky lantern during the Yee Peng Festival in Chiang Mai. The ritual
symbolises the release of kindness and goodwill (Credit: Getty)
Empathy is absolutely central to what we call morality, says de Waal. “Without empathy, you
can’t get human morality. It makes us interested in others. It makes us have an emotional
stake in them.” If religion, according to our definition, is a way of being together, then
morality, which instructs us as to the best ways to be together, is an inextricable part of that.
De Waal has been criticised over the years for offering a rose-coloured interpretation of
animal behaviour. Rather than view animal behaviour as altruistic, and therefore springing
from a sense of empathy, we should, these wise scientists tell us, see this behaviour for what
it is: selfishness. Animals want to survive. Period. Any action they take needs to be
interpreted within that matrix.
But this is a misguided way of talking about altruism, de Waal says.
“We see animals want to share food even though it costs them. We do experiments on them
and the general conclusion is that many animals’ first tendency is to be altruistic and
cooperative. Altruistic tendencies come very naturally to many mammals.”
But isn’t this just self-preservation? Aren’t the animals just acting in their own best
interests? If they behave in a way that appears altruistic, aren’t they just preparing (so to
speak) for a time when they will need help? “To call that selfish,” says an incredulous de
Waal, “because in the end of course these pro-social tendencies have benefits?” To do that,
he says, is to define words into meaninglessness.
Yes, of course there are pleasurable sensations associated with the action of giving to
others. But evolution has produced pleasurable sensations for behaviours we need to
perform, like sex and eating and female-nursing. The same is true for altruism, says de Waal.
That does not fundamentally alter what the behaviour is.
Such a hard and fast line between altruism and selfishness, then, is naive at best and
deceptive at worst. And we can see the same with discussions of social norms. Philosophers
such as David Hume have made the distinction between what a behaviour “is” and what it
“ought” to be, which is a staple of ethical deliberation. An animal may perform the
behaviour X, but does it do so because it feels it should do so – thanks to an appreciation of
a norm?
Women prepare food for the homeless during a charity Christmas dinner (Credit: Getty)
This distinction is one that de Waal has run into from philosophers who say that any of his
observations of empathy or morality in animals can’t possibly tell him about whether or not
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they have norms. De Waal disagrees, pointing out that animals do recognise norms:
The simplest example is a spider web or nest. If you disturb it, the animal’s going to repair that
right away because they have a norm for how it should look and function. They either abandon
it, or start over and repair it. Animals are capable of having goals and striving towards them. In
the social world, if they have a fight, they come together and try to repair damage. They try to
get back to an ought state. They have norm of how this distribution should be. The idea that
normativity is [restricted to] humans is not correct.
In the Bonobo and the Atheist, de Waal argues that animals seem to possess a mechanism
for social repair. “About 30 different primate species reconcile after fights, and that
reconciliation is not limited to the primates. There is evidence for this mechanism in hyenas,
dolphins, wolves, domestic goats.”
He also finds evidence that animals “actively try to preserve harmony within their social
network ... by reconciling after conflict, protesting against unequal divisions, and breaking
up fights among others. They behave normatively in the sense of correcting, or trying to
correct, deviations from an ideal state. They also show emotional self-control and
anticipatory conflict resolution in order to prevent such deviations. This makes moving from
primate behaviour to human moral norms less of a leap than commonly thought.”
There’s obviously a gap between primate social repair and the institutionalisation of moral
codes that lie at the heart of modern human societies. Still, says de Waal, all of these
“human moral systems make use of primate tendencies”.
How far back to these tendencies go? Probably, like those capacities that allowed for play
(and ultimately ritual), to the advent of parental care. “During 200 million years of
mammalian evolution, females sensitive to their offspring out-reproduced those who were
cold and distant,” says de Waal. Of course, nurturing is arguably seen in species of fish,
crocodiles, and snakes, but the nurturing capabilities of mammals is really a giant leap
forward in the evolutionary story.
The early dawn of religion
Our religious services of today may seem worlds away from the mammalian play and
empathy that emerged in our deep past, and indeed institutionalised religion is much more
advanced than a so-called waterfall dance. But evolution teaches us that complex, advanced
phenomena develop from simple beginnings. As Bellah reminds us, we don’t come from
nowhere. “We are embedded in a deep biological and cosmological history.”
Our religious services of today seem worlds away from their ancient origins, but like all human
behaviours, they are deeply embedded in evolutionary history (Credit: Getty)
As the ape line evolved from our last common ancestor in more open environments, it was
necessary to pressure apes, who prefer to go it alone, to form more lasting social structures.
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Natural selection was able to accomplish this astonishing feat by enhancing the emotional
palettes available that had long been available to our ancestors. With a broader set of
emotions, the hominin brain was then able to enhance some of its capabilities, some of
which quite naturally lent themselves a religious way of being. As these capacities got more
acutely enhanced with the growth of the Homo brain and the development of the neocortex,
behaviours such as play and ritual entered a new phase in hominin development, becoming
the raw materials out of which cultural evolution would begin to institutionalise religion.
And though this history doesn’t determine us – for with each new phase in life’s story comes
greater power of agency – this bio-cosmological history influences everything we do and
are. Even the most seemingly autonomous human decision is made from within history.
That’s the big picture here. That’s what we’ve been keeping in mind as we made our way
back in time to the evolutionary seeds that would eventually – and quite slowly – blossom
into human religion.
Though I often think theologically about the words “This is my body,” I shouldn’t overlook
the basic fact that communion is about bodies – mine, yours, ours. Religion is an embodied
phenomenon because the human religious way of being has evolved for millions of years as
the bodies of our ancestors interacted with the other bodies around them. Whether or not
one takes communion or even feels religious, we are at all times navigating our social
worlds with our evolved capacities to play, to empathise, and to celebrate rituals with each
other.
--
Brandon Ambrosino has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Politico,
Economist, and other publications. He lives in Delaware. This is the first of a two-part special
examining the evolutionary roots of religion.
Join 900,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only
Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital,
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S H A R E
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Universalizing and Ethnic Religions
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Universalizing and Ethnic Religions
It is important to know the difference between universalizing religions and ethnic religions. When people move, they bring their religion with them whether it is universalizing or ethnic. Whether other people embrace it depends on how easy it is to adopt into their culture. Haitian Vodou is an ethnic religion. It relocated from Haiti to the United States when Haitian plantation owners escaped with their slaves to New Orleans during the Haitian Revolution. Other African slaves in the United States embraced it, but it also changed to reflect more of their culture.
The article below talks about universalizing and ethnic religions. As you read about it, think about the characteristics of each type of religion.
Universalizing and Ethnic Religions
This is a part of an online chapter from Contemporary Human Geography published by Pearson Higher Education. Here is the link to the complete chapter: https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/1/3/2/013243573X.pdf his link opens in a new window/tab)
CHAPTER 6
Stonehenge, England, at winter solstice sunset.
Religion
And He shall judge between the nations,
And shall decide for many peoples;
And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
And their spears into pruning-hooks:
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more.
T
Isaiah 2:4
his passage from the Bible, the holiest book of Christianity and
Judaism, is one of the most eloquent pleas for peace among the
nations of the world. For many religious people, especially in
the Western Hemisphere and Europe, Isaiah evokes a highly
attractive image of the ideal future landscape.
Islam’s holiest book, the Quran (sometimes spelled Koran), also
evokes powerful images of a peaceful landscape:
He it is who sends down water from the sky, whence ye have drink,
and whence the trees grow whereby ye feed your flocks.
He makes the corn to grow, and the olives, and the palms, and the
grapes, and some of every fruit; verily, in that is a sign unto a people
who reflect.
Sûrah (Chapter) of the Bee XVI.9
Most religious people pray for peace, but religious groups may
not share the same vision of how peace will be achieved. Geogra-
phers see that the process by which one religion diffuses across the
landscape may conflict with the distribution of others. Geographers
are concerned with the regional distribution of different religions
and the resulting potential for conflict.
Geographers also observe that religions are derived in part from
elements of the physical environment, and that religions, in turn,
modify the landscape. As evidence of this, note the rich agricultural
images in the passages just quoted from the Bible and the Quran.
K E Y I S S U E S
1. Where are religions
distributed?
2. Why do religions have
different distributions?
3. Why do religions organize
space in distinctive patterns?
4. Why do territorial conflicts
arise among religious groups?
180181182 Chapter 6 Religion
CASE STUDY
The Dalai Lama Versus
the People’s Republic of China
The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan
Buddhists, is as important to that religion as the Pope is
to Roman Catholics. Traditionally, the Dalai Lama—
which translates as oceanic teacher—was not only the
spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism but also the head
of the government of Tibet. The first photograph of
this chapter shows the Dalai Lama’s former palace
in Tibet’s capital Lhasa, situated in the Himalaya
Mountains.
China, which had ruled Tibet from 1720 until its
independence in 1911, invaded the rugged, isolated
country in 1950, turned it into a province named Xizang
in 1951, and installed a Communist government in Tibet
in 1953. After crushing a rebellion in 1959, China
executed or imprisoned tens of thousands and forced another
100,000, including the Dalai Lama, to emigrate. Buddhist
temples were closed and demolished, and religious artifacts
and scriptures were destroyed.
Why did the Chinese try to dismantle the religious
institutions of a poor, remote country? At issue was
the fact that the presence of strong religious feelings
among the Tibetan people conflicted with the aims
of the Chinese government. The conflict between tra-
ditional Buddhism and the Chinese government is one
of many examples of the impact of religion. However,
in the modern world of global economics and culture,
local religious belief continues to play a strong role in
people’s lives.
Religion interests geographers because it is essential for
understanding how humans occupy Earth. As always, human
geographers start by asking “where” and “why.” The predom-
inant religion varies among regions of the world, as well as
among regions within North America. Geographers docu-
ment the places where various religions are located in the
world and offer explanations for why some religions have
widespread distributions, whereas others are highly clustered
in particular places.
To understand why some religions occupy more space than
others, geographers must look at differences among practices of
various faiths. Geographers, though, are not theologians, so
they stay focused on those elements of religions that are geo-
graphically significant. Geographers study spatial connections
in religion: the distinctive place of origin of religions, the extent
of diffusion of religions from their places of origin, the
processes by which religions diffused to other locations, and the
religious practices and beliefs that lead some religions to have
more widespread distributions.
Geographers find the tension in scale between globalization
and local diversity especially acute in religion for a number of
reasons:
• People care deeply about their religion and draw from reli-
gion their core values and beliefs, an essential element of the
definition of culture.
• Some religions are actually designed to appeal to people
throughout the world, whereas other religions are designed
to appeal primarily to people in geographically limited areas.
• Religious values are important in understanding not only
how people identify themselves, as was the case with lan-
guage, but also the meaningful ways that they organize the
landscape.
• Most (though not all) religions require exclusive adherence,
so adopting a global religion usually requires turning away
from a traditional local religion, whereas people can learn a
globally important language such as English and at the
same time still speak the language of their local culture.
• Like language, migrants take their religion with them to
new locations, but although migrants typically learn the lan-
guage of the new location, they retain their religion.
This chapter starts by describing the distribution of major
religions, then in the second section explains why some religions
have diffused widely, whereas others have not. As a major facet
of culture, religion leaves a strong imprint on the physical envi-
ronment, discussed in the third section of the chapter. Religion,
like other cultural characteristics, can be a source of pride and
a means of identification with a distinct culture. Unfortunately,
intense identification with one religion can lead adherents into
conflict with followers of other religions, discussed in the fourth
key issue of the chapter.K E Y I S S U E 1
Where Are Religions Distributed?
• Universalizing religions
• Ethnic religions
Only a few religions can claim the adherence of large numbers of people. Each
of these faiths has a distinctive distribution across Earth’s surface (Figure 6–1).
Geographers distinguish two types of religions: universalizing and ethnic.
Universalizing religions attempt to be global, to appeal to all people,
wherever they may live in the world, not just to those of one culture or loca-
tion. An ethnic religion appeals primarily to one group of people living in
one place. About 62 percent of the world’s population adhere to a universal-
izing religion, 24 percent to an ethnic religion, and 14 percent to no religion.
This section examines the world’s three main universalizing religions and
some representative ethnic religions.
Universalizing Religions
The three main universalizing religions are Christianity, Islam,
and Buddhism. Each of the three is divided into branches,
denominations, and sects. A branch is a large and fundamental
division within a religion. A denomination is a division of a
branch that unites a number of local congregations in a single
legal and administrative body. A sect is a relatively small group
that has broken away from an established denomination.
Christianity
Christianity has more than 2 billion adherents, far more than
any other world religion, and has the most widespread distribu-
tion. It is the predominant religion in North America, South
America, Europe, and Australia, and countries with a Christian
majority exist in Africa and Asia as well.
BRANCHES OF CHRISTIANITY. Christianity has three major
branches—Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox.
Roman Catholics comprise 52 percent of the world’s Christians,
Protestants 21 percent, and Eastern Orthodox 10 percent. In
addition, 22 percent of Christians belong to churches that do
not consider themselves within one of the above three branches,
and 5 percent of self-professed Christians are unaffiliated with
any church. This list adds up to 110 percent, because 10 percent
of Christians have been baptized in more than one church and
have therefore been counted more than once.
Within Europe, Roman Catholicism is the dominant
Christian branch in the southwest and east, Protestantism in
the northwest, and Eastern Orthodoxy in the east and south-
east (Figure 6–2). The regions of Roman Catholic and
Protestant majorities frequently have sharp boundaries, even
when they run through the middle of countries. For example,
the Netherlands and Switzerland have approximately equal
percentages of Roman Catholics and Protestants, but the
Universalizing Religions 183
Roman Catholic populations are concentrated in the south of
these countries and the Protestant populations in the north.
The Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity is a collection
of 14 self-governing churches in Eastern Europe and the Middle
East. More than 40 percent of all Eastern Orthodox Christians
belong to one of these 14—the Russian Orthodox Church.
Christianity came to Russia in the tenth century, and the Russian
Orthodox Church was established in the sixteenth century.
Nine of the other 13 self-governing churches were estab-
lished in the nineteenth or twentieth century. The largest of
these nine, the Romanian Church, includes 20 percent of
all Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Bulgarian, Greek, and
Serbian Orthodox churches have approximately 10 percent each.
The other five recently established Orthodox churches—
Albania, Cyprus, Georgia, Poland, and Sinai—combined have
about 2 percent of all Eastern Orthodox Christians.
The remaining four of the 14 Eastern Orthodox churches—
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—trace
their origins to the earliest days of Christianity. They have
a combined membership of about 3 percent of all Eastern
Orthodox Christians.
CHRISTIANITY IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE. The over-
whelming percentage of people living in the Western Hemi-
sphere—nearly 90 percent—are Christian. About 5 percent
belong to other religions, and the remaining 6 percent profess
adherence to no religion.
A fairly sharp boundary exists within the Western Hemisphere
in the predominant branches of Christianity. Roman Catholics
comprise 93 percent of Christians in Latin America, compared
with 29 percent in North America. Within North America,
Roman Catholics are clustered in the southwestern and north-
eastern United States and the Canadian province of Québec.
Protestant churches have approximately 83 million mem-
bers, or about 28 percent of the U.S. population. Baptist
churches have the largest number of adherents in the United
States, about 35 million combined (Table 6–1). The next three
largest Protestant denominations in the United States are
Methodist, Pentecostal, and Lutheran.
Membership in some Protestant churches varies by region of
the United States. Baptists, for example, are highly clustered in
the southeast, and Lutherans in the upper midwest. Other
Christian denominations are more evenly distributed around
the country (Figure 6–3).
SMALLER BRANCHES OF CHRISTIANITY. Several other
Christian churches developed independent of the three main
branches. Many of these Christian communities were isolated
from others at an early point in the development of Christianity,
partly because of differences in doctrine and partly as a result of
Islamic control of intervening territory in Southwest Asia and
North Africa. Two small Christian churches survive in northeast
Africa—the Coptic Church of Egypt and the Ethiopian Church.
The Ethiopian Church, with perhaps 10 million adherents, split
from the Egyptian Coptic Church in 1948, although it traces its
roots to the fourth century, when two shipwrecked Christians,
who were taken as slaves, ultimately converted the Ethiopian
king to Christianity.184 Chapter 6 Religion
FIGURE 6–1 World distribution of religions. More
than two-thirds of Earth’s people adhere to one of four
religions:
• Christianity: 33 percent, especially in Europe and
the Western Hemisphere
• Islam: 20 percent, especially in northern Africa and
Southwest and Southeast Asia
• Hinduism: 13 percent, virtually all in India
• Buddhism: 6 percent, especially in East and South-
east Asia
Eleven percent adhere to one of a number of ethnic
religions based in Africa or Asia. Three percent belong
to another universalizing religion. The remaining 14
percent are nonreligious or atheists. In China and sub-
Saharan Africa, many people profess adherence to both
an ethnic and a universalizing religion. The small pie
charts on the map show the overall proportion of the
world’s religions in each world region. The large pie
chart below shows the worldwide percentage of people
adhering to the various religions.
80°
ARCTIC OCEAN
70°
70°
60°
50°
2% Other
religions
10% Nonreligious
2% Sunni
Muslim
2% Jewish
40°
25%
Catholic
30%
Other
Christian
29%
Protestant
30°
ANGLO-AMERICA
160°
Tropic of Cancer
60°
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
50°
3% Nonreligious
4% Other
religions
40°
30°
20°
10°
0°
10°
20°
140°
130°
PACIFIC
OCEAN
120°
110°
84%
Catholic
100°
10° 10°
90°
20°
9%
Protestant
10°
LATIN
AMERICA
Equator
40°
20°
30°
40°
50°
UNIVERSALIZING RELIGIONS
CHRISTIANITY ISLAM
20°
Roman Catholic
Sunni
Protestant
Shiite
30°
Eastern Orthodox
30°
Buddhism
Other
Sikhism
40°
ETHNIC RELIGIONS
40°
Hinduism
African
Judaism
50°
Mixed with
50°
universalizing
30°
40°
50°
Other
universalizing
RELIGIONS
(Percentage of people
practicing each)
S
O
N
L
I
E
I
G
A
I
N
Other ethnic
R
S
T
G
R
I
2
N
H
I
C
Roman Catholic
17
Nonreligious
14
4
Z
I
Protestant
7
Eastern
Orthodox
L
3
Hindu
13
A
6
S
R
E
Sunni
Muslim
17
7
3
6
V
S
N
O
I
G
I
L
E
R
C
I
N
H
E
T
I
N
Other
Christian
U
Buddhist
Shiite Muslim
East Asian ethnic
The Armenian Church originated in Antioch, Syria, and was
important in diffusing Christianity to South and East Asia between
the seventh and thirteenth centuries. The church’s few present-
day adherents are concentrated in Lebanon and Armenia, as well
as in northeastern Turkey and western Azerbaijan. Despite the
small number of adherents, the Armenian Church, like other small
sects, plays a significant role in regional conflicts. For example,
Armenian Christians have fought for the independence of
Nagorno-Karabakh, a portion of Azerbaijan, because Nagorno-
Karabakh is predominantly Armenian, whereas the remainder of
Azerbaijan is overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim (see Chapter 7).
The Maronites are another example of a small Christian sect
that plays a disproportionately prominent role in political unrest.
They are clustered in Lebanon, which has suffered through a long
civil war fought among religious groups (see Chapter 7).
In the United States, members of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) regard their church as
a branch of Christianity separate from other branches. About
3 percent of Americans are members of the Latter-Day Saints,
a large percentage clustered in Utah and surrounding states.
Islam
Islam, the religion of 1.3 billion people, is the predominant reli-
gion of the Middle East from North Africa to Central Asia
(Figure 6–1). However, half of the world’s Muslims live in fourUniversalizing Religions 185
1% Other
Religions
ARCTIC OCEAN
Arctic Circle
17% Catholic
3% Protestant
6% Sunni
Muslim
4% Other
Christian EASTERN
EUROPE
31% Orthodox
1% Other Christian
16%
Orthodox
53%
Catholic 21%
Protestant
40°
WESTERN
EUROPE
30°
43%
Nonreligious
1% Jewish
3% Sunni Muslim
6% Other religions
21%
Catholic
16%
Animist
10°
26%
Sunni
Muslim
24%
Protestant
6% Other
6%
Christian
Orthodox
20°
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
0°
ATLANTIC OCEAN
30°
40°
50°
2%
Sunni Muslim
10%
Buddhist
5%
Shinto
18%
Chinese
folk
64%
Non-
religious
1%
Other
religions
EAST
ASIA
40°
PACIFIC
OCEAN
5% other
religions
30°
22%
Catholic
4%
Nonreligious
5%
Protestant
ARABIAN
SEA
BAY OF
BENGAL
2%
1% Other religions 2%
Orthodox
1% Jewish
Sikh
27%
Shiite
3%
Shiite Muslim
Muslim
13%
Buddhist
20°
51%
Sunni
4%
Muslim
Other
religions 2%
Christian
SOUTHEAST
ASIA
10°
50°
69%
Sunni
Muslim
Sunni
Muslim
24%
Equator
140°
65%
Hindu
MIDDLE EAST
INDIAN OCEAN
SOUTH ASIA
10°
120° 140° 150° 160° 170°
CORAL SEA
20°
20°
2%
Buddhist
5% Other
religions
Tropic of Capricorn
26%
Catholic 13%
Nonreligious
13% Other
Christian
39%
Protestant
2%
Orthodox
40°
SOUTH PACIFIC
110° 120° 130° 140° 150° 160° 180°
0
1,000 2,000
3,000 MILES
0
1,000 2,000
3,000 KILOMETERS
MODIFIED GOODE'S HOMOLOSINE EQUAL-AREA PROJECTION
30°
40°
30°
40°
50°
countries outside the Middle East—Indonesia, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, and India. The word Islam in Arabic means “submis-
sion to the will of God,” and it has a similar root to the Arabic
word for peace. An adherent of the religion of Islam is known as a
Muslim, which in Arabic means “one who surrenders to God.”
The core of Islamic belief is represented by five pillars of faith:
1. There is no god worthy of worship except the one God,
the source of all creation, and Muhammad is the messen-
ger of God.
2. Five times daily, a Muslim prays, facing the city of Makkah
(Mecca), as a direct link to God.
3. A Muslim gives generously to charity, as an act of purifica-
tion and growth.
4. A Muslim fasts during the month of Ramadan, as an act of
self-purification.
5. If physically and financially able, a Muslim makes a
pilgrimage to Makkah.
BRANCHES OF ISLAM. Islam is divided into two important
branches: Sunni (from the Arabic word for orthodox) and Shiite
(from the Arabic word for sectarian, sometimes written Shia in
English). Sunnis comprise 83 percent of Muslims and are the
largest branch in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and
Asia (see Figure 6–1).
Sixteen percent of Muslims are Shiites, clustered in a hand-
ful of countries. Nearly 30 percent of all Shiites live in Iran,
15 percent in Pakistan, and 10 percent in Iraq. Shiites comprise
nearly 90 percent of the population in Iran and more than half
of the population in Azerbaijan, Iraq, and the less populous
countries of Oman and Bahrain.
ISLAM IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE. The Muslim
population of North America and Europe has increased rapidly
in recent years. In Europe, Muslims account for 5 percent of
the population. France has the largest Muslim population,186 Chapter 6 Religion
60°
50°
40°
0
0
CHRISTIANITY IN EUROPE
Protestant majority
Lutheran
Calvinist
Church of England
Roman Catholic majority
Eastern Orthodox majority
Not Christian majority
20°
10°
0°
10°
ICELAND
A r c t i c
C i r
c
l
e
Y
F
I
A
N
W
N
L
R
E
A
O
D
250 500 MILES
N
250 500 KILOMETERS
E
W
S
N
D
ESTONIA
LATVIA
DENMARK
LITHUANIA
UNITED
No r th
Se a
RUSSIA
IRELAND
KINGDOM
BELARUS
NETHERLANDS
POLAND
BELGIUM
GERMANY
UKRAINE
CZECH
REP. SLOVAKIA
ATLANTIC
LUXEMBOURG
MOLDOVA
OCEAN
AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
FRANCE
SWITZ.
ROMANIA
L
A
G
U
T
R
O
P
SPAIN
SLOVENIA
CROATIA
BOSNIA &
SERBIA
HERZEGOVINA
I
MONTENEGRO
MACEDONIA
Y
ALBANIA
T A L
BULGARIA
C
E
E
E
R
G
Me dite r r a n e a n Se a
R U S S I A
Bla c k Se a
FIGURE 6–2 Branches of Christianity in Europe. In the United Kingdom, Germany, and Scandinavia the majority adhere to
a Protestant denomination. In Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Eastern Orthodoxy dominates. Roman Catholicism is
dominant in Southern, Central, and Southwestern Europe.
TABLE 6–1 Religions of the United States
250 million Christians
67 million Roman Catholics
4 million Orthodox
12 million a church of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
2 million another Orthodox church
83 million Protestants
35 million a Baptist church
16 million a Southern Baptist Convention church
5 million a National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., church
5 million a National Baptist Convention of America church
3 million a National Missionary Baptist Convention of America church
3 million a Progressive National Baptist Convention church
3 million another Baptist church
12 million a Methodist church
8 million a United Methodist church
4 million an African Methodist Episcopal or Episcopal Zion church
11 million a Pentecostal church
5 million a Church of God in Christ
3 million one of the Assemblies of God churches
2 million one of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the world churches
1 million another Pentacostal church
8 million a Lutheran church
5 million an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
2 million one of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod churches
1 million another Lutheran church
4 million a Presbyterian church
3 million a Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
1 million another Presbyterian church
2 million a Reformed church
1 million a United Church of Christ
1 million another Reformed church
2 million an Episcopal church
2 million a Church of the United Brethren in Christ
2 million one of the Churches of Christ
1 million a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
1 million a Seventh Day Adventist church
3 million another Protestant church
96 million other Christians
6 million a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
1 million a Jehovah’s Witness church
89 million marginal Christians, unaffiliated with a church, or affiliated
with multiple churches
7 million Muslims
5 million Sunni and Shiite Muslims
2 million Black Muslims
6 million Jews
3 million Buddhists
1 million Bahá’ís
1 million Hindus
4 million other faiths
30 million nonreligious or atheistUniversalizing Religions 187
45°
40°
35° 40°
35°
PACIFIC
OCEAN
30°
120°
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
30°
155°
22°
0 200 MI.
0 200 KM.
0
200 400 MILES
25°
0 400 MILES
0 400 KILOMETERS
180° 160° 140°
0
95°
200 400 KILOMETERS
90° 85° 75°
Baptist
Catholic
Christian
Latter-Day Saints
Lutheran
Mennonite
Methodist
Reformed
Other
FIGURE 6–3 Distribution of Christians in the United States. The shaded areas are U.S. counties in which more than
50 percent of church membership is concentrated in either Roman Catholicism or one Protestant denomination. Baptists are
concentrated in the Southeast, Lutherans in the Upper Midwest, Mormons in Utah and contiguous states, and Roman
Catholics in the Northeast and Southwest. The distinctive distribution of religious groups within the United States results
from patterns of migration, especially from Europe in the nineteenth century and from Latin America in recent years.
about 4 million, a legacy of immigration from predominantly
Muslim former colonies in North Africa. Germany has about
3 million Muslims, also a legacy of immigration, in Germany’s
case primarily from Turkey. In Southeast Europe, Albania,
Bosnia, and Serbia each have about 2 million Muslims.
The United States and Canada are home to approximately
5 million Muslims, an increase from only a few hundred thou-
sand in 1990. Islam also has a presence in the United States
through the Nation of Islam, also known as Black Muslims,
founded in Detroit in 1930 and led for more than 40 years by
Elijah Muhammad, who called himself “the messenger of Allah.”
Black Muslims lived austerely and advocated a separate
autonomous nation within the United States for their adherents.
Tension between Muhammad and a Black Muslim minister,
Malcolm X, divided the sect during the 1960s. After a pilgrim-
age to Makkah in 1963, Malcolm X converted to orthodox Islam
and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was
assassinated in 1965.
Since Muhammad’s death, in 1975, his son Wallace
D. Muhammad led the Black Muslims closer to the principles of
orthodox Islam, and the organization’s name was changed to the
American Muslim Mission. A splinter group adopted the ori-
ginal name, Nation of Islam, and continues to follow the
separatist teachings of Elijah Muhammad.
Buddhism
Buddhism, the third of the world’s major universalizing reli-
gions, has nearly 400 million adherents, who are mainly found
in China and Southeast Asia (refer to Figure 6–1). The founda-
tion of Buddhism is represented by these concepts, known as
the Four Noble Truths:
1. All living beings must endure suffering.
2. Suffering, which is caused by a desire to live, leads to rein-
carnation (repeated rebirth in new bodies or forms of life).
3. The goal of all existence is to escape from suffering and
the endless cycle of reincarnation into Nirvana (a state of
complete redemption), which is achieved through mental
and moral self-purification.
4. Nirvana is attained through an Eightfold Path, which
includes rightness of belief, resolve, speech, action, liveli-
hood, effort, thought, and meditation.
Like the other two universalizing religions, Buddhism split into
more than one branch, as followers disagreed on interpreting
statements by the founder, Siddhartha Gautama. The three main
branches are Mahayana, Theravada, and Tantrayana. Mahayanists
account for about 56 percent of Buddhists, primarily in China,
Japan, and Korea. Theravadists comprise about 38 percent of188 Chapter 6 Religion
A 34-meter (110-foot) statue of Buddha seated on a lotus flower stands at Po Lin
Monastery on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island, in China.
Buddhists, especially in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and
Thailand. The remaining 6 percent are Tantrayanists, found
primarily in Tibet and Mongolia.
An accurate count of Buddhists is especially difficult, because
only a few people participate in Buddhist institutions. Religious
functions are performed primarily by monks rather than by the
general public. Also, the number of Buddhists is difficult to count
because Buddhism, although a universalizing religion, differs in
significant respects from the Western concept of a formal reli-
gious system. Someone can be both a Buddhist and a believer in
other Eastern religions, whereas Christianity and Islam both
require exclusive adherence. Most Buddhists in China and Japan,
in particular, believe at the same time in an ethnic religion.
Other Universalizing Religions
Sikhism and Bahá’í are the two universalizing religions other
than Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism with the largest num-
bers of adherents. There are an estimated 25 million Sikhs and
8 million Bahá’ís. All but 3 million Sikhs are clustered in the
Punjab region of India, whereas Bahá’ís are dispersed among
many countries, primarily in Africa and Asia.
Sikhism’s first guru (religious teacher or enlightener) was
Nanak (1469–1538), who lived in a village near the city of Lahore,
in present-day Pakistan. God was revealed to Guru Nanak as The
One Supreme Being, or Creator, who rules the universe by divine
will. Only God is perfect, but people have the capacity for contin-
ual improvement and movement toward perfection by taking
individual responsibility for their deeds and actions on Earth, such
as heartfelt adoration, devotion, and surrender to the one God.
Sikhism’s most important ceremony, introduced by the tenth
guru, Gobind Singh (1666–1708), is the Amrit (or Baptism), in
which Sikhs declare they will uphold the principles of the faith.
Gobind Singh also introduced the practice of men wearing tur-
bans on their heads and never cutting their beards or hair.
Wearing a uniform gave Sikhs a disciplined outlook and a sense
of unity of purpose.
The Bahá’í religion is even more recent than Sikhism. It grew
out of the Bábi faith, which was founded in Shíráz, Iran, in 1844
by Siyyid ‘Ali Muhammad, known as the Báb (Persian for
“gateway”). Bahá’ís believe that one of the Báb’s disciples Husayn
‘Ali Nuri, known as Bahá’u’lláh (Arabic for “Glory of God”), was
the prophet and messenger of God. Bahá’u’lláh’s function was to
overcome the disunity of religions and establish a universal faith
through abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices.
Ethnic Religions
The ethnic religion with by far the largest number of followers is
Hinduism. With 860 million adherents, Hinduism is the world’s
third-largest religion, behind Christianity and Islam. Ethnic
religions in Asia and Africa comprise most of the remainder.
Hinduism
Ethnic religions typically have much more clustered distribu-
tions than do universalizing religions. Although Hinduism is
the world’s third-largest religion, 97 percent of Hindus are con-
centrated in one country, India, and most of the remainder can
be found in India’s neighbor Nepal. Hindus comprise more
than 80 percent of the population of these two countries, and a
small minority in every other country.
Rigid approach to theological matters is not central to
Hinduism. Hindus believe that it is up to the individual to
decide the best way to worship God. Various paths to reach
God include the path of knowledge, the path of renunciation,
the path of devotion, and the path of action. You can pursue
your own path and follow your own convictions, as long as they
are in harmony with your true nature. You are responsible for
your own actions and you alone suffer the consequences.
Because people start from different backgrounds and expe-
riences, the appropriate form of worship for any two individu-
als may not be the same. Hinduism does not have a central
authority or a single holy book, so each individual selects suit-
able rituals. If one person practices Hinduism in a particular
way, other Hindus will not think that the individual has made
a mistake or strayed from orthodox doctrine.
The average Hindu has allegiance to a particular god or con-
cept within a broad range of possibilities. The manifestation of
God with the largest number of adherents—an estimated
68 percent—is Vaishnavism, which worships the god Vishnu, a
loving god incarnated as Krishna. An estimated 27 percent
adhere to Sivaism, dedicated to Siva, a protective and destructivegod. Shaktism is a form of worship dedicated to the female con-
sorts of Vishnu and Siva. Although these and other deities and
approaches are supported throughout India, some geographic
concentration exists: Siva and Shakti are concentrated in the
north; Shakti and Vishnu in the east; Vishnu in the west; and
Siva, along with some Vishnu, in the south. However, holy
places for Siva and Vishnu are dispersed throughout India.
Other Ethnic Religions
Several hundred million people practice ethnic religions in
East Asia, especially in China and Japan. The coexistence of
Buddhism with these ethnic religions in East Asia differs from
the Western concept of exclusive religious belief. Confucianism
and Daoism (sometimes spelled Taoism) are often distinguished
as separate ethnic religions in China, but many Chinese
consider themselves both Buddhists and either Confucian,
Daoist, or some other Chinese ethnic religion.
Buddhism does not compete for adherents with Confucianism,
Daoism, and other ethnic religions in China, because many
Chinese accept the teachings of both universalizing and ethnic
religions. Such commingling of diverse philosophies is not totally
foreign to Americans. The tenets of Christianity or Judaism, the
wisdom of the ancient Greek philosophers, and the ideals of the
Declaration of Independence can all be held dear without doing
grave injustice to the others.
CONFUCIANISM. Confucius (551–479 B.C.) was a philosopher
and teacher in the Chinese province of Lu. His sayings, which
were recorded by his students, emphasized the importance of
the ancient Chinese tradition of li, which can be translated
roughly as “propriety” or “correct behavior.” Confucianism is
an ethnic religion because of its especially strong rooting in tra-
ditional values of special importance to Chinese people.
Confucianism prescribed a series of ethical principles for
the orderly conduct of daily life in China, such as following
traditions, fulfilling obligations, and treating others with sym-
pathy and respect. These rules applied to China’s rulers, as well
as to their subjects.
DAOISM (TAOISM). Lao-Zi (604–531? B.C., also spelled Lao
Tse), a contemporary of Confucius, organized Daoism. Although
a government administrator by profession, Lao-Zi’s writings
emphasized the mystical and magical aspects of life rather than the
importance of public service, which Confucius had emphasized.
Daoists seek dao (or tao), which means the “way” or “path.”
A virtuous person draws power (de or te) from being absorbed in
dao. Dao cannot be comprehended by reason and knowledge,
because not everything is knowable. Because the universe is not
ultimately subject to rational analysis, myths and legends
develop to explain events. Only by avoidance of daily activities
and introspection can a person live in harmony with the princi-
ples that underlie and govern the universe.
Daoism split into many sects, some acting like secret soci-
eties, and followers embraced elements of magic. The religion
was officially banned by the Communists after they took control
of China in 1949, but it is still practiced in China, and it is legal
in Taiwan.
Ethnic Religions 189
SHINTOISM. Since ancient times, Shintoism has been the dis-
tinctive ethnic religion of Japan. Ancient Shintoists considered
forces of nature to be divine, especially the Sun and Moon, as
well as rivers, trees, rocks, mountains, and certain animals. The
religion was transmitted from one generation to the next orally
until the fifth century A.D., when the introduction of Chinese
writing facilitated the recording of ancient rituals and prayers.
Gradually, deceased emperors and other ancestors became
more important deities for Shintoists than natural features.
Under the reign of the Emperor Meiji (1868–1912), Shintoism
became the official state religion, and the emperor was regarded as
divine. Shintoism therefore was as much a political cult as a reli-
gion, and in a cultural sense all Japanese were Shintoists. After
defeating Japan in World War II, the victorious Allies ordered
Emperor Hirohito to renounce his divinity in a speech to the
Japanese people, although he was allowed to retain ceremonial
powers.
Shintoism still thrives in Japan, although no longer as the
official state religion. Prayers are recited to show reverance for
ancestors, and pilgrimages are made to shrines believed to
house deities. More than 80,000 shrines serve as places for
neighbors to meet or for children to play.
JUDAISM. About 6 million Jews live in the United States,
5 million in Israel, 2 million in Europe, and 1 million each in
Asia and Latin America. Within the United States, Jews are
heavily concentrated in the large cities, including one-fourth in
the New York area alone. Jews constitute a majority in Israel,
where for the first time since the biblical era an independent
state has had a Jewish majority.
Judaism plays a more substantial role in Western civilization
than its number of adherents would suggest, because two of the
three main universalizing religions—Christianity and Islam—
find some of their roots in Judaism. Jesus was born a Jew, and
Muhammad traced his ancestry to Abraham.
Judaism is an ethnic religion based in the lands bordering the
eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, called Canaan in the
Bible, Palestine by the Romans, and the state of Israel since
1948. About 4,000 years ago Abraham, considered the patriarch
or father of Judaism, migrated from present-day Iraq to
Canaan, along a route known as the Fertile Crescent (see dis-
cussion of the Fertile Crescent in Chapter 8 and Figure 8–3).
The Bible recounts the ancient history of the Jewish people.
Fundamental to Judaism was belief in one all-powerful God. It
was the first recorded religion to espouse monotheism, belief
that there is only one God. Judaism offered a sharp contrast to the
polytheism practiced by neighboring people, who worshipped a
collection of gods. Jews considered themselves the “chosen”
people, because God had selected them to live according to His
ethical and moral principles, such as the Ten Commandments.
The name Judaism derives from Judah, one of the patriarch
Jacob’s 12 sons; Israel is another biblical name for Jacob.
Descendants of ten of Jacob’s sons, plus two of his grandsons,
constituted the 12 tribes of Hebrews who emigrated from
Egypt in the Exodus narrative. Each received a portion of
Canaan. Judah is one of the surviving tribes of Hebrews; ten of
the tribes were considered lost after they were conquered and
forced to migrate to Assyria in 721 B.C.190 Chapter 6 Religion
ETHNIC AFRICAN RELIGIONS. Approximately 100 million
Africans, 12 percent of the population, follow traditional ethnic
religions, sometimes called animism. Animists believe that
such inanimate objects as plants and stones, or such natural
events as thunderstorms and earthquakes, are “animated,” or
have discrete spirits and conscious life. Relatively little is known
about African religions because few holy books or other written
documents have come down from ancestors. Religious rituals
are passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth.
African animist religions are apparently based on monotheistic
concepts, although below the supreme god there is a hierarchy of
divinities. These divinities may be assistants to the supreme god or
personifications of natural phenomena, such as trees or rivers.
As recently as 1980, some 200 million Africans—half the
population of the region at the time—were classified as ani-
mists. Some atlases and textbooks persist in classifying Africa
as predominantly animist, even though the actual percentage
is small and declining. Followers of traditional African reli-
gions now constitute a clear majority of the population in
Botswana and half of the population in Angola, Benin, Congo
Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mozambique, Togo,
and Zimbabwe.
The rapid decline in animists in Africa has been caused by
increases in the numbers of Christians and Muslims. Africa is now
46 percent Christian—split about evenly among Roman Catholic,
Protestant, and other—and another 40 percent are Muslims. The
growth in the two universalizing religions at the expense of ethnic
religions reflects fundamental geographical differences between
the two types of religions, discussed in the next key issue.
K E Y I S S U E 2
Why Do Religions Have
Different Distributions?
• Origin of religions
• Diffusion of religions
• Holy places
• The calendar
We can identify several major geographical differences between universal-
izing and ethnic religions. These differences include the locations where
the religions originated, the processes by which they diffused from their
place of origin to other regions, the types of places that are considered
holy, the calendar dates identified as important holidays, and attitudes
toward modifying the physical environment.
Origin of Religions
Universalizing religions have precise places of origin, based on
events in the life of a man. Ethnic religions have unknown or
unclear origins, not tied to single historical individuals.
Origin of Universalizing Religions
Each of the three universalizing religions can be traced to the
actions and teachings of a man who lived since the start of recorded
history. The beginnings of Buddhism go back about 2,500 years,
Christianity 2,000 years, and Islam 1,500 years. Specific events also
led to the division of the universalizing religions into branches.
ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY. Christianity was founded upon
the teachings of Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem between
8 and 4 B.C. and died on a cross in Jerusalem about A.D. 30.
Raised as a Jew, Jesus gathered a small band of disciples and
preached the coming of the Kingdom of God. The four Gospels
of the Christian Bible—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—
documented miracles and extraordinary deeds that Jesus
performed. He was referred to as Christ, from the Greek word
for the Hebrew word messiah, which means “anointed.”
In the third year of his mission, he was betrayed to the
authorities by one of his companions, Judas Iscariot. After shar-
ing the Last Supper (the Jewish Passover seder) with his disciples
in Jerusalem, Jesus was arrested and put to death as an agitator.
On the third day after his death, his tomb was found empty.
Christians believe that Jesus died to atone for human sins, that
he was raised from the dead by God, and that his Resurrection
from the dead provides people with hope for salvation.
Roman Catholics accept the teachings of the Bible, as well as
the interpretation of those teachings by the Church hierarchy,
headed by the Pope. According to Roman Catholic belief, God
conveys His grace directly to humanity through seven sacraments,
including Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Anointing the sick,
Matrimony, Holy Orders, and the Eucharist (the partaking of
bread and wine that repeats the actions of Jesus at the Last Supper).
Roman Catholics believe that the Eucharist literally and miracu-
lously become the body and blood of Jesus while keeping only the
appearances of bread and wine, an act known as transubstantiation.
Eastern Orthodoxy comprises the faith and practices of a col-
lection of churches that arose in the Eastern part of the Roman
Empire. The split between the Roman and Eastern churches dates
to the fifth century, as a result of rivalry between the Pope of Rome
and the Patriarchy of Constantinople, which was especially intense
after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The split between the two
churches became final in 1054, when Pope Leo IX condemned the
Patriarch of Constantinople. Eastern Orthodox Christians
accepted the seven sacraments but rejected doctrines that the
Roman Catholic Church had added since the eighth century.
Protestantism originated with the principles of the Reforma-
tion in the sixteenth century. The Reformation movement is
regarded as beginning when Martin Luther posted 95 theses on
the door of the church at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.
According to Luther, individuals had primary responsibility for
achieving personal salvation through direct communication
with God. Grace is achieved through faith rather than through
sacraments performed by the Church.
ORIGIN OF ISLAM. Islam traces its origin to the same narra-
tive as Judaism and Christianity. All three religions consider
Adam to have been the first man and Abraham to have been one
of his descendants. According to legend, Abraham married
·
·
· History and Religious Studies Review
Web Page
History and Religious Studies Review
In the last module, you learned the following historical information about Haitian Slavery and the Haitian Revolution:
· Haiti was a French colony originally called Saint Domingue.
· Haitian slaves worked on sugar plantations.
· Haiti was one of the largest importers of slaves directly from Africa.
· Haitian slavery was brutal and the average life span of a Haitian slave was 25 years.
· Haiti passed Code Noir or Black Codes that established a social structure based on skin color in Haiti.
· The Haitian Revolution was a slave revolt.
· The Haitian Revolution was a class struggle.
· Escaped slaves who lived in the mountains were called Maroons and they helped to start the Haitian Revolution.
· Vodou, a unique religion of Haitian slaves, helped to unite slaves in the fight for freedom.
We have learned the following about religion from the first activity in this learning outcome:
3. Religion is part of culture.
3. Religion is part of people's identity.
3. By studying various religions, we can better understand other cultures and other people.
3. There are two types of religions: universalizing and ethnic religions.
3. Universalizing religions spread throughout the world through missionaries, trade and war.
3. Universalizing religions is not tied to one culture and it's beliefs can be easily adopted by people of other cultures.
3. Ethnic religions only spread when members of the ethnic group move from one place to another.
3. It is hard for people who are not in an ethnic religion's ethnic group to adopt the religion because ethnic religions are tied directly to specific cultures. To truly understand and practice an ethnic religion, you have to be born into or become part of that culture.
Now that we have had a history review of Haitian slavery, we have established the context for the development of Vodou. Because slaves died so quickly in Haiti, new slaves had to be brought from Africa on a regular basis. The African slaves brought their culture with them and even though they were forced to convert to Catholicism, they still practiced their own religious beliefs. Over time these beliefs along with certain aspects of Catholicism came together to form Haitian Voodou. Haitian Vodou is an ethnic religion. So now let's learn about Haitian Vodou in the next activity.
Web Page
What is Haitian Vodou?
As previously noted Haitian Vodou came from the mixing of African religious traditions along with Catholicism. Catholicism never wiped out African religious traditions because new African slaves were constantly being imported into Haiti. This is because Haitian slaves died faster than in the United States slaves and only had a life span of 25 years. They were worked to death. New slaves reinforced African religious beliefs and blended with other African religious beliefs as well as with Catholicism. Vodou emerged from this. As you read and watch the information below, think about how religion shapes a society. And also think about the fact that society is a group of people who practice a particular type of culture. Culture is made up of history, religion, literature, art, philosophy, language, food, clothing and any other rituals or traditions that help to define the identity of either the individual or the society. Are you starting to see why it is important to look at a topic from an Integrated Studies perspective? As you learn about Haitian Vodou, think about why it is an ethnic religion.
· Explore the Timeless World of Vodou, Deep Within the Caves of Haiti
To cite each of the above articles in the milestone, use the author's last name and page number. Since they are pdfs, use the pdf page number.
Direct Link: Haitian Vodou(this link opens in a new window/tab)
To cite the above video in your milestone, type the title and the timestamp of where you found the information.
Web Page
Haitian Vodou and the Zombi
Understanding the origins of today's zombies from Haitian Vodou really pulls together history and religion. Read the article below to learn about the relationship between the zombi and Haitian Vodou.
· The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies if this link does not work, try this one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J8IHZV3p1WpkP0Dt87QDmIWUN8kVC30v/view?usp=sharing -- You should not have to pay for this article. -- Cite it as Mariani, pg number. You will use the pdf page number as there are no printed page numbers on each page of the article.
The film below goes into more detail about the origins of zombies from Vodou. Notice how the narrator frames these ideas in terms of history and then pulls in religion. She is indirectly modeling for you how the disciplines of history and religion work well together to explain a concept in this case the history of Vodou and the origin of the zombi. The section on religion starts around 8 minutes into the video. This is the same video that was shown in the history module. It won't hurt to watch it again but this time concentrate on the religious aspect of it.
Direct Link: The Origins of the Zombie (this link opens in a new window/tab)
To cite the information in the video in your milestone, type the title and the timestamp where you found the information.
History and Religious Studies Review
In the last learning outcome, you learned the following historical information about Haitian Slavery and the Haitian Revolution:
· Haiti was a French colony originally called Saint Domingue.
· Haitian slaves worked on sugar plantations.
· Haiti was one of the largest importers of slaves directly from Africa.
· Haitian slavery was brutal and the average life span of a Haitian slave was 25 years.
· Haiti passed Code Noir or Black Codes that established a social structure based on skin color in Haiti.
· The Haitian Revolution was a slave revolt.
· The Haitian Revolution was a class struggle.
· Escaped slaves who lived in the mountains were called Maroons and they helped to start the Haitian Revolution.
· Vodou, a unique religion of Haitian slaves, helped to unite slaves in the fight for freedom.
We have learned the following about religion from the first activity in this learning outcome:
1. Religion is part of culture.
2. Religion is part of people's identity.
3. By studying various religions, we can better understand other cultures and other people.
4. There are two types of religions: universalizing and ethnic religions.
5. Universalizing religions spread throughout the world through missionaries, trade and war.
6. Universalizing religions is not tied to one culture and it's beliefs can be easily adopted by people of other cultures.
7. Ethnic religions only spread when members of the ethnic group move from one place to another.
8. It is hard for people who are not in an ethnic religion's ethnic group to adopt the religion because ethnic religions are tied directly to specific cultures. To truly understand and practice an ethnic religion, you have to be born into or become part of that culture.
Now that we have had a history review of Haitian slavery, we have established the context for the development of Vodou. Because slaves died so quickly in Haiti, new slaves had to be brought from Africa on a regular basis. The African slaves brought their culture with them and even though they were forced to convert to Catholicism, they still practiced their own religious beliefs. Over time these beliefs along with certain aspects of Catholicism came together to form Haitian Voodou. Haitian Vodou is an ethnic religion. So now let's learn about Haitian Vodou in the next activity.
What is Haitian Vodou?
As previously noted Haitian Vodou came from the mixing of African religious traditions along with Catholicism. Catholicism never wiped out African religious traditions because new African slaves were constantly being imported into Haiti. This is because Haitian slaves died faster than in the United States slaves and only had a life span of 25 years. They were worked to death. New slaves reinforced African religious beliefs and blended with other African religious beliefs as well as with Catholicism. Vodou emerged from this. As you read and watch the information below, think about how religion shapes a society. And also think about the fact that society is a group of people who practice a particular type of culture. Culture is made up of history, religion, literature, art, philosophy, language, food, clothing and any other rituals or traditions that help to define the identity of either the individual or the society. Are you starting to see why it is important to look at a topic from an Integrated Studies perspective? As you learn about Haitian Vodou, think about why it is an ethnic religion.
· Explore the Timeless World of Vodou, Deep Within the Caves of Haiti
To cite each of the above articles in the milestone, use the author's last name and page number. Since they are pdfs, use the pdf page number.
National Geographic: Inside the
voodoo rituals of Haiti
In Haiti voodoo is recognized as a religion. Here are some of its rituals and what it means to
believers.
BySharon Guynup
July 7, 2004
•
5 min read
This article has been copied and pasted from this url:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/haiti-ancient-traditions-voodoo
The ceremony begins with a Roman Catholic prayer. Then three drummers begin to play
syncopated rhythms. The attendees begin to dance around a tree in the center of the yard,
moving faster and harder with the rising pulse of the beat. The priest draws sacred symbols in
the dust with cornmeal, and rum is poured on the ground to honor the spirits.
One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet.
She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps
no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great
mother spirit.
It is an honor to be entered and "ridden" by a Loa, or spirit. In Haiti these rituals are
commonplace: Voodoo is the dominant religion.
"One common saying is that Haitians are 70 percent Catholic, 30 percent Protestant, and 100
percent voodoo," said Lynne Warberg, a photographer who has documented Haitian voodoo for
over a decade.
In April 2003 an executive decree by then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide sanctioned voodoo
as an officially recognized religion.
"It is a religion in the same way Judaism or Christianity is," said Bob Corbett, professor emeritus
of philosophy at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Voodoo doesn't have a sacred text, a
church, or a hierarchical structure of leaders, but it is very similar culturally."
Ancient Traditions
2
Voodoo, meaning "spirit," may be one of the world's oldest ancestral, nature-honoring traditions,
according to Mamaissii Vivian Dansi Hounon, a member of OATH, the Organization of African
Traditional Healers in Martinez, Georgia.
Some anthropologists estimate that voodoo's roots in Benin—formerly Dahomey—West Africa
may go back 6,000 years. Today an estimated 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide.
At a voodoo ceremony, believers gather outdoors to make contact with the Loa, any of a
pantheon of spirits who have various functions running the universe, much like Greek gods.
There is also a responsibility to care for beloved and deified family spirits and to honor a chief
god, Bondieu.
Messages From the Spirits
During the ceremony, the houngan or mambo—priest or priestess—sacrifices a sanctified
chicken or other animal to the Loa. Participants then ask the spirits for advice or help with
problems. More than half the requests are for health.
It is said that the Loa sometimes communicate prophecies, advice, or warnings while the
believer is possessed. Other messages are sent through the priest or priestess, or sometimes
come later in dreams.
These disembodied spirits are believed to become tired and worn down—and rely on humans to
"feed" them in periodic rituals, including sacrifices. "It's not the killing of the animals that
matters," Corbett said. "It's the transfer of life energy back to the Loa."
Each of the spirits has a distinct identity. Some are loving and good, while others are capricious
or demanding. Haitians believe that the Loa most often express their displeasure by making
people sick.
Black Magic?
In the West voodoo has been portrayed in zombie movies and popular books as dark and evil, a
cult of devil worship dominated by black magic, human sacrifice, and pin-stuck voodoo
dolls—none of which exist in the voodoo practices that originated in Benin.
In Haiti voodoo began as an underground activity. During the 1700s thousands of West African
slaves were shipped to Haiti to work on French plantations.
The slaves were baptized as Roman Catholics upon their arrival in the West Indies. Their
traditional African religious practices were viewed as a threat to the colonial system and were
forbidden. Practitioners were imprisoned, whipped, or hung.
3
But the slaves continued to practice in secret while attending masses. What emerged was a
religion that the colonialists thought was Catholicism—but they were outfoxed.
Hybrid Rituals
It was easy to meld the two faiths, because there are many similarities between Roman
Catholicism and voodoo, Corbett said. Both venerate a supreme being and believe in the
existence of invisible evil spirits or demons and in an afterlife.
Each religion also focuses its ceremonies around a center point—an altar in Catholicism, a pole
or tree in voodoo. Their services include symbolic or actual rituals of sacrifice and consumption
of flesh and blood, Corbett noted.
Many of the Loa resemble Christian saints, endowed with similar responsibilities or attributes.
For example, Legba, an old man, is said to open the gates between Earth and the world of the
Loa, much like St. Peter traditionally throws wide the gates to heaven.
But there are differences. Westerners tend to believe in free will and personal choice. Not so in
voodoo.
"The Haitian people have a view of the world that is unimaginably different from ours," Corbett
said. The Loa are believed to determine our lives to an astonishing degree, he explains, and
they are always present in great numbers: There might be two people in a room, but there are
also 20 Loa.
"Our view is dominated by physical, touchable reality. In Haiti the spirits are as real as your wife
or your dog," Corbett said.
Like any other religious practice, voodoo brings great benefits, explains Warberg, the
photographer. "Participation in voodoo ritual reaffirms one's relationships with ancestors,
personal history, community relationships—and the cosmos. Voodoo is a way of life," she said.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
What is Haitian Voodoo?
August 21, 2019 8.25am EDT
Guilberly Louissaint
Anthropology Ph.D. Student, University of California, Irvine
For many in the West, Voodoo invokes images of animal sacrifices, magical dolls and chanted spells.
But Voodoo – as practiced in Haiti and by the black diaspora in the United States, South America and
Africa – is a religion based on ancestral spirits and patron saints.
Known as “Vodou” in Haiti, the religion has also served as a form of resistance against the French
colonial empire.
And unlike many mainstream representations around magic and rituals, scholars have shown how
Voodoo serves as a form of health care system by providing religious healing.
A religion born out of struggle
Haitian Vodou was born from the blending of Catholicism, Western and Central African spirituality.
In addition, scholars assert that the religion was influenced by escaped slaves who wanted to inspire
rebellions under a common spiritual identity.
Voodoo believers walk during the annual Voodoo festival Fete Gede at Cite Soleil Cemetery in Port-
au-Prince, Haiti. AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery
2/15/22, 4:38 PM What is Haitian Voodoo?
https://theconversation.com/what-is-haitian-voodoo-119621 2/2
Historian C.L.R. James described Voodoo as a “medium of the conspiracy,” meaning Voodoo was at
the center of inciting the 1791 revolution in Haiti against slavery and colonialism.
In later years – from 1835 to 1987 – the Haitian government banned Voodoo under laws that
prohibited ritualistic practices. However, as historian Kate Ramsey points out, the laws were almost
impossible for the Haitian government to implement. As early as the 19th century, Voodoo had
already become a dominant belief system even influencing elite culture – even if secretly.
Haitian elites could not openly support the religion. The Catholic Church based in Rome forced Haiti
to adopt Roman Catholicism as its official religion.
Over the years, several anti-Voodoo campaigns were launched by the Catholic and Protestant
churches. Systematic attacks on Voodoo temples and Voodoo objects over decades paved the way for
this religion to become predominately associated with sorcery.
The contemporary status of Voodoo
In contemporary Haitian society, Voodoo serves in multiple ways. An important contribution is its
role in healing. Anthropologist Nicholas Vonarx, who has studied Voodoo’s role as a health care
system, explains how religious spaces can become “therapeutic sites where the sick goes to seek help
in managing illness and other misfortune.”
My research looks at how Voodoo is blamed for health disparities in Haiti by the country’s elites and
international aid groups who ignore its role in Haiti’s health landscape.
For many, Voodoo remains associated with sorcery and satanic worship.
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A Smithsonian magazine special report
Explore the Timeless World of Vodou, Deep Within the Caves of Haiti
Photographer Troi Anderson captures the religion that has been misunderstood for centuries
Jonathan M. Katz, Photographs by Troi Anderson
July 2017
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The slaughter of fowl, goats or cows is highly ritualized. Troi Anderson
[1/14]
It was the height of the summer solstice, the brightest day of what had already been a long, hot year in Haiti. But deep within the caves outside Saint-Michel de l’Attalaye, beneath the mountain-ringed northern edge of the island nation’s central plateau, there was no light. Troi Anderson had to feel his way along the cool limestone walls and follow the worshipers’ singing to find his way to the Vodou ceremonies below. A photographer based in Oregon, he had come for the pilgrimage of St. John, an annual event that generally draws hundreds of participants.
Anderson had once worked with a major aid group on the island, and as he photographed people on Haiti’s streets, he noticed their suspicion and came to share their distrust of what he calls the “poverty industry,” or those aid efforts better at serving themselves than the people they’re supposed to help. So he left that work behind and focused instead on images of Haitian pride. That led him to the “sacred theater” of Vodou, a uniquely Haitian cultural force.
Vodou has roots in the religious traditions of West and Central Africa, where most Haitians’ ancestors were born, and in the Roman Catholicism of European colonizers in Africa and the French who colonized the western third of the island of Hispaniola in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its beliefs and practices were forged in one of the most brutal slave regimes the world has known.
The religion honors a supreme creator god who is considered too remote to reach directly. Worshipers venerate intermediary spirits, such as the orisha gods of the Yoruba people who inhabit what is now Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and figures from Haitian history. The faith is decentralized. It is practiced creatively, not prescriptively, which helps to account for the differing forms practiced elsewhere, such as in New Orleans. Like many great religions, throughout its history Haitian Vodou has provided both solace and an intimate sense of community to the oppressed.
Ruling interests often saw it as a threat. It wasn’t just the French slave masters, who condemned practitioners to the whip and branding iron, and priests to death, as they sought to put down slave rebellions. The black military leaders and elites who led Haiti after they ejected the French in late 1803 also tried to suppress the faith, mandating imprisonment and fines for participating in Vodou ceremonies and working at times with the Catholic Church to eradicate “superstition.” As historian Kate Ramsey has written, these leaders felt they had to “assert Haiti’s ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’ in the face of the republic’s diplomatic isolation and exclusion following independence.”
This sense of Vodou as a primitive practice also shaped American impressions of Haiti. The U.S. military occupied the country from 1915 to 1934, during a formative period in the U.S. empire-building in Latin America and Asia. Marines who served on the island, and journalists who covered them, returned with lurid tales of what they called “voodoo” and characterized as black magic. Pop-culture distortions, in both books and films, weren’t far behind. In 1932, the year after Bela Lugosi starred in Dracula, he played an evil sorcerer in Haiti named “Murder” Legendre in White Zombie.
Those perceptions persist. In 2010, two days after the catastrophic earthquake that killed up to 316,000 people in and around Port-au-Prince, New York Times columnist David Brooks blamed “the influence of the voodoo religion” as first among a “web of progress-resistant cultural influences” that had made Haiti vulnerable and impoverished.
But Vodou has won respect, if grudgingly. In 2003, the Haitian government formally recognized it as an official religion alongside other faiths. Precise statistics are hard to come by, but it is commonly estimated that more than half the Haitian population practices it.
Many Vodouisants refer to their faith as sevis lwa, or “service to the spirits.” Ancestor worship is a bedrock element of the faith. So is trance possession by the spirits, which is aided by the complex, sacred rhythms of master drummers. The sacrifice of chickens, goats or cows is also widely practiced, with the animal intended to replenish the life-giving energy of the universe. The meat is usually distributed among family and friends.
The Vodou calendar is filled with pilgrimages, often coinciding with Catholic saints’ feast days, to sites around the country. Around Easter, the faithful, robed in white, pay homage to the spirits near the sacred site of Souvenance. In summer, thousands flock to a towering waterfall where the Virgin Mary (also venerated as Ezili Danto, a goddess of love) is believed to have appeared. It was this pilgrimage tradition that attracted Troi Anderson to Saint-Michel de l’Attalaye last year.
Inside the caves, the floors were slick with the blood of past sacrifices. Occasional beams of light streamed in through holes in the limestone roof. In the darkest recesses, candles cast orange light onto walls that fluttered with small papers bearing written prayers. A woman dressed in red held up a chicken—an offering to Ogou Feray, a god of iron and war, a divinity drawn directly from West African traditions and often represented by the icon of St. James the Greater.
https://youtu.be/PzKLm_YByI4?si=TS6TlVRIhq_mInvu
Haitian Vodou and the Zombi
Understanding the origins of today's zombies from Haitian Vodou really pulls together history and religion. Read the article below to learn about the relationship between the zombi and Haitian Vodou.
· The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies if this link does not work, try this one: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J8IHZV3p1WpkP0Dt87QDmIWUN8kVC30v/view?usp=sharing -- You should not have to pay for this article. -- Cite it as Mariani, pg number. You will use the pdf page number as there are no printed page numbers on each page of the article.
The film below goes into more detail about the origins of zombies from Vodou. Notice how the narrator frames these ideas in terms of history and then pulls in religion. She is indirectly modeling for you how the disciplines of history and religion work well together to explain a concept in this case the history of Vodou and the origin of the zombi. The section on religion starts around 8 minutes into the video. This is the same video that was shown in the history module. It won't hurt to watch it again but this time concentrate on the religious aspect of it.
https://youtu.be/KIGmsxBMnjA?si=PXQQYVlVZxdnamiI