philosophy paper

THE PIUMOIHRN ERA

as story of a separate religion religio, or den, or din); rather, a late medieval Christian, and an earlier Nl:amch:aeam

the story of is quite

heresiological approach to managing difference that I discussed ear- lier in this chapter, but it represents another way that premodern peoples outside the modern framework of religions.

Conclusion

not discuss one aH•UC>>'-0

used other strategies Manichaeans, "orthodox" Christians were simply ill-informed Man- ichaeans in need For many (indeed most) Catholic writers in medieval the followers of Muhammad were heretical Christians, in some circumstances, they could be classi- fied as idolatrous pagans. Unless one resorted to singling out indi- vidual manuscripts, one would be to assign a particular "religion" to the story of Ioasaph. materials like these in terms of different "religions" creates are to boundaries that ancient aut_hors. constructed. 1t is true that by

many Catholic Christian authors did classify the populations of the world using a four-part division: proper Chris-

Nfohammedans, and pagans. In this the ~~T~e.~vere not people. of different flawed Christians. "What I in the following is how

become so easy and natural for us to think of those groups as religions.

Introduction

\Ve seen native to the ancient world and the modern people group under the head- ing_ of "religion" were not so grouped by peoples. The ancient world was not divided into "religions," conceived of as voluntary associations of people with

ences." I now ani:_.:1a~c,c.::o!.lu~inl!_lt~~olJ_f~·. CE::~_q~~~!<:JP!!!~!f _. ___ .,_._._~--·"·--, ---------=·-·-·· If religion has not simply

this particular way

manner of carving the world into "religious" and ··,.,.~ .. ~:..·,:.,~,vu,,, come to be so dominant?

In this CU,~Plt:1

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

---·-··-------·-"··-----Interpreting the newly Christian sectarian

r111-+,,,rP,,r religions stand in tension, competing ways to

salvation, "can be to grammar of the term 'religions'"

that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I begin by looking at how the idea of vera

Itiiian Neo~Pi~tonists deists de 1velop1ect,

ou-- .. ,.ucu Wars seven- teenth centuries as a context for discussing works of authors usually regarded as political theorists (Jean Bodin and John Locke), whose writings during and after the birth of the modern nation-state are

est~m:actve of a decisive in the ______________ ._. ___ ---- My treatment in this chapter is again

selective, and once I acknowledge that sources other than the ones I could a different, although not in- rnm,v,,, 1-,1,, narrative. 3

the Italian Neo-Platonists

to the English

In the Retractationes, written nearly years after De vera re/i- Augustine to a sentence he had written in

the earlier work. He had made a reference to christiana religio "in our times" (nostris temporibus), and he felt that he needed to dear up a possible misunderstanding: "I was speaking of name, here, and not of the so named. For what is now called the christiana religio existed of and was never absent the beginning human race until Christ came in the flesh. Then vera religio which already existed began to be called christiana. . . . I said, 'This is the christiana religio in our ' I did not mean that it had not existed in

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RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

times, that name " 4 This can be read in of the argument of Eusebius that was treated in

Chapter 3. Since worship, and proper of one God, had always existed, all other practices,

1 ancient and contemporary, were divergences from this original vera

! religio, or worship. A corollary of this view is the observation that non-Christian

Christians Lactantius discovered Christian doctrine and prophecies Christ even in "pagan" au- thors, such as Hermes who were to be exceed-

ancient. 5 For such testimonies served an apologetic purpose; even these ancient "pagan" to the revelation of Christ and the an for the truth of Christian teaching from universal agreement (consensus In the ninth century, Photius described (not without some disapproval) a massive

work written by an anonymous in the sev-

•~<HUHU to us today. I examine in this

among other notable

world with its first full Latin produced a multivolume Theologia Platonica that to

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

Christian and Platonic thought.9 In 1463, Ficino's patron, Cosimo de' Medici, interrupted Ficino's project of translating Plato and set Ficino at the task of immediately translating a manuscript that he had recently acquired containing fourteen of the documents now known as the Corpus Hermeticum. 10 Ficino obliged and completed the translation quickly, although it was not published until 1471.11 The work was immensely popular; sixteen editions appeared before the close of the sixteenth century.12 In his preface to the translation, Fi­ cino outlined how these texts preserved knowledge of ancient truths parallel to the revelation given to Moses and the prophets. Hermes Trismegistus was a link in a chain that extended Plato's wisdom backwards in time. Hermes "is named the first author of theology" (primus igitur theologiae appellatus est auctor), and Ficino asserted that "there is one Ancient Theology, in all respects consistent ... taking up its origin in Mercury and being absolutely perfected in divine Plato " (itaque una priscae theologie undique sibi consona secta ... exordia sumens a Mercurio a Divo Platone penitus absoluta).13 Ficino's mature view would trace this heritage from Plato, back through-Pythagoras, Aglaophemus, Orpheus, Her��s Tris��gi�tus,.andulti�ateiyt�Zo­ roaste�.14 ThisAn�i�llctTheology-s�gg�st�d-t:h.a�genuine ,;���Eip had a unified beginning and found many imperfect expressions through the ages until the more perfect revelation of Christianity appeared on the scene.

Ficino became a priest in 147 3, and in 1476 he published De chris­ tiana religione, which. reflected 011. rh;pfota!iti·;;d · ��ity=�f Fi?�­ 'thei-�, Ficino wrote that although "divine Providence does not per­ mit any region of the world at any time to be entirely without religion [ prorsus religionis expertem]," it always allows "different rites of worship to be observed [ritus adorationis varios observari]."15 At first glance, Fi­ cino's model appears quite close to the modern framework of religion as a genus with the individual religions as species. Yet, Ficino's method of classification possesses some features that place considerable dis­ tance between it and the modern framework:fn �dditio�ro the aTf­ encompassing nature of religio (there is no "secular " for Ficino), Ficino's most celebrated modern interpreter, Paul Oskar Kristeller,

88

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

has emphasized the importance of recognizing that for Ficino, "every genus possesses a supreme elem_e11t on which _the q1:1ality Qf all th�. �th.er el�ment� depends."16 Therefore, just because members of a class shar;-;-ome common �l1aracteristics, this does not mean that all mem­ bers of a class are of equal value. Kristeller continues, "For Ficino, on the contrary, the members of a genus, like all existing things, for that matter, constitute a continuous and well-defined hierarchy."17 It is in this context that we should understand the quotation from Ficino mentioned in Chapter 2 ("All religio has something good in it; pro­ vided that it is directed towards God, the creator of all things, it is sincere, Christian religio").18 In this schema, Christianity is not simply one item in a class, on_�_�i!Ji-thi�h(:iiiiE1-P_l(:5-.�fr-�ligiQ,.B:atl1c:i,}_ ISth�-pinnacle of what_:�lf.gio_can _and shol!ld be. Nevertheless, in Fi­ cino's scheme, every form of worship, "however primitive, is related, though unconsciously, to the one, true God."19 This notion of Chris­ tian worship differs significantly from Augustine's dichotomy of vera religio as opposed to religio deorum.

Ficino died quietly at the villa at Careggi outside Florence in 1499. A century later, another Neo-Platonist Christian would meet a less pleasant end-Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in the Camp� dei Fi;riin R�;,e in r6oo. Probably born in 1548 in the Italian town of Nola, Bruno entered a Dominican mon­ astery in Naples in 1565. Over a period of eleven years he seems to have become extremely well read, absorbing a great deal of classical and contemporary literature that was available to him in Naples. In 1576,, he was forced to flee the monastery because of accusations of heterodoxy. For the next sixteen years, he lived an extraordinary life, traveling widely across Europe and moving in the intellectual circles of Geneva, Paris, Oxford, London, Wittenberg, and Prague before finally being imprisoned and executed. 20 The prisca theologia played a very important role in Bruno's thought, but he made signifi­ cant departures from the ways Ficino and his other predecessors used that notion.21 For the ancient Hermetic (or, perhaps more properly in Bruno's case, P ythagorean) wisdom wasthe _true

-·�---·-·- . . . ., .. . . .. . -

relig_�o, fr.��:whi<::li_ey(:�_(:bti?ti::iJ1ity_�as __ cleriya!i":(:.22 In The Ash

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

Wednesday Supper, a set of dialogues written in 1583 during Bruno's stay in London, the character Theophilo sets forth the views of "the Nolan," understood by most interpreters as a mouthpiece for Bruno's own views. Near the end of the first dialogue, Theophilo states in no uncertain terms the superiority in all aspects of life of those who

adhere to the ancient ways:

And, in conclusion, are we, who make a beginning of the renewal of the ancient philosophy, in the morning which makes an end to the night, or are we rather in the evening which ends the day? And cer- tainly this is not difficult to decide, even if we judge hastily by the fruits of the two different kinds of contemplation. Now let us see the difference between the former [the advocates of the Ancient Theol- ogy] and the latter [Aristotelian Christians]. The former are moder- ate in life, expert in medicine, judicious in contemplation, unique in divination, miraculous in magic, wary of superstition, law-abiding, irreproachable in morality, godlike in theology, and heroic in every way. All this is shown by the length of their lives, their healthier bod- ies, their most lofty inventions, the fulfillment of their prophecies, the substances transformed by their works, the peaceful deportment of their people, their inviolable sacraments, the great justice of their actions, the familiarity of good and protecting spirits, and the ves- tiges, which still remain, of their amazing prowess. I leave to the judgment of anyone with good sense the consideration of the fruits of the latter. 23

Bruno is like Ficino in seeing religio as a class with many members, but Bruno becomes especially interesting_ because he was able, while working from wirhi~ Chrisri~~-1:radition, ·t;·· er~;;:-~-;;; 1i::i1:ellectua1 spa~ ~here Christia;ity is .simply ~~e of many religJ;nn, a;J not eve;;·;;~~essariiy th~ b~st ;;n~.24 . . . . ... . .. . ..• ·······----

What ~as · · · about Christianity, especially Protestant groups, ;;~ their :i;.~ltiplicity and mutual -bi~ke;i;;g: ti,:··another of B~uno'~-di·;1;·gues w~itt;n during his time in London, one of the

characters expresses this sentiment: "For among ten thousand of such Teachers, there is not to be found one, who has not form'd to him-

self a Catechism, ready to be publish'd to the World, if not publish'd

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

already; approving no other Institution his own, finding in others something to be condemn'd, disapprov'd, or doubted of: be- sides that the greater part of them disagree with themselves, blotting

out to day what they had wrote yesterday." 25 This complaint would echo through the seventeenth century. Rival claims to the "true reli- gion" caused a number of difficulties. ·Peter writ~~;--;~F~l-

lo~ing the Ref?rmation, the fragmentation of Christendom led to··~ chang~frnm an instituti;11~lly based u~ders~anding of exdusive ~al~ vation to·;·p;;p;·siti;n;lly b~~~d~11der~t;11ding. Fo;Ill~rly it h;d been

'nosaTvati~j:;-outside the Church.' No~, it: h~d become 'no salvation without the profession of the "true religion."' But which religion was the true religion? The proliferation of Protestant sects ...

t!1e q~~stion exceedfoglycoIIlpl~x, for there ~ere not simply t\V()Op- posing Churches, but many." 26 This variety of true religions and the disagreement it created is evinced in the proliferation of polemical literature. As Bruno was well aware, the number of short tracts being published exploded, all of them written by different Christians and all of them spelling out how their own particular set of propositions led to salvation. These maps to Christian salvation often took on a question--and-answer format, such as the anonymous pamphlet A Booke of Christian Questions and Answeres. Wherein are set foorthe the chiefe pointes of Christian Religion. A woorke right necessarie and profit- able, for ~dl such as shall have to deale with the captious quarellinges of the wrangling adversaries of Gods truth (1578). Quite similar is Thomas Gouge's frequently reprinted The Principles of Christian Religion, Ex- plained to the Capacity of the Meanest (1668). 27 These works begin with questions like "Who is the maker of all things?" and "How many persons are in the god-head?" The proper answers to these questions are necessary components to the answers of the later, more pressing question of "How is one saved?" Thus Christianity was distilled to a set of and salvation was achiev~:tiy internal, private,mental assent to this (single, correct, true) set of ideas. 28 · ., ... · · , ·- ___ ,

-sTnZ;~;i;;ti~~ ~;s at stake, it is not surp~ising that strong po- lemic was a part of these exchanges. An especially important type

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

polemic was "P~gano-papism." The practice of drawing parallels be- tween pagan and Catholic practices goes back at least to Luther, but the concept is perhaps best summarized in this (abbreviated!) title of a book by Oliver Omerod originally published in 1606: The Picture of a Papist: Or, A relation of the damnable heresies, detestable qualities, and dia-

bolicall practises of sundry hereticks in former ages, and of the papists in this

age: Where in is plainly shewed, that there is scarse any heresie which

the auncient Church knew, and withal condemned to the pit of hell, which the

Romish Church hath not raked up againe, and propounded to the world with

new varnish and fresh colours ... Whereunto is annexed a certain treatise,

intituled Pagano-papismus: wherein is prooved by irrefragable demonstra-

tions, that papisme is fiat paganisme: and that the papists doe resemble the

very pagans, in above sevenscore several/ things. 29 The book contains ex- actly what one might expect: a series of supposed parallels between Catholic and ancient paganpracdces. In a set of dialogues, such ac- i:{v'itie~ as prayer bef;re a ~~;s;; th~ veneration of the saints, and reli- ance upon papal authority and priests are compared not only to pagan practices, but also to various Christian heresies and the practices of "Rabbinicall ]ewes" and "Turkes." This method of polemic was not simply a tool for Protestants to use against Catholics; such charges also appeared in disputes among different groups of Protestants. 30

John Edwards, author of a book titled The Doctrines Controverted Be- tween Papists and Protestants Particularly and Distinctly Consider'd: And

Those which are held by the Former Confuted (1724), also attacked Protes- tant groups. In another book about the theology of the Socinians (a group of Christians who denied the divinity of Jesus), Edwards had the following to say: "It is patch'd up of several different Opinions fetch'd from sundry quarters, it is a Fardle of mix'd and disagreeing Notions, it is a Nest of Heterodoxies, a Galimafrey of Old and New Errors, a Medley of Heresies taken from Ebion and Cerinthus, the Sa- bellians, Smnosatenians, Arians, Photinians, Macedonians, who corrupted the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. They joyn with Jews, Pagans and Mahometans in disowning and denying this Great Mystery of Reli- gion."31 This kind of polemic itselfco11t1)buted to th~Jorrnati~J:?:.2f ~!~~iE~!-~il~gI9~s: -- · associating tht;se different gr<JUps wit? one

92

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, ANO RELIGION

another,, this ty[)e of attack had a double effect; it not only painted t1i:e·s~ci~;i;~~~~-~-;;t~q~ite:chri~d;; her~ti~~, it simultaneously con- structed "Jews" and "l\1ahometans" as false, perverted Christians.

Such prolific argumentation led_s0111eJ~11gEsh thinkers to deal with these disputes about Christian truth by tryingto determine low- est comm~n denominator of all the creeds, the things abo~t the di- vine-;-;pon which eve;y~;e ii~eed. explore- point, return tothe Neo-Platonic milieu but this time in an English setting, with Edward Lord Herbert ofCherbury. 32 Herbert is perhaps best known a~ "the Father of ]_)eism," but he did not receive this reputation until well after his death. 33 During his lifetime, he had a respectable mili- tary and diplomatic career (even if he did frequently "indulge his favourite pastime of issuing challenges to duels").34 His philosophical works were read with approval by such notable contemporaries as Rene Descartes and Hugo Grotius. 35 While it is Herbert's later work on "pagan religion" that is most relevant here, this piece is best under- stood in light of the opinions on religion he expressed in De Veritate, prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibili, et a Falso, which was published in 1624.36 De Veritate gained Herbert a degree of noto- riety in intellectual circles and set the stage for his later work. In De Veritate, Herbert sets out his theory of truth and knowledge. He argues thatallnormal people naturally have "Common Notions"(; ;:-;n~ept i:l~;~~ from the Stoic notion of koinai ennoiai), .vhich form the basis for Truth. What determined Tr;ili-;as the consensus gentium, the presence ~fa notion in all sane people.37 The Common Notions are not always (or even usually) immediately visi- ble to people; rather, they often have to be uncovered because the ac- cretion of traditions has obscured these natural, universal features of humanity. He claims that religion, since it is universal, is ~uch a Com- mon Notic:;n)8 At the conclusion of the work, he dedic~t~s a ~ection to "Common Notions Concerning Religion." 39 He prefaced his list of five Common Notions of religion with the claim that "the system of Notions, so far at least as it concerns theology, has been clearly ac- cepted at all times by every normal person, and does not require any further justification." 40 Yet, as Herbert realized, the religions of the

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RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

heathen could at times appear to bear little resemblance to "normal" religion. Thus his claim did indeed require further proof, and this

proof formed the centerpiece for De religione gentilium, which exam- ined the diversity and origins of ancient "pagan" religions in order to substantiate the universality of his Common Notions of religion.

These fr\T~<::_ol)J_m()11_;~otions, described as "five undeniable Proposi-

tions" in De religione gentilium, are:

I. That there is one Supreme God. 2. That he ought to be worshipped. 3. That Vertue and Piety are the chief Parts of Divine Worship. 4. That we ought to be sorry for our Sins, and repent of them. 5. That Divine Goodness doth dispense Rewards and Punish-

ments both in this Life, and after it.41

Herbert arrived at these principles by ignoring any offensive rites and rituals of "pagans" because such things were merely "the Inven-

tion of the Priests," who had corrupted an older, purer form of the religions. 42 For example, Herbert searched through ancient Greek and Roman texts about worshippers of the sun (as well as some litera- ture about the pagans of the New World) and determined that the more intelligent of them worshipped not the sun itself, but what it represented: "The Sun was only a kind of sensible Representation of the Supreme God under which consideration only the most Wise among the Heathens worshipped him, knowing very well that GOD himself could not be discerned in any one thing." 43 Herbert made similarly generous assumptions about worshippers of the planets, stars, and elements, showing along the way that there is universal agreement on his five Common Notions. The pagans appear foolish

only because of their reliance upon priests:

I must lay this down for an Establisht Truth, That the Religion of the Antient Heathens was not so absurd and stupid as is generally imagin'd .... When the Heathens had receiv'd the Notion of the At- tributes of the Supream GOD mention'd before, there sprung up a Race of Crafty Priests, who not thinking it sufficient that there should be just one GOD in all this Universe, judg'd it would conduce much

94

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

more to their Interest, to join and associate some others to this Supremn Deity . ... Their Design of Introducing other Gods, drove farther ... They also expected to reap more Profit, and have larger Stipends from the various Rites, Ceremonies, and Sacred Mysteries which they contriv'd and divulg'd.44

Surveys of the beliefs of various peoples were nothing new. What is interesting is that Herbert provided such a sympathetic account of

the religions. Both his list of Common Notions and his argumenta- tion are noteworthy. What stands out about the (and what earned Herbert the posthumous tide Father of Deism) is_tJ_!~t_non~of_his Common_~otions _is specifically C:hristjan. 45 For Christi- anity is, iin theory but certainly not in . . no longer rhe mea- surmg·s-t1ckby-;ET~h·-;ir;th~r ~embers of the ,;r~ligi~~,, are

measu ;:~-ctchristianityjsjust ~nother form J_,:__'::'.".~.:: __ ':'_~_:1:;c::.~:_'. :~'Ii~'=-~-~: Some Protestant Christian bias~;,-h;;;;;er, are inherent in Herbert's comparative methodology. He was interested in showing that all religions are at a basic level good religions, but his criteria what

constitutes "good" and what constitutes "religion" are very much in-

~~!~~--~o-the Christianity ;;f his day. talc~ b~t one e~ample, his disdain for priesthood seems to o;e a large debt to the kind of Protestant anti-Catholic polemics outlined above. Nevertheless, Herbert's explanation of the variety of distasteful worship practices by reference to priestly interference can be viewed as paving the way for the eighteenth-century "natural histories of religion," such as

that of David Hume. 46 As a means of defending universality of the five Common Notions of religion, Herbert sets the stage for later reductive discussions of the origins of religion, projects of which he would almost certainly not have approved. It is for this reason that I

~i_be this shift.asan "accident.:!1-"tr_g!1.~for@?.tJ()n_9.fth1c;_p'(iJca t~~()- logia ~nto_ comparative_r~ligion. 47

Before leaving Herbert, I call attention to his strict focus on ideas (the Common Notions are just that-notions). By.si;earing away the practices of ancient people in his discussions of what was essen- tial and original in these religions, Herbert contributed to the grow- ing sense that religion was a matter of beliefs apart from "various

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RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

Rites, Ceremonies, and Sacred Mysteries." Religion was for Herbert a mental phenornenon. 48 This view of religion as a set of beliefs that could be either true or fals~ would be~~~e standard the next century. -Later writers more firmly identified with the label "deist" were eveil:~ofder in theirplaceJTients .of''other" religio:O:s ~n.an .~~~ ing with Christianity. The prolific Irish author and noted heretic John Tola~d is a ;ase in point. 49 He wrote a tract in favor ofJewish 1ntegrati~n ;nd also defended followers of Muharnmad. 50 Driven by an interest in the formation of the Christian canon, he studied Chris- tian apocryphal writings, and while in Amsterdam in 1709, he discov- ered a manuscript of the Gospel of Barnabas, which he believed to be an ancient composition. This lengthy gospel, purporting to be the story of Jesus told by the apostle Barnabas, contains a heavy element of Islamic ideas, such as predictions of the corning of Muhammad. Toland later published a description of the manuscript as a part of a defense of the Nazarenes, "the Primitive Christians most properly so call'd."51 Partially on the basis of analogy of the relationship of Jews to the true Christianity and partially on the basis of what he be- lieved to be the ancient harmony between the teachings of Jesus and those of Muhammad he had uncovered in the Gospel of Barnabas, Toland asserted that Muslims were indeed "a sort of Christians, and not the worst sort neither, tho farr from being the best."52 Toland's views did not find a large following, but the inc:ipientpluralisrn_ that characterized his work makes him interesting. --w1.1:fi-these deist authors, we find the concept of religion being

used in a way that is beginning to apprnachits cur_rent use. Y~~-~lf- ferences are still appare;.;t. The idea ~la Mu~fim-ch~tstiaii.',-for ex- ample, would seem to be a contradiction in terms in the current World Religion paradigm. 53 And there is still another crucial dimension to this story that involves the sharp differentiation of religion from the public sphere in the context of the development of the nation-state. To flesh out more fully these developing characteristics of religion and the religions, it is necessary to examine some of the political as- pects of the Reformation.

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

The Formation of the State and the Formation of Religion

My discussion thus far may have given the impression that the de- velopment of the notion of religion is one of disembodied ideas tak- ing shape in the serene venue of intellectual discussions. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, however, were anything but stable and serene. It is during this period that we witness the Wars of Religion and the tumultuous beginnings of the modern system of nation-states. 54 Rather than offering a detailed examination of this complex phenomenon, I instead focus on the writings of two figures,

Jean !()1i_ri :ci_ri4J2_hnJ::c:ic1':e1 'YI-io c:an be understood as heirs to the d~~tes about_vera reljgj_o_ that I_ h~vej~st sketched. Sei~c~io~s-fro~ their works shed light upon another crucial ·di~~~;i~n of the modern notion of religion that developed during this era-the idea that the

0cu_s_of a r~~gio_!!.i_s_ the salvation_ of an)ndivicl1.1caL~2!1l: R<:Jigi2.11;_~e: comes a mu<::l_i_!:1-1:<:>re p~j_':::1~~-:1ffair: In Locke and Bodin, we can begin to see how the development of the nation-state gave rise to religious pluralism as a means of subduing citizens.

First, however, a brief word of clarification on the Reformation will be helpful. It is not simply the case. that the Reformation pro- duced variety where there had be~n u~ity. Christend~rn of th~ i;t~ medievai and early modern pe~iods in~luc!ed an extremely diverse set of phenomena. 55 What makes the reformers of the early sixteenth century different is_ that th~y-;e~~ ~ble _to g:1rne~-~-~-o-;:;gF-~;t~~i~l

~upport so that_when .doctrinaL<::()nflict~-(or economic conflicts or legal conflicts) arose, they could resist repression by Catholic au- thorities. 56 The effects of the ~eformers' protests th~s ~ent beyoii.'d the realm of what we might call "religious ideas." When Luther be- gan calling for local rulers to resist papal authority, they listened to him; Frederick the Wise of Saxony provided Luther sanctuary from ecclesiastical authorities when he was excommunicated, and within fifteen years the list of princes and cities supporting Luther and his reforms was substantial. 57 The changes that figures such as Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli brought about in various church policies are important, but what interests me here are the changes

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RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

wrought in European governance. M. J. Tooley has nicely summed up this shift:

The break-up of the medieval Church destroyed the framework of the older forms of political thinking. So long as there was a univer- sally recognized Church, having authority, it was possible to conceive of a realizable order in Christendom in terms of obligation to the Church. To require princes to act as the sword of the Church, or sub- jects to renounce their allegiance to an excommunicate ruler, might be unpalatable, but were not impracticable commands. But when princes and subjects alike had first to make a decision as to what wa~ the-Chu~a;~-they recogn;ed, SllCh commandments could ~~ly;--;nd did, lead to confusion. 58 . -------

"Confusion" is an appropriate term. Although the ensuing Wars of Religion are generally narrated as a tale of Protestants versus Catho- lics, the disputes and alliances were considerably more complex. Catholic princes actively resisted papal authority, and Protestant lead- ers did not hesitate to form alliances with Catholics. 59 Many nobles switched confessional allegiances during the course of the wars. 60 It thus seems that confessional loyalties often were of secondary im- portance. These observatlO~~ i1a;e led William T. Cavanaugh to con- cludethi't calling "these conflicts 'Wars of Religion' is an anachronism, for what was at issue in these wars was the very creation of religion as a set of privately held beliefs without direct political relevance." 61

Jean Bodin's Ideal and Pragmatic States

This point is illustrated most clearly in the writings of Jean Bodin, who emerged from the intellectual tradition of the Renaissance Neo-Platonists and lived in the midst of the French wars of the six- teenth century. 62 His political affiliations shifted over the years, but he was most associated with the politiques, a group that claimed that the role of a government was the maintenance of peace rather than the enforcement of a particular creed. 63 In his Six Books of the Com- monwealth, Bodin provided practical instructions for the ideal, suc- cessful government. 64 He warned about the threats of divisiveness,

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

especially when such daungerous seditions and factions be not grounded upon matters directly touching [one's] estate, but other- wise, as it hath happened almost in all Europe within this fifty yeares, in the warres made for matters of religion: for we have seen the king- dome of Sweden, of Scotland, ofDenmarke, of England, the Cantons of the Swissers, yea and the Germaine empire also, to have changed their religion, the estate of every of these monarchies and common- weales yet standing entire and whole: howbeit that the truth is, that it was not done, but with great violence, and much bloodshed in many places.65

When_dispute~-~~i:,e. __ re.g_a~~i!1K!h~~11:1::1r_c=.~1 !h~ result is viC>l~_ll<:~: And yet, Bodin asserted, religion could be useful to the magistrate, given the proper circumstances: - -

Seeing that not onely all wise law-givers and Philosophers, but even the very Atheists themselves also ... are of accord, That there is nothing which doth more uphold and maintaine the estates and Com- monweals than religion: and that it is the principall foundation of the power and strength of monarchies and Seignories: as also for the ex- ecution of justice, for the obedience of the subjects, the reverence of the magistrates, for the feare of doing evil!, and for the mutual love and amitie of every one towards other, it is by most strait and severe !awes to be provided, that so sacred a thing as is religion be not by childish and sophisticall disputations (and especially by such as are publickely had) made contemptible. 66

Religion, if it is not a bone of contention, can work to stabilize a state. Tot:tl~reement about religio~·;;~ld-b~id~al, and di;~~~rs~ ;;:i;;~t religion is thus to be closely regulated to avoid disputations: If such disputes ;hould o-ccur, they certainly should not be in public, in order to prevent any larger disturbance from happening. Bodin's picture, however, is not as draconian as it might first appear. In fact, in the real world, where complete agreement about religion is not possible, the ruler who most embodies the model stance toward religion is "the great emperour of the Turkes," who, "with as great devotion as any prince in the world honor[s] and observe[s] the religion by him received from his ancestours, and yet destesteth hee not the straunge religions of others; but to the contrarie permitteth every man to live

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according to his conscience: yea and that more is, neere unto his pal- lace at Pera, suffereth four divers religions, viz. That of the Jewes, that of the Christians, that of the Grecians, and that of the Maho- metanes." 67

When uniformity of religion is impossible toachieve, the best means for subjugating a people and maintaining. a stable_ state is to allow distinct.groups to live according to their own beliefs. This -poTnt is also the co~cl~;~n of an~th~~ ;fB.odin's ;~;i;i;: th~-Collo- quium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime. 68 Set in Venice, the work recounts a discussion among seven characters-a Catholic (the host), a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Muslim, a Jew, a philosophic natu- ralist, and a skeptic. Their dialogue, which touches on various philo- sophical and practical matters, concludes when they turn to the question of vera religio. The Jewish speaker argues that the schisms among Muslims, Christians, and Jews could be avoided if everyone were "to embrace that most simple and most ancient and at the same time the most true religion of nature, instilled by immortal God in the minds of each man from which there was no division." 69 The discussion that follows leaves the impression that such a return to the vera religio is not possible in the modern day. Their talk comes to a close with the Lutheran stating that "we are unable to command religion because no one can be forced to believe against his wiU."70

The narrator notes that "everyone approved of these things," but "afterwards, they held no other conversation about religions." 71

Discussion about different creeds was to be a mat!er of th!_PE~':ate sphere. In such a · · different cr~edai ;ffi!i;tions_coitld

~;-ist peacefully under a siI1gle, dominating state government. · ··;h1-i; ~1otion ~f pl13:~~lis~ ·;nd t~lera11~~-;~; ··n~\T~I7TA~ Ingrid Creppell 11ot~;i~-her recent study of the emergence of tolerance in Europe, for "toleration to be the prudent policy, people have to be able to imagine themselves as functioning in a political sphere in which they refrain from asserting religious cohesion. The creation of this prudential world required strategies of the self that were new."73

One of these new strategies was a highly personalized notion of ---- ·----e·----·-··~·••• '·-·- •••" - ' .-~ .,-,.,, -- •·,.,,.-,~.--"'•'"'"-·--

IOO

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

religion that focused on the salv:itioAsif fhe)ndividual soul. It is here tiirt··a;e the~retical diff~renti;tion of something called ;'religion" from the civic arena becomes quite clear.

Restraining Religion in John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration

~ 0 ·~,.,·,?n after Bodin, the writings of John Locke illustrate the

emergence of thi~- i~1divi<lu~li~~d~eiigious self.74 Trained in med1cine.at O~f;~~Ci,";~i_:~b~~;;~·a pro~inentvoice in the domes-

tic and international affairs of British government during the sec- ond half of the seventeenth century. His chief patron from the 1660s through the early 1680s was Lord Ashley, First Earl of Shaftesbury, a highly influential politician who had been granted joint propri- etorship of the American province of Carolina. Locke himself held the office of secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations from 1673 to 1675 and the office of commissioner of the Board of Trade from 1696 to 1700.75 Like Bodin, Locke was not a stranger to Neo- Platonic speculation about "religion" (Locke had very likely read the early work of John Toland and in fact had met him in 1693).76

While in exile in Holland in the late r68os, Locke composed his Letter Concerning Toleration, which attempted to provide reasonable arguments for allowi11.g ~ ~ariety of worship practices in a single state.77 To do so, he made a crucial distinction: "I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the Business of Civil Gov- ernment from that of Religion, and to settle the just Bounds that lie between the one and the other." 78 In Locke's scheme, would ideally not be a part of the political ;;I S0uTs··c;~11~t b~fo11.g tZii:he Civll.Magistrate, because his Power consists only in outward force; but true and saving Religion con- sists in the inward perswasion of the Mind." 79 ~for L()c,k.c:2 religi()n ought to be purely a matter of the salv~tio~2L!h~ .. inciiyigl,!~!, It is not surprising then that he radica!!y_r:edefined the idea of " Whereas the medieval church had been conceived of largely "as an

IOI

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

inviolably holy body, possessed of unchallengeable, because divine, authority," 80 Locke presented the church, or rather_ churches, as

much more crrcumscribed entities: ------·-----····-----·-'"·--·- ..... -.-.. - .. - -·· ·~---

Let us now consider what a Church is. A Church then I take to be a vol- untary [libera] Society of Men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the publick worshipping of God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him, and effectual to the Salva- tion of their Souls. I say it is a free and voluntary Society [societatem liberam et voluntariam]. No body is born a member of any Church .... No man by nature is bound unto any particular Church or Sect, but everyone joins himself voluntarily to that Society in which he be- lieves he has found that Profession and Worship which is trnly ac- ceptable to God. The hopes of Salvation, as it was the only cause of his entrance into that Communion, so it can be the only reason of his stay there. 81

To be sure, Locke envisioned a worship that was "publick," but the

impetus to the formation C>f _the church in the_ first _place wa2_to be an entirely private affair. The church was now a voluntary assembly

of individuals ~ho gath~r together for theso!e__pl~EP()Se of~b~injng 11 ;r;~tion: Any-g;th~~i~g-f;;~ thi; p~p;;~-;~ght ~o be tolerated by the I civil authorities, provided that the participants played by the rules of l the game, the most important of which was, do not disturb the func- 1 tions of the state (which Locke had earlier d~lineated as''Ovil Inter-

ests": "Life, Liberty, Health, and Indolency of the Body; and the Possession of outward things, such as Money, Lands, Houses, Furni- ture, and the like"). 82 All "Ecclesiastical Laws," wrote Locke, should

be confined to matters concerning "the acquisition of Eternal Life ....

Nothing ought, nor can be transacted in [a 'Religious Society'], re-

lating to the Possession of Civil and Worldly Goods. No Force is here to be made use of, upon any occasion whatsoever: For Force belongs wholly to the Civil Magistrate, and the Possession of all out- ward Goods is subject to his Jurisdiction." 83 As long as beliefs about God did not interfere with those interests, said Locke, they should be tolerated; thus the only groups that he explicitly excluded from

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RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

toleration were atheists (though Catholics and Muslims would seem implicitly to_ be excluded). new proposed legal "protec-

tion" for religions raised the question of what exactly constituted "a religion." In fact, after the conclusion of the Letter, Locke added an appendix that posed a closely related question:

We are to enquire, therefore, what men are of the same Religion. Concerning which, it is manifest that those who have one and the same Rule ofF~ith a;_d Worship, are of th~;ame-Religi;;n; ind i:hos·e who have not the.sameRuie'ofFarthandWo;;i:;Jr;;;;eof different Religions. For since all things that belong unto that Religion arc contained in that Rule, it follows necessarily that those who agree in one Rule are of one and the same Religion: and vice versa. Thus Turks and Christians are of different Religions: because these take the Holy Scriptures to be the Rule of their Religion, and those the Alcoran. And for the same reason, there may be different Religions also even amongst Christians. The Papists and the Lutherans, tho' both of them profess faith in Christ, and are therefore called Christians, yet are not both of the same Religion: because These acknowledge nothing but the Holy Scriptures to be the Rule and Foundation of their Reli- gion; Those take in also Traditions and the Decrees of Popes, and of these together make the Rule of their Religion. 85

We~~ thus in~lude adhc:rence_toa_certainset_ofsc:riptmes_as_a~::- other defining feature_()fa_reHgio11 forJ;c'.gc:k~,86 This assemblage of ideas-religions as groups of individuals who freely choose to associ- ate with each other and adhere to a particular set of writings for the purpose of salvation, and who ideally operate in ways that do not in-

terfere or overlap with the concerns of the state-now begins to look quite similar to modern conceptions of religion.

Yet there are still some differences. Locke';~cliema still allowed for cha~1:ianity to be subdi"idediI1to different "religions," which is not ~Uy the case in modern scholarship (although one does sometimes see "Catholicism" and "Protestantism" discussed as separate religions). Locke's model also presupposed that citizens would be socialized and educated by churches and thus that in some sense, "church" would

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RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

stillhave a role to play, at least indirectly, in "state." 87 Nevertheless, Locke'; Dtter C~n~erning 1ol~ration can be viewed as a turning point. From thelate.seventeent:11-ce-ntliiy; the isolat1on of religion as a dis- tinct sphere of life ideally separated from other areas of life allowed for a new kind of fi!ental mappjrlg of Europe and the world.

---·--·--·-····-·-·-

Conclusion

I close this chapter by emphasizing the context in which these in- tellectual developments occurred. I have accentuated European do- mestic strife, but the wider global context is also important. Locke may not have agreed with his patron on everything, but his passion for toleration was a characteristic he shared with Lord Ashley. It is worth considering the circumstances in which Ashley's opinions de- veloped. In his biography of Locke, Maurice Cranston writes:

Ashley's very zeal for toleration was indeed but an aspect of his inter- est in trade. It was not simply a case of his desiring toleration of dis- senters because of his own Presbyterian views, still less a case of his having achieved a Christ-like forbearance beyond the spiritual range

of the average sensual man. Ashley_opp_?.?~1.i:eligi_()ll_S_E~~~C_}l!!2~ because rdigious persecution di;ided a n_ation,Ar.?~~~~IJX?f~~sm_()~£ i ndust;i~;;s··diI~e~i t;; e;;igrate,. arid generaYly impeded commercial &veiop;i;~~t~ He ~;w more ~!early th;;_;· mo~rE~gii~h~e~ ;;fhi~-r~; how colonial expansion and international trade could be made to bring enormous fortunes to investors like himself and at the same time increase the wealth and power of the country as a whole. The example of Holland had taught him how trade ~d to~ration cou!_<i :flourish splendidly together. He was the complete progressive capital- ist in p·;;lit1c.s; he-·;;Tghi:-aiin~st have been invented by Marx. 88

As we will see, trade apcl<::()l()nization had .a i-9Je,_tg _ _p!~Y.J.1.<.>t only in the form;ti~;-~f the cate15ory of religion, but also in the formation of the entities we have co~1e to call ''religions." The fragmentation Christenclo;:;:; ;;l 1:h~ p;oposed resp~nse of toleration and confine- ment of religion for the benefit of the stability of the state allowed

RENAISSANCE, REFORMATION, AND RELIGION

for the perception of Europe as a group of independent nations su- perimposed over a nonoverlapping map of different, antagonistic re- ligions in coexistence. This model would prove to be an important tool for Europeans as they began to produce knowledge about the foreign peoples they had been increasingly encountering abroad since the late fifteenth century.

ro5

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS,

WORLD RELIGIONS

Introduction

In the preceding chapter, I tried to show how a world that had previously not been differentiated into "religious" and "secular" spheres became one in which religion was conceived of as an ideally

private and nonpolitical realm. 1 Along with a number of other schol- ars, I have come to see this period and locale as central to the pro-

duction of the modern concept of religion. Yet it would be a mistake to ignore the effect of the foreign exploration and colonization in which Europeans engaged during this same period of time. After all, it was in 1492, just seven years before Ficino's death, that Co- lumbus sailed the ocean blue. More to the point, it was in October 1493 that a vernacular Italian ballad recounting Columbus's dis- coveries was printed in Ficino's hometown of Florence. 2 With the growth of the printing industry, news of far-flung peoples hovered

over the internal Christian disputes racking Europe. At the _same

time that the genus of reli~ion was corning. tobe !hought. of a~ ide- arry-a-n -internil, private, depoliticized entity,. interactions W~!l:iP~ ~f~;_;~1y·;_;~kno;~ :pe~ple~ ;ere begiu'ni:ng to.c~eate new species _of 1~d~;1cl~al religio;s. .. ··

Of c~~~~e, ~;en before the age of exploration and colonization, Europeans had been confronted with previously unknown peoples, most notably the Mongols in the thirteenth century. European reac- tions to the Mongols' capture of Poland and Hungary early in 1241 both resembled and differed from the colonial setting of later centu- ries. A crucial distinction is that in the thirteenth century, Europe-

ans were facing invasion from a superior fighting force, a difference that helps to explain why the understanding of the Mongols that came to dominate was an apocalyptic one: the Mongol invaders were Gog and Magog of Revelation 20:8. 3 Yet alternative understandings

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

that saw the Mongols as the ten lost tribes of Israel are precursors to some of the interpretive strategies for handling new peoples that be- came more common during the colonial era.

Without underplaying the trauma of these early encounters, it is

safe to say that JE __ ~1as __ !he. __ ~~!ee.mh_c:tcgh!ry_!l:i3:!_~a"W_!he q11e.~!.i~~.9f dift!_~~!!:.~e.!.f!!?I1g_~ll1:11_~1:J??Plll~!i()ES emerge.."WithflC."W.l_.:~ge.~~Y-There was an increasing knowledge of southern Africans, thanks to the Por- tuguese and later the Dutch. The English and Dutch presence in In- dia brought about more awareness of the Indian subcontinent. French Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century took Catholic teach-

ings to the Chinese and brought back knowledge of ancient Chinese scripts and gods. The most surprising new people, though, were cer-

tainly the Americans. J. H. Elliott writes of the discovery and inter- pretation of America:

Here was a totally new phenomenon, quite outside the range of Eu- rope's accumulated experience and of its normal expectation. Europe- ans knew something, however vaguely and inaccurately, about Africa and Asia. But about America and its inhabitants they knew nothing. It was this which differentiated the response of sixteenth-century Euro- peans to America from that of fifteenth-century Portuguese to

!'' Africa .... The very fact of America's existence, and of its gradual /// revelation as an entity in its own right, rather than as _a~ extension of

I Asia, constituted a challenge to a whole body of tradmonal assump-' I tions, beliefs and attitudes. 4 As exploration and interactions with the peoples of the Americas, Africa, and Asia increased, a flood of new information was created about these new peoples. The organization and systetnatization of this information provides_another part of the contextin which_the modern;otion of religion took shape. 5 I will have more to say about the role of reports abo~t "religion" in the Americas in Chapter 7, but for now, I carry my account of the development of the concept of religion from the sixteenth century into the twentieth by focusing on different ways that colonial interactions helped to generate what

are now known as religions in India, Africa, and Japan. I choose these three examples because they "each Illustrate different aspects

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

of the complex sets of interactions between European academics and the indigenous peoples of these areas that were decisive in the

formation of the religions and in the sharpening of the generic con- cept of religion.

Before proceeding, I emphasize that it was not only academics and indigenous peoples who participated in this creation of religions. Recall that in Chapter 2, one of the authors whose works repre- sented a shift into the more modern way of using the term religio was Hugo Grotius in the early seventeenth century. The context in which Grotius was writing sheds an interesting light on his new

usage of the term. He began his treatise De veritate religionis christi- anae ("On the Truth of Christian Religion") by explaining that the work was written for_those in the Dutch shipping industry who would no doubt be meeting the other three ofth~ ~~;id;~ ·f~i::tr kinds i(~~9rli~; __ '~~~~ar{s,)ews, and. Mah;111~tans," on their voyages.6 Such s·aTiors would need a ;;;y t;; mai;ta1ii th~i~ Chri~ti;~·id-;;ntity and propagate the gospel. Grotius elaborated on his reasoning in the preface to the work:

For my design was, to compose something that might be serviceable indeed to my fellow citizens in general, but especially to the sea- faring part of our community; that so they might employ usefully, rather than beguile idly, as too many of them do, the number of lei- sure hours they must necessarily have upon their hands at sea. And therefore prefacing the work with some encomiums on the Dutch nation, representing them as easily capable of excelling others in the art of navigation, I urged them to employ that art, as a blessing pecu- liarly given from above, not only for the service of their private ends and temporal advantage, but also for the propagation of the true, or in other words the Christian religion. Sufficient opportunities, I observed, would constantly present themselves, in the course oflong and distant voyages; continually meeting, as they must be, every where, either with Pagans, as in China or Guinea; with Mahometans, as in the Turkish, the Persian, and the African dominions; or indeed, lastly, with Jews, (these also being now become professed enemies of Christianity) dispersed and scattered, as they are, into almost every country of the known world.7

rn8

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RHIGIONS

This newly developed sense of the word religio arose in this context of IS-;;-t~h nationalism ~nd econo~ic:_~:x,:pa11s_i()11: In Grotiu~'s ideal world~-part of the mission of the Dutch shipping industry would be the spread of the true, Christian religion, which must be articulated by whoever happened to be confronting and interacting with foreign peoples. As we will see, all manner of people were involved in these colonial interactions.

"Religion" in India

In April 1853 a former employee of the British East India Com- pany, one Malcolm Lewin, testified before the House of Commons.

At issue was a dispatch that described "the body of Pagan natives of India" as "heathen." Under questioning from the members of Parlia- ment, Lewin protested the use of that word. We pick up in the midst of the exchange:

Lewin: " ... All I know is, that the word 'heathen' conveys an insult."

"What word would you have used?" Lewin: "Hindoos." "A Hindoo may be a Christian?" Lewin: "He may." "[If the] question was between a converted Hindoo, and a Hindoo

adhering still to the religion of his ancestors; would you say between a Christian and a Hindoo, when in fact both were Hindoos?"

After Lewin made further protests against the use of the word

"heathen," the questioning resumed: "What word would you have proposed to use[?]" Lewin: "The word which hitherto had been in use was that of

Hindoos. A Hindoo Christian is a Christian convert from Hindoo- ism; a Hindoo is a person of the Hindoo faith."

"But supposing the Christian was also a Hindoo, how could you say that a Christian was on one side and a Hindoo was on the other?" 8

This almost humorous failure of communication helps to illus- trate a change that had been occurring slowly for decades. The term

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

hindu, which is itself ancient, was derived from the local name of the Indus river and was a geographic identifier, referring to people or

things from India. 9 By the eighteenth century, hindu (or "Hindoo")

was already wen on its way to becoming used -primarily as a "reli- g10us"-Ide11ti:fi-er (note the ~se in the exc~;P;: ~f b~th-''Hi~d~oi~'' and "Hindoo faith"). Lewin, in fact, uses the term both ways in this example from the nineteenth century. In the phrase "Hindoo Chris- tian," the word "Hindoo" must be a geographic or ethnic label, while in the phrase "Hindoo faith," the term clearly describes a religion. Thus the miscommunication.

The term "Iiindooism" seems to have first appeared in the late eighteenth century (~t thisstagei1;~~r study, it;h~~ldnotbe surpris-

ing to find that there is no word in an ancient Indian language that approximates "Hinduism"). 10 It seems to have gradually replaced such older phrases as "the religion of the Hindoos" and "the religion of the

Banians," which were in use as early as the sixteenth century.11 We can get a sense of what such phrases were thought to convey by dis- secting the title of one of the earliest English published accounts of India. It is a tract printed in 1630 by Henry Lord, an Anglican chap- lain stationed with the British East India Company in the northwest- ern port city of Surat: A Discoverie of the Sect of the Banians Containing their History, Law, Liturgie, Casts, Customes, and Ceremonies. Gathered

from their Bramanes, Teachers of that Sect: As the Particulars were com-

prized in the Booke of their Law, called the Shaster.12 Much is instructive

in this title. We see here the easy interchange of the vocabulary of "sects" and "religions." In fact, the title line in the header of the actual

pages of the book reads "A Discoverie of the Banian Religion." The

vocabulary is further blurred when the topic under discussion is described as a "heresy." 13 What constitutes this sect/religion/heresy is "history, law, liturgie, casts, customes, and ceremonies." The infor- mation is gathered from the "Booke of their Law" and was mediated to the author through the aid ofBrahmins, "whose eminence of place, was an attractive to draw on this discovery and manifestation." 14 Lord claimed that in researching the book, he, "with the helpe of Inter- preters, made collections out of a booke of theirs called the SHASTER,

IIO

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD IIEUGIONS

which is to them as their Bible, containing the grounds of their Reli- gion in a written word." 15

The actual contents of Lord's book in some ways reflect the con-

tents of the Old Testament: a creation story; followed by the "Moral! Law," a series of commandments in the "Thou shalt ... " format; fol-

lowed by a critique of parts of the commandments that Lord found objectionable. This portion of the work is characterized by not only a number of biblical citations, but also a series of comparisons with ancient cultures (Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Carthaginians) and citations of ancient Greek and Latin literature. The last two sections of the book offer an account of "Ceremoniall Law" of the Banians and a description of the caste system (notable here is Lord's observa-

tion that, contrary to the opinion of some, the "Bramanes" are not in fact descended from Abraham and were never called "Abrahmanes"). 16

The work then concludes with an additional short refutation of some of the precepts outlined in the book (that the refutation is a key part of this account is intimated by the presence on the title page of a quo- tation of Isa. 9:16: "The Leaders of this people cause them to erre: and they that are led of them are destroyed"). 17

The knowledge produced in Lord's book, the generation of "the religion of the Banians," is a complex product and a forerunner of European scholarship of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lord's interests as a Christian chaplain abroad in India are merged with the interests of his native Brahmin interpreters (not to mention

the interests of the Company officials who introduced Lord to the Brahmins). Also important is the centrality of text in Lord's account.

He sought out what h~~-~garded as "their Bible" and built his acc~~~t

around it. As such, his work stands near the beginning of a Euro-

pean scholarly interest that centered on "sacred texts" as represent- ing the essence of "religions." Thus, even though it is now generally agreed that in premodern India no single text played a role analogous to that of the Bible in European cultures, it would be wrong to call Lord's book and works like it "distortions" of some sort of more "au-

thentic"' native "religion." Ra1:_her1 t~~Iegacy of Lord's book and other

s~milar :":'_<:>~~~~S_!he cr~ation of an Indian religi()n in whi~_h f~x,-ts _h:.i~~

III

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

become central. Indeed, the massive amount of energy directed dur- mg the eightee;;,th and nineteenth centuries by scholars toward the production of critical editions and translations of what were re- garded as "sacred texts" not only of India but of "the Orient" more generally owes a great deal to the work of decidedly nonscholarly writers such as Lord. The most spectacular product of these later efforts was undoubtedly the fifty volumes of Sacred Books of the East produced under the editorial oversight of Max Muller, which ap- peared from 1879 to 19rn. 18

The Sacred Books of the East and other translations produced during this era had a wide readership. That these scholarly efforts were central to the formation of what many regard as the establishment of "authentic" Hinduism is demonstrated by the fact that none other than M_~~~maGandhi, considered by many as a standard bearer of "Hinduism" and a celebrated Hindu interpreter of the Bhagavad Gita, recalled in his autobiography that he first encountered the Gita in the English translation of Edwin Arnold introduced to him by Theoso- phists during a stay in England in the late nineteenth century. 19

It is also worth emphasizing that these texts being edited, trans- lated, and designated as "sacred" in the nineteenth century were an- cient. As scholars wrote about the religious systems they detected in

these ancient texts, _!_~_ry_g~.ri:~rat~9 pur~,- textual rc:lig~o11~~ that vided a standard which ~11r()peans could (and often con- cfemn) the pra~tices of modern peoples as. not being trne to these ancient''authentj~"~r~Eg1;n;_-Thi~ opirii~ri held ri~1:~nly for Hindu- ism, but for all of the "Oriental religions." Thus, in the course of a discussion on modern Parsis (devotees of the ancient Persian prophet Zoroaster) in India, Muller writes that the Parsi priests

would have to admit that they cannot understand one word of the sa- cred writings in which they profess to believe .... A Parsi, in fact, hardly knows what his faith is. The Zend-Avesta is to him a sealed book; and though there is a Guzerati [the language spoken in Gujarat in western India] translation of it, that translation is not made from the original, but from a Pehlevi paraphrase, nor is it recognized by the priests as an authorized version. Till about five-and-twenty years

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

ago [that is, about 1837], there was no book from which a Parsi of an inquiring mind could gather the principles of his religion. At that time, and, as it would seem, chiefly in order to counteract the in- fluence of Christian missionaries, a small Dialogue was written in Guzerati-a kind of Catechism, giving, in the form of questions and answers, the most important tenets of Parsiism. 20

/

!Miiller's evident disdain for the inability of Parsis to understand their own "sacred writings" was not uncommon among European scholars,

land it is perhaps not the most interesting feature of this quotation. 21

What instead merit~. ~pecial attention is_ the pro~uction b1 __ riaEiv..e p~oples, apparently in _response to Christian missionary: wo1::k, of texts that distilled and pro~duced ''Parsi religion" in opposition to Christi- :mity:1t is, e;_~~tly thi~ ~ort ~f give~and-take between Europ~ans a11d lrll!ia~; that~as fundamental in the creation of "Indian "

not on this topic as a number of scholars have recently produced much more in-depth studies of how the "religions ofindia" took shape during the colonial era. 22 These studies have met with considerable resistance from other scholars interested in defending the notion of a kind of precolonial "authentic ancient Indian reli- gion."23 For example, the introduction to a recent reference work refers to "Hinduism" as "an ancient religion that still flourishes." 24 I hope that by now I have shown just how problematic that kind of claim is. "Religion" is a modern concept, and "the religions" are the

of modern int~r;~ti~;_;;-:1; th~-~~ample ab;,;~, ~~~-portion life of a community of Parsi people is parceled out into a

"Catechism" (apparently in response to the work oflocal Christians) representing the essence of something called "Parsiism." Clearly, ideas of "continuous existence" and authenticity are extremely com-

plicated in such situations.

"Religion" in Southern Africa

David Chidester has produced a fine study on the colonial interac- tions of Dutch and British colonists and native peoples in southern Africa from the sixteenth century through the nineteenth century. 25

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

Here I examine just one of the many examples Chidester presents of the creation of religion in the frontiers of southern Africa: the case of the German writer Peter Kolb. Well educated in mathematics and astronomy (he was a lecturer at the University of Halle), Kolb set out for the Cape of Good Hope late in 1704 in order to make astronomi- cal observations, having secured passage on a ship belonging to the Dutch East India Company. 26 Unfortunately, "he proved incompe-

tent" and "according to his critics, Kolb spent his time smoking and drinking, having to resign his post and return to Germany in 1713 because he had gone blind." 27 Kolb did, however, capitalize on his eight years in the Cape. He made many observations about the phys- ical characteristics of the area and the habits and customs of the na-

tives. The end result of these efforts was the production of a detailed and highly influential study of the Cape of Good Hope that paid special attention to the religion of the "Hottentot" (now generally called Khoikhoi) natives of the area. It was first published in 1719 after his return to Europe. 28 Kolb presented his account as a vast improvement of previous publications on the Cape, stressing his first- hand knowledge: "But I had not been at the Cape a long Time, before I saw the Folly of trusting almost to any Report there. Upon which I threw away the Historical Rubbish I had gather'd upon Information, and made it a Rule, not to believe any Thing I did not see, of which a Sight could be had." 29 In the absence of native written texts, Kolb's observations, along with his interviews of natives (often, it seems, induced with bribes), provided the raw materials for his_production ()£J=:!ottentot r~lig~o11/0 ·· ···· ·· - ········ · ···- ··

The natives of southern Africa had been known to Europeans through regular interaction since the Dutch East India Company set up a way station at the Cape in 1652. At the time Kolb wrote, the

i::.':.c!i!~.1.~i~??m was that the .Hottentots W:~E~~}!l:?1:1~E~!ig_i,on~ Kolb opened his chapter "Of the RELIGION of the Hottentots" by noting that "it is doubted by many whether the Hottentots have any Notion

of a Deity." 31 He was quick to prove such claims wrong by comparing Hottentot behaviors to those of Jews and Catholics. Early on in his work, Kolb wrote:

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RHIGIONS

In their Customs and Institutions they cannot be said to resemble any People besides the Jews and the Old Troglodytes. They resemble the Jews in their Offerings, the Regulation of their Chief Festivals by the New and Full Moon, and in their VVithdrawing at certain Times from their Wives. They agree with that People in abstaining from certain Sorts of Food; in particular, Swine's Flesh, which hardly any of 'em will taste. At a certain Age, they undergo a Sort of Circumci- sion. And Women are excluded the Secret and Management of cer- tain Affairs, much as they are among the Jews. And in several other Customs do the Hottentots agree with that People. 32

Yet the connection with the Jews was not, in Kolb's opinion, direct:

But as they have no Memory of the Children of Israel, of Moses, or the Law, Things of which, had they derived their Origin or these Cus- toms from any of the Tribes, some Traces, in highest Probability, had remain'd, it cannot be thought, on any good Grounds, that they de- duce either their Origin or these Customs from them. A far greater Probability lies on the side of the Troglodytes, the Descendants of Abraham by his Wife Chetura, who not only observed all or most of the Customs in which the Hottentots agree with the ]ews, but likewise several others, observed by the Hottentots at this Day.33

After describing Hottentot worship of the moon, which involves

"Shouting, Screaming, Singing, Jumping, Stamping, Dancing, Pros- tration on the Ground, and an unintelligible Jargon," Kolb writes, "I shall observe, by the Way, that this Dancing-Ceremony gives a new light into the Origin of the Hottentots; since 'tis pretty certain, Danc- ing enter'd into the Divine Worship in Times as early as the Flood. And the Jews retain it, on certain Festivals, to this Day."34 Again, after describing the Hottentot veneration of a certain insect, Kolb carries on: "The Hottentots likewise pay a Religious Veneration to their Saints and Men of Renown departed. They honour 'em not with Tombs, Statues or Inscriptions; but consecrate Woods, Mountains, Fields and Rivers to their Memory." 35 He also notes that the Hotten- tots call the person upon whom this insect lands "a Saint" and "a lfoly

Man."36 He concludes his discussion of Hottentot religion by claim- ing that they are even worse than the Jews when it comes to hindering

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

the (true, Protestant) Christian mission: "Never certainly were there, in Matters of Religion, so obstinate and so infatuated a People. Stiff as are the Jews, many of 'em embrace the Faith of Christ and die in it. But I never heard of a Hottentot that died a Christian."37

\Vhereas earlier interpreters had found no religion among the Hottentots, thanks to these comparative efforts of . the Hot- tentots no"1 hacf-;: r~ligion.· A~ Chidester ~iit~;: ;;Th~y might have hacf a 'false' ;eligion that ;as similar, in Kolb's terms, to Judaism or Roman Catholicism, which stood as an obstacle to Protestant Chris- tianity. But at least they had a recognizable religious system." 38 The "discovery" of Hottentot religion came about through the rich com- bination of a number of factors, which included among other ele- ments Dutch economic aspirations, the peculiar interests of Peter Kolb, and the active participation of native informants. Chidester has noted that Kolb's attribution of religion to the Hottentots oc- curred at a time when they posed no threat to the colonists. In the later eighteenth century, when greater European encroachments led to renewed hostilities, European writers would again deny that the Hottentots had a religion. 39 The southern African situation raises a key point to which I will return in the concluding chapter: !.11:.~ en- erg}'_ spent on trying to produce a "good definition" of religion or tryi11g to decide whether or not something "really · is''~ a ;~ligi-;;~ ~ight better be directedto individual acts of naming ~ome ph-;;~;-~: ena.as. ~eliir()n ar{d oth;;s as not i:~Iigion. Who t.o -;;;~~--theie decisions and what are their reasons?

"Religion" in Japan

The invention of religion in Japan involves many of the kinds of power relationships and colonial encounters we have been examining, but this story is ~particularly goo<J exampleof the role that ment can play in the creation of a religion, even an ancient religion. In the late nineteenth century, "Shinto" began to be-portrayed by the imperial Meiji government as the ancient, indigenous religion of Japan, and this Meiji view continues to be reproduced even in some

n6

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RHIGIONS

academic circles. The view is enshrined in the opening statement of the entry for "Shinto" in a standard reference tool of the late twenti- eth century: "Shinto is the name given to the traditional religion of Japan, a religion that has existed continuously from before the found- ing of the Japanese nation until the present." 41 The idea of Shint() "continuously existing" implies a stability and an essentialism that \Vouffb~Jl!"QJ)Jim:iti~-~~ ~ _c;lescriptiQn 9f a11y soci~l-formation, but in the c.ase Clf°_~EigtQ,)! .!~ 3.:g_espec:}~llyinislea<iing statement. The term shinto does indeed date back at least as far as the Nihon shoki, a histori- cal chronicle produced in the eighth century C.E. It entered the

Japanese vocabulary from Chinese as a combination of the Chinese character shin, meaning kami, or divinities associated with weather and natural calamities, and the character to, meaning "way." The term shinto is thus frequently translated as the "way of the kami," but it can refer to the activities of or worship of the kami or simply the state of being a kami. 42 Furthermore, in ancient Japan, the rites for these divinities were not· clearly distinct from Bu~'icl!;i;t-ritual~ and insufiitions.'H-'fh-;:;s,-as· Sarah Thafha~- ~~t~d, Shinto "was neith~i- ; fully independent set of institutions nor a distinct phi1~;-a'p1;I~al ti-a.<li~- tion-dmingm;;s-t-;T1:h;millen11ium: b~f~i-~ 1868." 44 Th.at.par1:1~nlar year marked the begin11ing of the ''Meiji Restoration," which dis- placed the rule of the shogun, or military governors, and installed in their place the emperor Meiji Tenno in the role of head of state. The

--'-·-···-'----o_f ___ h __ .is rule _\V~!~ II1ar~~ci a nativist IIlQY~IIl(:llt tQ pQ.rge_ supposedly foreign elements from ')nciigt;.i:ious" Japanese. W():s~ip. Early in 1868, th;-g;~~rnment issued edicts that denigrated the status of Buddhist priests and ordered objects identifiable as Buddhist to be removed from shrines. 45 In 1870, the Meiji government implemented the Great Teaching Campaign (taikyo), which melded kami worship andnatlo:;~alist intei-~sts into a kind of ~~;t~·religion.tha~ purported t;

revived ancient · _ ?€Jap;~: 46 Tl;~-questionabl~ ";~t:h~n~ enterprise was not lost on some contemporaries. In

1872, Nlori Arinori, a Japanese diplomat educated in the United Kingdom and assigned to work in the United States, published a pam- phlet (in the form of an open letter to a top government official) that

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

highlighted the artificiality of "Shinto" as it was being promoted by the state. He criticized the government's "attempt to impose upon

our people a religion of its creation," protesting that the "notion of making a new religion or precept by the authority of the State, which now prevails in our country, has a strange appearance." 47 Whether

through the effect of criticisms such as these or through other forces, by 1887, the government was proclaiming that Shinto was in fact not a religion at all: "There can be no question of the evil deed of viewing our Way of the Gods (Shinto)-the public way of Heaven and Earth, the spirit of the world-as identical with religion in general ... this Way cannot be included in 'religion' any more than can ice in ashes." 48

In fact, it took a military directive from the Allied powers in 1945 to

officially cre?-)esrablish Shinto as a religion disti~.ct from the state apparatus. The directive prohibited all state-rel~ted Shinto ~ituals in

ord~r ''to separate religion from the state, to prevent the misuse of religion for political ends, and to put all religions, faiths, and creeds

upon exactly the same legal basis, entitled to precisely the same op- portunities and protection." 49

With Shinto, then, we have a clear example of the creation of

a religion srecifi~~~lrtg~~.~t~.~gdel.ofWorldR~l~gjo::1s- Shi~to "is neither ancient, unchanging, nor peculiarly indigenous." 50 Various parties used the designation "Shinto" to represent the indigenous religion of Japan, something distinctly not religion, and eventually simply a religion among other religions.

Classifying All These "Religions"

Given the complicated histories associated with the entities we have come to call "religions," it is not surprising that different means of organizing these new religions proliferated from the seventeenth century on. European Christians were beginning to re~ognize them- selves as a fractured, diverse group, and the "heathen" were be- ginning to be seen as divisible into distinct groups. A great deal of

intellectual energy was expended in attempts to produce comprehen- sive catalogues of the religions, and the acknowledgement of these

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

multiple religions in turn focused attention on the singular, generic "religion."51

These points are nicely illustrated in the seventeenth-century writings of such authors as Samuel Purchas and Alexander Ross. Purchas, an ordained minister educated at Cambridge, published in

1613 a large tome that bore the informative title Purchas his Pilgrim- age: Or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in all Ages and Places discovered, from Creation unto this Present. 52 The organizational structure of the book is a mix of new and old. It is divided into nine parts: Asia covered in five chapters, and Africa and America covered

in two chapters each. But within this framework based on the geog-

raphy of the "New World," Purchas narrated a very old biblical story, beginning (under the heading of "Asia") with the Genesis account of creation and reflections on the Trinity. By the second edition of the

work in 16!4, however, this creation account was dotted with refer- ences to the studies of Copernicus and Galileo.

When it came to the actual discussion of the "Religions Observed in All Ages," Purchas offered an eclectic collection using a variety of formulations, including "Religion of the world before the flood," "Syria, and the ancient Religions there," "the Theologie, and Reli- gion of the Phoenicians," "the Hebrew Nation and Religion," "the Arabians, Saracens, Turkes, and of the ancient Inhabitants of Asia Minor: and of their Religions," "Arabia, and the ancient Religions,

Rites, and Customes there," "the Successors of Mahomet, their dif- ferent Sects, and of the dispersing of that Religion through the World," "the Opinions holden by the Turkes in their Religion," "the

Regions and Religions of Asia Minor," "the Armenians, Medes, Per- sians, Parthians, Scythians, Tartarians, Chinois, and of their Reli- gions," "the Religions and Rites of the Virginians," and "Cumana, Guiana, Brasill, Chica, Chili, Peru, and other Regions of America Peruviana, and of their Religions." The descriptions of each vary in the level of detail provided (presumably based on the level of detail in the travel narratives that constituted his sources), but Purchas

managed to convey a sizable amount of information on the customs of a wide range of peoples. Despite the interest in diversity, Purchas

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

emphasized unity when he came to reflect on the phenomenon of

religion more generally. He stood in the traditi()n that regarded

<:::l~~~~i~?ity_as "the. gi:_~t therefore best) Religio1::" He asserted that "the true Religion can be but one, and that which God himselfe teacheth, as the onely true way to himselfe; all other religions being

but strayings from him, whereby men wander in the dark." 53 Even as he set out to describe the outward behaviors of numerous peoples

from the far ends of the world, ~urchas claimed that religion was an internal affair: "Religion it selfe is in the hea-rt:andproduceth those outward cerimoniall effects thereof." 54 Early on in the work, he of- fered an etymoiogical discussion: "Religion in it selfe is naturall, written in the hearts of all men, which wil (as here we shew) rather be of a false then no Religion: but the name whereby it is so called, is by birth a forreiner, by common use made a free-denizen among

us, descended from the Romans, which by their swords made way for their words, the Authors both of the thing it selfe and of the ap- pellation, to a great part of this Westerne world." 55 After citing and

discussing several Latin authorities, Purchas settled on a definition, not of "religion," but of "true Religion": "The true Religion is the true rule and right way of serving God. Or to speake as the case now standeth with us, True religion is the right way of reconciling and re- uniting man to God, that he may be saved."56 We have seen this sort of language in the sixteenth century. Religion is a "rule" that leads to salvation, and there is only one "true" rule, of

' Chr1stians like p~;~h~s:_ The oth~; "Religiori~," despi~e their vari- ety, can be classed as the subtitle of Purchas's book indicates into "Heathnish, Jewish, and Saracenicall."

_ Alexander ~oss, whom we have already encountered in his capac-

ity as producer of the earliest English translation of the Qur'an in 1649, provides another example of this interest in the religions of the world. 57 In 1653, one year before his death, Ross published a 578-page work with a title that suggests something like the World Religions model: Pansebeia: Or, A View ~f All Religions in the World, with the Several Church-Governments,from the Creation, to These Times.

Together with a Discovery of All Known Heresies, in All Ages and Places,

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

Throughout Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. 58 Yet, it becomes clear that Ross's understanding of religion and the religions is somewhat foreign to typical modern discourses. First, his vocabulary, like that

of Henry Lord in A Discoverie of the Sect of the Banians, appears to blend older sectarian terminologywith the newer vocabulary of dif- fere~t ;eligions. i=1e complained that "the world is peste;ed ;ith too rnanySects and Heresies" but expressed the same idea with the lament that "the world is pestered with too many Religions." 59 For Ross, religion was a human universal: "all Societies of men in all Ages, and in all parts of the Universe, have united and strengthened themselves with the Cement ofReligion." 60 Yet, his treatment of the topic of "all the Religions in the World" includes a total of three sections on the ancient and modem religions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas and no fewer than eleven sections devoted to "the Reli- gions of Europe" (ten for varieties of Christians and one for "Mahu-

metanism"). Roughly a sixth of the book consists of a rambling concluding chapter of general questions about religion and the con-

sequences of a plurality of religions. Ross here brings together a number of the topics I covered in Chapter 5. After first establishing that "Religion is the pillar on which every Common-wealth is built," he moves on to the issue of multiple religions: ''Are pluralities of Reli- gions tolerable in a State? Publickly one Religion onely is to be al- lowed, because there is but one God ... Religion (as is said) is the Foundation of all States and Kingdomes; therefore in one State and Kingdome there ought to be but one Religion, because there can be but one foundation." 61 A second question follows:

May a State tolerate different Religions in private? I. If they be such Reli- gions as doe not overthrow the fundamentals of truth. 2. Nor such as impugn or disturb the government established in that State or King- dom. 3. If the professors thereof be such as are not factius, ambitious, or percinacious; but honest, simple, tractable, obedient to Superiors, having no other end in holding their opinions of Religion, but Gods glory, and satisfaction of their own conscience ... diversity of Reli- gions, with the limitations aforesaid, may be connived at; especially when it cannot be avoided without the danger and ruin of the State. 62

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

Ross thus treats "AU the Religions of the World" from astandpoint notunlil~eth;i-;;fJean Bodin examined in the previous ch~p-te~:The

statewouid have one religion, but when.ne~essary, a multiplicity of religions within a state is permissible, provided that the religions "do not disturb the government" and are "private." On the question

of classifying the religions of the world, Ross offered a theory of mix- tures: "What else may we observe in view of all these Religions? That some

of them are meerly Heathenish; some Jewish; some meerly Christian; some mixed, either of all, or some of these; Mahumetanism is mixed of Judaisme, Gentilisme, and Arianisme, the Moscovit Religion is, partly Christian, partly Heathenish: In the East are many Sects, partly Chris- tian, partly Jewish. "63 Such theories of religions being the result of "mixing" stood in some tension with the "Pagano-papist" theories of the priestly corruption of an original, pristine monotheism. The eighteenth century, however, would produce theories of the origins of religion that displaced both of these hypotheses. 64

The goal of comprehensive accumulation seems to have persisted im~ the eighteenth a~ indicated the titles ot"the·;;;ru compilations continued to appear. The most celebrated eighteenth-century works of this genre, Ceremonies et coutumes reli- gieuses de tousles peuples du monde, was published by Jean-Frederic Bernard and featured fine engravings by Bernard Picart; it appeared

seven volumes from 1723 to 1737. 65 It was translated into English as The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World Together with Historical Annotations and several Curious

Discourses Equally Informative and Entertaining and was reprinted, excerpted, and plagiarized numerous times over the next one hun- dred years. 66 The work was more detailed than its predecessors (the first English translation ran to almost three thousand pages), but its organizational structure was still roughly the fourfold division. The major sections are "Ceremonies of the Je~s," "Customs and Reli- gious Ceremonies of the Roman Catholics," "Ceremonies and Reli- gious Customs of the Idolatrous Nations," "Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Greeks and Protestants," "the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England, Presbyterians, Independents,

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

Anabaptists, Quakers, &c.," and "Various Sects of Mahometans." Curiously, in addition to the seventh volume dedicated to the "I!istory of Mahometism" and its sects, the Mahometans were also treated under the heading of "the Greek Religion" (that is, Greek Orthodox Christian religion): "As the Religion of the Mahometans is a Com-

pound only of the Doctrine of the Jews and the Christians, we have thought proper to give the Reader an Abstract thereof." 67 Thus, Picart also appears to have simultaneously held a theory of "mixing"

of religions and a theory of prtestly COrruptiOI11 ~ tfi~Ille Ol1tli11ed in the openTng chapter of the firstyolume: "[R]eligious Worship being -o~nfi~;d to Temples, the Appointment of Ministers for the Deities became necessary ... From hence sprang up a numerous Crowd of worthless Creatures, who pretend a Right to serve at those Altars which maintain them. True Religion by Degrees became less Spiritual." 68

Just after Picart's volumes appeared in English, Thomas !3roll~h.- !C~I:, a well-educated Anglican clergyman, authored the two-volume work An Historical Dictionary of All Religions from the Creation of the World to this Present Time. 69 It provides a good example of the complex overlap of different classification systems. In the preface, Broughton outlined his classification scheme: "The first general division of Re- ligion is into True and False. True Religion must ever be the same and invariable, and therefore there can be but ONE TRUE RELIGION. That infinite variety, therefore, in the doctrines and modes of worship, which have prevailed in the world (only one scheme excepted) are but so many deviations from the truth, so many FALSE RELIGIONs."70

Thus, there is a single "True Religion" and many "False Religions." Kr,sn,Yh1-,m-·adhered tO the ·:fourfold model as· an alte~nati;e

-----··-· means of ?rganizing .--·reHg10ns: · religion may more particularly distinguished into Pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Moham- medan. These are the four grand Religions of the world, and include those of every particular country and people." 71 While multiple, seem- ingly independent "religions" could be recognized and described, ultimately they all could be classed as one of "the four grand Religions of the world."

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NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

Even toward the close of the eighteenth century, the fourfold di~rision remained i;;_-~ff~-;;-t~ A g~~d example is the com pend.Turn of William Hurd, which seems largely derivative of Picart's Ceremonies and Religious Customs. In fewer than 950 pages, Hurd produced A New Universal History of the Religious Rites, Ceremonies and Customs of

the Whole World; Ot; A Complete and Impartial View of All the Religions in the Various Nations of the Universe; Both Ancient and lvlodern, From

the Creation Down to the Present Time, which seems to have been pub-

lished first in 1788 and subsequently reprinted in 1799, r8n, and 1814.72 Like the others, it offered a large catalogue of "religions." After beginning with a history of the "ancient Jews," Hurd moved geographically through the cultures of the ancient world, then the modern. The "Heathen" religions are enumerated into more sepa- rate groups, and the accounts are generally more detailed, thanks to the continuing accumulation of travel reports and other sources of knowledge. Hurd made use of, for example, Peter Kolb's work on southern African peoples from earlier in the century, though he re- jected many ofKolb's conclusions. 73 Hurd also noted more divisions among Christians. His work maintained the basic hostility toward Catholics characteristic of earlier Protestant works. He compared "the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of Rome" to "genuine Chris- tianity," which is "The Protestant Religion," but he outlined an array of newly formed groups, including such lesser known groups as the Muggletonians and the Hutchinsonians. 74 All of this detailed dis- cussion, however, still took place basically within the framework of the fourfold division of Christians, Jews, Mahometans, and hea- thens (for instance, each of his many accounts of "the religions" of foreign lands is classified as "pagan": "THE RELIGIONS OF CEYOLON. The inhabitants of Ceylon are all Pagans"). 75

It was the nineteenth ce11tur:y th::it_s:1\V tht'. fina! g(;1:11i5.t: gf_!_his fo{!_i::- fokl division of humanity and the establishment of the modern frame- work-ofWorldReligions.76 The c~~plex processe~ iil;olved in this

are subject of a penetrating study by Tomoko Masuzawa.77

She has compellingly argued that it was not the ca;;-that "the change from the old four-part classification to today's world religions list

l'IEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

[was] simply a revision and refinement, that is, a matter of subdivision of the fourth category of the old system (the pagans/heathens/idola- tors) into more specific, individual religions, hence a matter of more precise differentiation supposedly made possible by the increasingly more exact and accurate state of empirical knowledge." 78 Instead, the

change ought to bc:_i::t:ad in -· context ofa nu~ber gf11i11toteenth- century discour~~~--that of comparative theology, that of the ne\Vly emergi;g·;~i;11~~ ~fja~g~ages, ;nd that of race and the formation of Europea~ identity. Vie;ed from those angles, the emerging

Religions paradigm should be gi~()_I(;_<::!_t:-4.i!_for giving§ubstapce to the 1t 1s to describe: "The collapse of the old tax- onomy was not ... simply a matter of one framework losing ground and eventually being replaced by another. What changed was not so much the method of how to count and categorize religions, but the very manner in which-in an important sense, for the first time-a 'religi;;i-;,was t~be recognized, to be identified as ~uch, so that_it might be comp_ared~~a;-~i1other:''79 Examples like three case stud- i-;;-i~-iliis chapter suggest to me that this change was already under way in the seventeenth century and continued even into the twentieth century, but Masuzawa's point is well taken.

I close this chapter by briefly surveying_ thre!_J:r.()p()s:iJs for t~~- classification of "r~!ig~()!J:S"_!hatt:I11erg~d in the nineteenth Th-;;-t~rminology of World Religions seems to have appeared at least as early as 1864.80 In a book on Zoroastrian religion, the Dutch scholar and theologian Cornelis P. Tiele had declared that "the high- est class [of religions] includes only three, namely the familiar triad, to which one could give the name universalist or world-religions [wereld-godsdiensten], Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedan- ism."81 According to Tiele, these religions were able to break free from a particular nation and spread geographically. This particular mode of classification and defining criterion were not, however, in- stantly successful. Other writers proposed other distinguishing criteria.

Professor of Sanskrit William D. Whitney provides our first ex- ample. In 1881, he described his topic as "the comparative study of the

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

non-Christian religions," and his stated purpose was "to see what are the fundamental views held, rightly or wrongly, by those who are dedicating themselves to the science [of religion]." 82 Yet, in the bulk of the essay, he elaborated his own views about the origins and classi- fications of religions. The question of origins was no question at all. That "polytheism" preceded "monotheism" was "so clear as to call for no labored argument to sustain it" (Hume's arguments had by this time become highly influential). 83 His scheme of classification called for a two-part division:

There is no more marked distinction among religions than the one we are called upon to make between a race-religion, which, like a language, is the collective product of the wisdom of a community, the unconscious growth of generations, and a religion proceeding from an individual founder, who, as a leading representative of the better insight and feeling of his time (for otherwise he would meet with no success), makes head against formality and superstition, and recalls his fellow men to sincere and intelligent faith in a new body of doctrines, of specially moral aspect, to which he himself gives shape and coherence. Of this origin are Zoroastrianism, Mohammedan- ism, Buddhism; and, from the point of view of the general historian of religions, whatever difference of character and authority he may recognize in its founder, Christianity belongs in the same class with them, as being an individual and universal religion, growing out of one that was limited to a race. 84

Charismatic founding figures were thus the central feature that set apart for Whitney a group of distinctive religions from the rest of the "race-religions." Whitney did not see a need to delineate these "race-religions" individually, but presumably they would include at least 1Iinduism, Judaism, and the "primitive" religions. In any event, their influence on history is negligible: "The old race-religions could not but become effete ... they have had to submit to complete overthrow, and the substitution of faiths of a different origin." 85 As we will see, estimations. of the riolitical effect of various "religions"

w~~_a__r,~g11l:1r f~;tu_~~_ (n the d~velopI11e11~_5>f_~h~-~v;;-ii~!~!gio~! paradigm. ----· .. -·"

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IIIEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

My second example comes from the Dutch scholar of the Old Testament Abraham Kuenen, who employed different designations but basically the same division of religions when he gave the Hibbert Lectures in 1882.86 Kuenen had a clear two-part division: "The uni-

~:'.?!d religi<~ns:1_!:~,_w}th f:1ir unanirriity, pl::1c;~q i11 one posed to the national religion..s. Nothing is more natural." 87 Given the "naturalness" of this distinction, disagreement on classification is puzzling: "Some will only admit Buddhism and Christianity to the title [of universal religion], while others add Islam as a third. How is any difference of opinion on such a matter possible?" 88 Kuenen's an-

swer hinged on the meaning of the word "universal." He argued that this descriptor did not signify a fact (the spread of a religion over a large area containing many nations) but rather a quality (the "charac- ter" of the religion). On those grounds, Kuenen excluded Islam from the universal category ("True universalism is to Islam ... unattain- able"). 89 Thus, for Kuenen, only Christianity and Buddhism were

1 universal religions--·-· terms ~f:'~h;;;~t~;,;, and ;,~~ can ha~e no-he~i~ · / tation in pronouncing Christianity the most universal of religions;

I and that because it is the best qualified for its moral task-to inspire

, and consecrate the personal and the national life."90

For my final example, I return to the work of Cornelis P. Tiele, which operates with a similar binary division of the religions. A little more than a decade after his book on Zoroastrian religion, Tiele pro- duced a more systematic treatment of religion in general, Outlines of the History of Religion to the Spread of the Universal Religions, which was quite widely read. 91 Tiele summarized his Outlines in his entry on "Religions''' in the popular ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britan- nica, which both surveyed previous scholarship and presented Tiele's own views . .92 Tiele discussed various religions in a list organized by a combination oflinguistic and geographic divisions (the marginal sub- headings are Aryan, Semitic, African, ?v1ongolian, Chinese,Japanese, Finnie, Eskimo, Other American religions, and Malayo- Polynesian). When it came to classifying religions, however, he distinguished be- tween "nature religions"and "ethical religions." Most of what wo1.;ld b~eth.~;~~;r~~~bers of the World Religions list were included

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among the ethical religions: Taoism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism, Mazdaism (Zarathustrianism), Afosaism, Juda-

ism, Islam, and Christianity. These ethical religions were subdivided into those "founded on a law or HOly Scripture" and those "universal or world religions" that "start from principles and maxims." The lat- ter elite group contains only three members: Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. 93 In general, Tiele warited to dismiss the term "woifd religions," he would allow it to designate these three reli-

gions, "which have found their way to different races and peoples and all of which profess the intention to conquer the world." Though these three religions stand together above the rest, Tiele assures the reader that

we are far from placing them on the same level. Islam, e.g., is not original, not a ripe fruit, but rather a wild offshoot of Judaism and Christianity. Buddhism, though the most widely spread, has never been victorious except where it had to contend with religions standing on no very high degree of development ... Both Islam and Buddhism, if not national, are only relatively universalistic, and show the one- sidedness, the one of the Semitic, the other of the Aryan race .... If religion really is the synthesis of dependence and liberty, we might say that Islam represents the former, Buddhism the latter element only, while Christianity does full justice to both of them.94

~f now._we should not be SU)"pj"i~e4 or distract~_<l._. the overt Christian triumphalism o(Tiele's account. What is far more interest- ing is his attempt to deal with the tensions in the criteria for the vari-

ous subdivisions of the religions in these schemes. The pl~~-~~

9.f ~2_haIT1me1anism/Islam the ninetecn~h.::~~!1:f:t:1.1::.Y. classifi- cation systems because its geographic spread was large and it won

n1any converts, but it w~; seuii1:lc,:~~Jh~~~i 1 ~Y ihe~i<:>gi~~2Eti:~]i~e, necessarily particulari;tic and national. 95 A similar problem arose £~ the~ ~ra;sification of Judais~(;;~ it a "race" or "national" religion, or did it belong with the other two "Abrahamic religions," Christianity and Islam?).96 Problems like these led to th~radual abandonment of !:!ie binyu:y divisions. (race religion versus founder religion, national versus universal, natural versus ethical). What was left was the list of

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distinct, named religions (the "religions of the world," or World Religions), along with a catch-all category of "savage," or "primi-

tive: or "pri"inaP'reHgi~~s(inore recent tre~tments often use di·e less offensive designation "native religions" or "indigenous religions," but the logic that groups these systems together remains intact even

though the names have changed). In fact, Tiele's list of the ten "ethical religions" is basically the same list that one finds in modern textbooks on World Religions. The widely used textbook of Huston Smith treats Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and "Primal Religions." 97 The third edition of World Religions Today contains chapters on "Indigenous Religions," Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and "East Asian

Religions," along with a final chapter titled "Globalization: From New to New Age Religions." 98 Other texts provide nearly identical !ists.99 The usual changes from the nineteenth-century lists are min-

imal: Brahmanism is replaced by Hinduism; Mohammedanism and its variants are replaced by Islam; Zoroastrianism is dropped be- cause it cannot claim enough adherents; and A1osaism is either re- classified as "the religions(s) of ancient Israel" or dropped altogether since it is no longer "living." 100

Conclusion

Textbooks, departmental websites of universities, and the media

tend to present the model of World Religions as a self-evident fact: these r;ligi~·~;·;~~ "simply ~here," and clas;ifying them in this way is

a natural and neutral activity. I have shown, however, that there is

nothing n.!1~11~~-~_::ir n~utral about_either theconcept of religion or_~h~ framework of Jonathan Z. Smith has argued that the various groups that populate the World Religion model are largely the result of political factors:

It is impossible to escape the suspicion that a world religion is simply a religion like ours, and that it is, above all, a tradition that has achieved sufficient power and numbers to enter our history and form it, interact with it, or thwart it. We recognize both the unity within

NEW WORLDS, NEW RELIGIONS, WORLD RELIGIONS

and the diversity among the world religions because they correspond to important geopolitical entities with which we must deal. All "prim- itives," by way of contrast, may be lumped together, as may the "mi- nor religions," because they do not confront our history in any direct fashion. From the point of view of power, they are invisible. 101

Even though, as we have seen, the crystallization of religion as a cat- egory was enmeshed in various power struggles between emerging nation-states in Europe and at colonial frontiers, _t~~ kinds of p9liti-

cal concerns to which Smith refers bee11Jarg~ly :i.~~~g~fr:°-.l_ll..the d1scuss1on c>f World Relig-~01:~ 1:111t~l \T~ry _r~c:~11!ly.102 Today, religious pracdriorierB and many academicians in the :field of religious studies prefer to discuss religions in terms not unlike those outlined in the quotation from Karen Armstrong in Chapter 1. Religion is defined in experiential terms. In the early twentieth century, this position was . ·artic1a;re2f~;p~-~i~fiy clearly by the Harvard professor of philosophy I

and psychology William James as well as by Rudolf Otto, who held a chair in theology at Marburg. In 1902, James defined religion in the following way: "Religion ... shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend them-

selves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." 103 For James, religion was largely an individual affair. So also for Otto, who characterized religion as an experience of"the numinous," which elic- ited "a feeling" of"mysterium" that could be characterized as "tremen- dum" ("the daunting and repelling moment of the numinous") and ''fascinans" ("the attracting and alluring moment of the numinous"). 104

In the early twenty-first century, the view of religion as a kind of pure unconditi~ned experience (a11d ~orld R1cJigi()11i,:i~~¥f£e!-

cultu~ally c~nditioned responses to or manifestations of t:his ex- perience) is still-prevalent. 111. the typical World Religions textbo~k, -;;;a;:.,1;;_;:n;id~;f ;eligi~~i~ celebrated for its uniqueness, and all are thought to be legitimate paths to individual "salvation," or "libera- tion" or "self-realization." The viewpoint of the influential theolo- gian John Hick represents this dominant outlook: humans are "religious beings"; they are subject to "religious experiences"; all reli- gions are "authentic contexts of salvation/liberation"; all religions are

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"authentic contexts of salvi:fic human transformation" and "part of a universal soteriological process." 105 With this portrayal of "the reli- gions" as convictions, privately held by individuals, that constitute multiple valid paths to salvation, we have arrived at something like the modern, liberal concept of religion and the religions.

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