Philosophy: Moral Ethics

Religion & Ethics: A very short introduction

Dr. Bruce Hiebert

© 2013

Used by permission. This document may be freely copied and distributed for academic instructional purposes.

1. A complex subject

2. The problem of religion

Hard to define

Many types

Religion and violence

3. Combining ethics and religion

Models of compromise and cooperation

Models of separation or antagonism

And then there are the different religions

4. Conclusion

1. A complex subject

While ethics is a complex subject in its own right, religion is no less complex an area to study. Combining the two creates a situation where any reasonable scholar runs and hides. The complexities are piled so high and deep that no reasonable answers can be developed, let alone sustained in the midst of the conflicting claims of both fields. However, the importance of the subject is so great that the attempt must be made. Religious ethics are a prominent aspect of every culture and to neglect the interaction leaves people ill equipped to function effectively in a pluralistic society. So it is in the interests of providing a few tools to help comprehend the complexities of this normal social situation that this essay proposes to examine in a very brief way this extremely difficult combination of issues.

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In order to do so, the first problem is to define religion itself. While religion seems obvious at first glance, it turns out to be very difficult to pin down to any simple understanding that can then be brought into association with ethics. Tied to that is the very frightening problem of religious violence, an issue that by itself seems to end the ability to examine this issue.

However, when ethics and religion are brought together it is highly revealing regarding a number of important clashes in contemporary Western culture. Religion flourishes within Western culture, even though it is formally secular. Understanding religious ethics turns out to create significant illumination around such issues as abortion, environmental protection, and the value of pluralism itself. That does not mean there is any social agreement to be found. But in a pluralistic society one of the hopes is that by understanding the parties, solutions to the clashes can be negotiated, or if not solutions, then reasonable compromises.

2. The problem of religion

Religion is a problem, not because of its adherents, but because of its diversity. Human responses to life that may be called religious run from the atheist (no gods) to the polytheist (many gods), and include thousands of variations in between. Finding a single definition is difficult, let alone a single frame of reference for that diversity. Regardless a definition needs to be attempted if there is any hope of determining what the subject is of our analysis.

Hard to define

One definition that offers significant analytical power is that:

A religion is a collective performance of rites, rituals and belief systems that relate to the ultimate conditions of human existence.

This is primarily an anthropological definition, though it is based upon a view of religion developed by the philosopher and theologian, Gordon Kaufman. As Kaufman determined, religion is about the limit conditions of human existence, those points such as birth, death, and human purpose, where empirical or pragmatic understandings are inherently unable to provide answers. As human beings explain the ultimate “why” of the difficult questions regarding life itself, they are engaging in religious language. This religious language becomes a religion

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when it is collectively organized and infused with rites, rituals and belief systems.

This definition is not one that is necessarily accepted by religious groups. This definition is hard for Western Protestant Christians to accept since it does not recognize one of the key understandings of their religion, which is that religion is primarily about individual beliefs. Some of the Eastern religious groups, such as some types of Taoists or Buddhists, would also disagree with this definition since they would argue that by providing a definition the very nature of their world has been violated. But an anthropologist would reply that the failure of a religion to see itself in the definition does not mean it is not a religion, merely that in its performance of its own religion it understands itself in a different way than does the anthropologist. As long as the definition allows one to understand what sets the religion apart from other types of human behaviour, it is a reasonable definition.

This debate shows just how hard it is to define religion since the religions themselves may not agree with the definition. But by identifying a religion in the terms used here, very specific components of human life that are normally understood to be about religion, like worship, beliefs in God, prayers, meditation, ritual acts, and personal motivations to self-sacrifice, can all be brought together. This definition also applies to wildly divergent groups including those who may not believe in a God or gods, but still collectively engage in rituals or organized beliefs about the ultimate values in human existence. So well organized atheists who have codified their beliefs about human meaning would qualify as a religion. So might some political or ecological groups who have understood their views to represent the fundamental nature of reality itself and ritualized or codified those understandings. Whether this inclusion in religion is appropriate, and thus the definition is too broad, is still open.

Many types

What this definition already identifies is that religious groups are many and their behaviours and self-understandings vary in extreme. This leads to efforts to understand the differences and commonalities among religions. Those efforts by academics have proved contentious and there is nothing about any religion or cluster of religions upon which all academics would agree, let alone the specific religious groups involved.

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Generally religions are divided by academics into two groups, Eastern religions and Western religions. Sometimes a third type is added related to indigenous religions, religions of specific tribal peoples rooted in specific geographical locales. Then there are academics who object to this set of descriptors, noting that differences within each of these groups may be greater than the differences between some of the religions within different groups, and that there are marked affinities around common ideas that cross one or more major group boundaries. Finally, there are those few scholars who argue that all religions are manifestations of the same basic religious impulse and experience and should not be divided.

The Eastern Religions are typically identified as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. What these religions share is a cyclical view of time, a commitment to harmony or oneness of all existence, and a belief that material existence is fundamentally illusory. They differ radically on how these conditions are to be managed in terms that are meaningful for human beings on a day-to-day basis.

The Western Religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What these religions share is the oneness and transcendence of God, a linear view of time, the need for human salvation through non-human agency, the importance of scripture, and material existence as the site of a cosmic struggle between good and evil. They differ radically on how these conditions are to be managed in terms that are meaningful for human beings on a day-to-day basis.

There are a number of other major religious traditions that do not tidily fall into these two groups. These include Sikhism, Shinto, Jainism, Confucism, and traditional Chinese religion, as well as many larger African religions.

All of these religions have well developed traditions about how human limit conditions are to be understand and the correct way in which to interact with them. The also have rites and rituals that are usually performed in similar ways regardless of the social and geographic location of the adherent.

What all these religions share, and make them vitally important to the issue of ethics, is a sense of lived justice or right relationships (which may be the same thing). Every religion has a way of moving from the rites, rituals, and beliefs about the ultimate conditions of human life to how life is to be lived rightly, or in balance, or justly on a day-to-day basis. That makes these

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religions the most powerful sources of morality in human history or contemporary existence.

Religion and violence

The very power of religion to shape morality raises the serious problem of violence. Every religion, either historically or currently, has sub-groups that idealize violence against other human beings. These violent religious groups see violence as an important part of how to make human existence just or properly balanced. These are typically fringe groups, but sometimes they become central or even dominant as historical circumstances make that specific way of being religious more popular with ordinary religious people or useful in terms of social interaction. In the context of a growing global awareness of the evil of violence, this can lead to the marking of specific religions or all religions with the taint of evil.

This taint is exacerbated by the standard trait of violent people in human political life to call upon the gods to bless their political violence and the subsequent willingness of religious leaders to do just that. It is very hard to find a war in human existence where religious leaders have not blessed the armed forces of one side or another. (In the 20th century it has often been the same religion blessing forces on opposed sides, claiming each to be the carrier of divine favour, Christianity in Europe or Islam in the Middle East.) However, what needs to be stressed is that these claims to divine favour, and even of Holy War, are not intrinsic to the religion but intrinsic to the political units that claim divine favour for themselves. The war is declared before the religious affirmation is called for, and the war is planned in the offices of the politically powerful and the wealthy, not in the churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, and religious sites of the religions. The political leaders then call upon the religious leaders to help them sell their war to the people who must do the suffering, and religious leaders are usually enthusiastic in their willingness to do just that. However, typically (but not always) the strongest opponents of the war come from among the most devout religious adherents of those very religions that are embracing the war.

All religions seek harmony between the divine or ultimate realities and human existence. For the most part this harmony is found in peaceful coexistence, even a desire to help strangers with acts of altruism. It is the very rare circumstance where violence itself is seen as reflective of the divine or ultimate reality.

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When it does happen it is usually under circumstances of rapid social change or new oppression, social conditions that feel intrinsically violent. From a historical or anthropological point of view it is certainly correct to identify the reality of religious violence, but it is just as important to name these events as typically rarer or situationally dependent conditions. Religious morality tends to pursue harmony rather than violence, and is generally found supporting actions that lead to human collective prosperity. Violence is a human problem, not a religious problem, and religions as human constructs share that fundamental human problem.

Understood in this way it becomes clear that in exploring the problem of violence in religion it is first imperative to understand the problem of violence among human beings. Obtaining that understanding is some distance off, despite much energy and academic attention. Once understanding has been achieved, human beings must still search for solutions. In that search religions hold as much hope for wisdom as they are representative of the problem. The moral force of religion can inspire world peace every bit as much, or even more than, it can drive people to hatred.

3. Combining ethics and religion

From examining the relationship of religion and violence it is easy to see that religions have significant moral implications. Thus they have a relationship to ethics. The difficulty is in determining what that relationship is, or what that relationship should be. The two questions are not the same, and depending on which one one starts with, the answers are quite different. If one starts from what the relationship is, one moves to questions of overlap between religious and ethical systems and from there to models of compromise and cooperation between philosophical and religious ethics. However, if one starts from what the relationship should be, one examines the points of difference between them, and therefore moves to models of separation or antagonism. Historians, sociologists and anthropologists typically start from the former. Theologians and philosophers typically start from the latter. The result is that bringing ethics and religion together leads to wildly divergent academic responses.

Models of compromise and cooperation

Historically or anthropologically, religious convictions of how human beings should behave have typically overlapped with

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cultural norms for human behaviour. This means that what the religion suggests people should do for religious reasons typically is close to what the culture suggests people should do for traditional, social, or political reasons. Since very often the culture and religion have grown up together, this is not surprising. However, it also happens that when a new religion or a new culture meet each other, both tend to change in order to accommodate one another. Generally the religion changes more than the culture, but both will change to find room to work together in relative harmony. This may mean making exceptions in the laws, or creating social patterns of ignoring specific religious behaviours that are seen as crazy or impolite, or even changing the social framework to make the religion easier to perform.

But these patterns of compromise can shift to clear cooperation. It is not uncommon for political or social bodies or their representatives to call upon religious leaders for assistance in developing or promulgating social policy. Similarly, religious leaders will often call upon political or social bodies to recommend social changes or to ask for assistance in managing the affairs of the religion. In pluralist states, such as western nations, this cooperation is often covert, sometimes only visible by accident or long after the fact as archives are opened to reveal documentation related to the cooperation.

In democratic states it is very common for adherents of religious groups to be elected to government office. From there they can seek the development or transformation of laws and policies to match their religious points of view. If the nominal or devout adherents of a specific religion dominate the elected representatives this can create a situation of defacto theocracy, of rule by a religion. However, the complexity of governing and normal human desires for reasonable compromise typically mean that nominally theocratic governments tend to seek social objectives that are broadly shared across religious groups and with non-religious members of the culture.

Models of separation or antagonism

While politically and historically, cooperation and compromise are the norm, this is not the perspective of those who approach the issues of religion and ethics from a more theoretical point of view. (And there are also important historical examples of antagonism, persecution and hatred between religions and other social groups or cultural forms.) Scholars, whether religious or

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secular, tend to see the ethics of religion as either separate from or antagonistic to the values and behaviours of the non-religious. This is due to the intent of scholars to explore the ultimate or most fine points of existence on both sides, and in doing so the real gaps between the two groups become intellectual chasms.

It is not uncommon for religious scholars, especially theological ethicists, to find that pluralist cultures are incompatible with religious perspectives on what life means and how it is to be practiced. Liberal democracy places its faith in the will of voters acting in their own (selfish) interests. Religions normally place their source of values in edicts or truths that come from the divine and confront normal human behaviour with demands for change. The result is a foundational opposition between the two, even if the practical outcomes (what the voters and the religions want) is the same.

It is also not uncommon for scientists to argue that scientific knowledge is incompatible with religious perspectives regarding what life means and how it is to be practiced. Again, rather than looking at the way religion motivates scientists (or historically is tied to foundational scientific approaches), the emphasis is on the foundational premises of scientific research that require material explanations for all observed behaviour. More liberal theologians and scientists suggest that rather than antagonism, the proper approach for each group is to accept unique and separate areas of expertise. Neither will attempt to rule on the specific expertise of the other. Regardless, they argue that science and religion are separate if not opposed.

Since views of separation or antagonism are usually developed by intellectual or social elites, these are typically the views that dominate popular discourse. However, the reality of separation and antagonism is usually minimal, even in cultures where actual separation or antagonism is practiced.

And then there are the different religions

Of course each religion has its own understanding of how social ethics and religion are to be combined. This particularity must not be neglected. Religious groups can work to change society to match their perspectives or carve off a space within a society where their values and perspectives become central to social behaviour. It is also extremely common for religions to spin off or foster extremist groups determined to pursue religious behaviour without compromise. These groups usually exist as networks of

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cloisters, small cells living within strongly bounded communities, cut off from routine interaction with the society. However, these cloisters are often centers of religious imagination, education, and outreach. They have been the source of transformative social programs, medical care, and schools. They rarely maintain permanent or rigid boundaries and may be deeply influential of or influenced by the dominant society and general religious conditions.

It is rare, but not unheard of, for religious groups to call for social disobedience or violation of the laws and customs of a social group. Typically these occurrences take place in the context of specific issues that are seen as running counter to core religious values or beliefs. The outcomes of such protests can be substantial, even leading to the overthrow of governments and complete transformations of society. In the most extreme cases these become the foundation of religious terror groups.

From time to time a religion will be so socially powerful that it is the central organizing force within a society. In the long-term this is typically destructive of the religion since the compromises inherent in governing destroy the legitimacy of the religion. However, the “long-term” is sometimes measured in centuries and during that period the religion will shape all the laws and regulations of society and define normative human practices at all levels. Such societies are often highly oppressive of the non- religious and religious minorities. They typically run into conflict with indigenous economic elites who find that religious proscriptions make business practices difficult and the enjoyment of wealth objectionable.

It is very common for religious groups to be noticeable within a society, not for their disobedience, but for their peculiarity. What is usually most remarked upon are differences related to dress, language, or marital practices. However, demographic analysis can reveal many more subtle differences in social practices based on generalized religious norms. So some religious groups are less likely than the norm to marry outside their religion, rigorously restrict family size, watch television, or vote. These impacts are hard to see and typically have minimal social consequences. Regardless, religions do operate from their own ethical premises and in keeping with their moral traditions in ways both visible and invisible within cultures.

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4. Conclusion

On a day-to-day basis in pluralist cultures, religious ethics interpenetrate and co-exist with non-religious ethics. In every cultural and political situation they are joined together, operating more and less comfortably to create the conditions within which everyone negotiates their personal moral behaviour. In extreme cases various religions and non-religious social groups find themselves in an antagonistic relationship. More often the two interact without even noticing that there are differences. It does not matter on a day-to-day basis if one engages in a specific behaviour for religious or non-religious reasons, or some mix thereof.

Where the problems become evident is typically under conditions of rapid social change when the traditional religious and social compromises break-down or specific religious groups find themselves under unique or specific pressure. Then both sides can become aware of each other in antagonistic ways leading to possibilities of social or religious transformation or oppression. In the context of a planet undergoing massive cultural changes, there is always some place where these clashes are taking place.

The vast majority of religious moralities and secular moralities work together in relative harmony. Where they occasionally conflict it is typical for the two to come to a working compromise. In both cases there are changes, with secular moralities changing to accommodate religious moralities and religious moralities changing to accommodate secular moralities. While philosophers and theologians bemoan the infinite gap between them, most people, from the religiously devout to the completely secular, just try to get along and create a world of mutual prosperity.

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Dr. Bruce Hiebert is a historical theological ethicist and member of the Mennonite sect of Christianity. He studies neurological aspects of ethical behaviour, particularly how trauma and cultural change transform innate perspectives regarding correct religious behaviour.