WHAT IS RELIGION? A FIRST LOOK

WHAT IS RELIGION? A FIRST LOOK Lesson 7: The Stuff of Religion – Part 2 Don E. Peavy, Sr.,M.Div.,J.D.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK The love that God has for you is not about your history. It's not about anything you've ever done or not done. It's about your being. It's about who you are. You are so loved that you are given complete realm. You get to choose what's in that kingdom of your mind. What you hold in your inner world will become what you experience in your outer life. Choose love.--Mary Manin Morrissey

VI. The Stuff of Religion • First Order Stuff. • Myth. • Symbol. • Scripture. – Second Order Stuff: • Dogma • Doctrine

OBJECTIVE • Explain the meaning of myth in academic religious studies, summarize and propose a solution to the conflict between mythic and nonmythic accounts of existence, identify mythic and nonmythic accounts of existence, identify mythic elements in popular culture, and compare and contrast mythic themes found in the major religious worldviews.

III. WHAT IS THE STUFF OF RELIGION? • FIRST ORDER -- • Symbol • Myth • Scripture • SECOND ORDER -- • Doctrine • Dogma • Ritual

EMILE DURKHEIM • 1858 – 1917

DURKHEIM (Contd.) • French sociologist and psychologist. • Born into a family of rabbis; early years spent in rabbinical schools. • Developed early interest in Catholicism. • Soon rejected any particular religious belief. • At 29, published observations of German intellectual life and appointed professor.

DURKHEIM (Contd.) • With Durkheim’s appointment, for the first time the social sciences are taught at a French university (1887) Also, gets married. • 1893 published “Division of Labor.” • 1895 “Rules of Sociological Method.” • 1897 “Suicide.” • 1898 started journal of sociology.

DURKHEIM (Contd.) • 1906 he is a prized intellectual in France. He is appointed chair of science of education and sociology. • 1915 his son, Andrew, dies of war wounds in Bulgaria. Durkheim suffers a stroke in less than a year. • 1917 dies at age 59.

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS • Obsessed with pursuit of theory that would give scientific reasoning to social phenomena. • Developed notion of collective representations. • There are social influences that exist outside of individual’s consciousness (i.e. money system, language).

CONTRIBUTIONS (Contd.) • Feeling generated by crowd cannot be reduced to one individual of the crowd. • Individual is born into set of religious practices and beliefs that are external to the individual and are coercive and compelling out of sheer habit in some respects • Social forces constrain us to follow certain external expectations.

“PIACULAR RITES” • “purpose is to meet a calamity or to remember and mourn one.” (392) • Mourning and funerals are types of piacular rites. • “Death calls for the shedding of blood,” (397) and at times people are injured and die during these rites which can last for days, weeks, and even months.

RITES (Contd.) • “The ascetic tortures himself in order to prove—in the eyes of his neighbor as well as his own—that he is above suffering. In mourning, people hurt themselves in order to prove that they are in the grip of suffering. All these signs are recognizable as characteristic traits of piacular rites.” (400)

RITES (Contd.) • “Mourning is not the natural response of a private sensibility hurt by a cruel loss. It is an obligation imposed by the group.” (400) • “It is believed, for example, that when a relative does not properly carry out mourning, the soul of the deceased dogs his steps and kills him.” (401) • “The attitude of the Australian in mourning

RITES (Contd.) • Is to be understood in the same way. If he cries and moans, it is not only to express individual sadness but also to fulfill a duty to the feeling—an obligatory feeling of which the society around him does not fail to remind him on occasion.” (403) • Note, that Durkheim discounts the idea that the soul is implicated in these piacular rites.

RITES (Contd.) • In more advanced religions, these rites are enacted to appease the sacred powers. People strike themselves and shed blood to prevent the gods from doing so. • These religions are imbued with “anthropomorphic ideas.” (410)

RITUAL • “A religious ritual can be defined as an agreed-on and formalized pattern of ceremonial movements and verbal expressions carried out in a sacred context.” (98) • Ritual can serve as “condensed symbols.” • The offering of a sacrifice is at the root of all religion and is intended to transfer human aggression outside the community.

Native American Rituals • This week, we will depart from our usual focus on religion per se and look at a particular religion as we seek to understand ritual. • There are religious rituals and secular or profane rituals. A tailgate part is an example of a non-religious ritual; so is a high school graduation.

Ritual (Contd.) • To understand ritual, you need to investigate the purpose or function of the ritual. • For instance, in the rain dance of Native Americans, is the dance performed to make it rain or to welcome and to celebrate the coming of the rain? • Notice that the dance is performed during the rainy season.

Ritual (Contd.) • As you review the following two rituals, try to understand what the purpose of these rituals are. • Are these rituals religious or non-religious? Why? • What rituals do you engage in on a regular basis?

THE GHOST DANCE • "They danced without rest, on and on...Occasionally someone thoroughly exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious into the center and lay there "dead"...After a while, many lay about in that condition. They were now "dead" and seeing their dear ones...The visions...ended the same way, like a chorus describing a great encampment of all the Dakotas who had ever died, where...there was no sorrow but only joy, where relatives thronged out with happy laughter...The people went on and on and could not stop, day or night, hoping...to get a vision of their own dead...And so I suppose the authorities did think they were crazy - but they were not. They were only terribly unhappy."A Lakota Sioux describing the Ghost Dance.

GD (Contd.) • The actual dance was performed by all members joining hands to create a circle. In the center of the formation was a sacred tree, or symbol of a tree, decorated with religious offerings. Looking toward the sun, the dancers would do a shuffling, counter-clockwise side-step, chanting while they sang songs of resurrection. Gradually the tempo would be increased to a great beat of arousal. Some dances would continue for days until the participants "died," falling to the ground, rolling around and experiencing visions of a new land of hope and freedom from white people which was promised by the messiah. The dance often produced mass hypnosis in its transfixed participants, and thus, it became known as the Ghost Dance. Curious onlookers were prohibited, furthering the sense of mystery about the ritual and elevating the tension between the dancers, settlers, and soldiers. • Eyewitness at Wounded Knee.

GD (Contd.) • “By the late 1880s, many Indian tribes, desperate and facing a dire existence of poverty, hunger and disease, sought a means of salvation to revitalize their traditional culture.” • The Ghost Dance religion was one response. • http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/wounded knee/wkghost.html

THE VISION • "When the Sun died, I went up to Heaven and saw God and all the people who had died a long time ago. God told me to come back and tell my people they must be good and love one another, and not fight, or steal or lie. He gave me this dance to give to my people." • http://www.viewzone.com/wovoka.html

WOVOKA • Paiute shaman, son of mystic, Tavibo, whose teachings influenced the new religion. • 1889, he has vision during an eclipse of the sun in which he sees second coming of Christ and receives a warning about the evils of the “white man.” • Knowledge of vision spreads quickly.

WOVOKA • Also known as Jack Wilson, name given to him by rancher, David Wilson, who taught him Christianity. • In his vision, he is told the earth will be destroyed and reborn, all white people will be destroyed, and all Indians will be renewed and those who are dead will be resurrected. • Until then, Indians should be pacifists and do the sacred dance.

The Columbia Encyclopedia • To make his message more convincing, Wovoka proved his supernatural powers by simple tricks, one of which, the supposedly bulletproof ghost shirt, was to play a tragic part in the massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee. Before long his stature grew from Paiute prophet to Messiah, and his religion, which spread rapidly through the western indigenous nations, took on warlike overtones never intended by its founder. The great popularity of Wovoka’s ghost dance waned as his prophecy failed to materialize and as his converts were forced onto reservations. • http://www.bartleby.com/65/wo/Wovoka.html • See biography by P. Bailey (1957, repr. 1970).

GHOST DANCE • Spread rapidly throughout Indian tribes and reservations but had its most disastrous effects on the Lakota reservation. • Kicking Bear and Short Bull revise the message of Wovoka and turn it into a call to war. • War comes on 12/29/1890 at Wounded Knee • 290 mostly unarmed men, women and children are killed in a matter of minutes.

WOUNDED KNEE • Some 33 soldiers are also killed, most by friendly fire. • http://www.viewzone.com/wovoka.html • As news of Wounded Knee spread throughout the Native nations, Ghost Dance died quickly. Wovoka's prophecies were hollow; the land would not be returned from the white man through divine intervention.

END OF A LEGEND • Wovoka himself virtually vanished into obscurity. In his later years, he exhibited himself at sideshows in county fairs and worked as an extra in silent movie Westerns. (The one surviving photograph of Wovoka was taken on the set of a film.) By the time of his death on September 20, 1932, he was virtually forgotten by both white and Native peoples. It would not be until the 1970s and the birth of Native American activism that the story of the Ghost Dance was told again— even if its father's life was reduced to footnote status.

FROM VISION TO OBSCURITY • The tragedy of Wovoka is a legacy of pain and suffering among the very people he wanted to save. The songs of the Ghost Dance are silent today and the dream of Wovoka vanished in the harsh light of reality. The Christian principles which he laced into his theology were brutally ignored by the soldiers and settlers who held allegiance to Christ and yet destroyed the Native way of life with a brutality unknown in the Gospel teachings.

PEYOTE RELIGION • The peyote plant is a small, spineless cactus having psychedelic properties and the experience of eating it is central to the Peyote Religion. [footnote 1] Unlike traditional religions which have sacramental symbols such as bread and wine, peyote is more than a sacrament to members of the Native American Church. Peyote is, itself, considered a deity which cannot be owned by any individual. Peyote is worshipped and eaten at a religious ceremony called a peyote meeting. "Peyote is a sacred medicine; peyote protects; peyote allows one to see the future, or to find lost objects; peyote gives power to the user that may be manifest in various ways; peyote teaches; peyote may be used by Christians or may be incorporated with Christian ideas; Omer C. Stewart [footnote 2], Peyote Religion 41 (1987).

PEYOTE (Contd.) • The peyote ceremony is unique and the very cornerstone of the Peyote Religion. It is always conducted by individuals who hold honored posts which have specially assigned duties. The leader of the ceremony is called a "roadman." The roadman is responsible for initiating the participants, although worshipers who are not personally invited are usually welcomed as well. Other officials present at a peyote meeting include the chief drummer, who sits on the right of the roadman; the cedarman, who sits on the left of the roadman and sprinkles sagebrush "incense" on the fire; and the fireman or doorman, who tends the fire and sits near the opening of the teepee. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rYdgHx8yrw

PEYOTE (Contd.) • At these peyote meetings, the worshipers usually gather in a teepee at dusk and the ceremony passes through a series of ritualistic stages. During these rituals, a staff and a rattle are passed around and the person who receives them leads in singing peyote hymns and prayer. Around midnight, peyote is ingested by the worshipers and the singing, praying and drumming continues throughout the night until dawn. When the "buttons" of the plant are eaten, or brewed into tea and imbibed, the user experiences hallucinations.

Worship • Worship is a particular kind of worship. • How do we distinguish worship from a tailgate party or a Friday night at the House of Blues? • If a Martian happened to go to the House of Blues on Saturday night and a local church on Sunday morning, would she notice a difference?

Worship (Contd.) • We now look at some sacred practices within Christianity with a focus on Catholicism since the practices of Catholics are more structured and regular than those of most Protestant groups. • For those of you who “go to church,” why do you go? What does going to church do for you that going to the mall does not do?

Sacred Practices • Worship services • Usually in a Church • Sacraments (7in Roman Catholic Church, 2 in most Protestant Churches) — sacred rites that transmit the mystery of Christ to worshippers • Baptism (also in Protestant Churches) • Confirmation • Eucharist (Lord’s Supper or Communion, also in Protestant Churches) • Penance • Anointing of the sick • Holy Orders • Matrimony

The Liturgical Year • Christmas—celebration of Jesus’s birth • Epiphany—celebration of the recognition of Jesus’s spiritual kinship by the 3 Magi • Advent in month preceding Christmas • Easter — most religiously significant, commemoration of Jesus’s death (Good Friday) and resurrection (Easter Sunday) • Lent — preceding 40 day period of repentance • Pentecost —commemorates descent of the Holy Spirit upon disciples • Transfiguration of Jesus and Assumption of Mary

Contemplative prayer • Hectic pace of modern life demand periods of quietness • Thomas Merton (1915-1968) • Trappist monk allowed to live as hermit • Studied and tried to practice great contemplative traditions • Had studied Eastern mysticism • Form of Christian meditation is following the Stations of the Cross

Devotion to Mary • Mostly among Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicans • Possibly derived from earlier worship of Mother Goddess • Annunciation • New Eve • Mother of God • Immaculate Virgin • Many “sightings” of Mary continue throughout world

Veneration of Saints and Angels • Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians honor spiritual heroes as saints. • They also pray to angels for protection. Angels are spiritual beings who serve as messengers from and adoring servants of God. • Relics

DOCTRINE • Doctrine is the systematic explanation of a belief (dogma). • Doctrine, from Latin doctrina, (compare doctor), means "a body of teachings" or "instructions", taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system. The Greek analogy is the etymology of catechism. • Often doctrine specifically connotes a corpus of religiousdogma as it is promulgated by a church, but not necessarily: doctrine is also used to refer to a principle of law, in the common law traditions, established through a history of past decisions, such as the doctrine of self-defense, or the principle of fair use, or the more narrowly applicable first-sale doctrine. (Wikipedia)

DOGMA • Dogma is the statement of a belief. • Dogma (the plural is either dogmata or dogmas) is belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization to be authoritative and not to be disputed or doubted. (Wikipedia)

DOGMA & DOCTRINE • Example of Dogma: I believe that there is one God in three persons. • Example of Doctrine: The Trinity which explains the nature of God and the relationship between the three persons of the Godhead. • Sometimes, doctrine and dogma are spoken of as being synonymous. The above examples seek to show the error of such speech.

Conclusion • We have now looked at the second order stuff of religion. • Earlier, we reviewed the first order stuff of religion. • We noted that the main difference between first order and second order stuff of religion is that first order stuff of religion needs to be interpreted.

WHAT IS RELIGION? A FIRST LOOK