In conjunction with this exercise, I have students read Andrew McKinnon’s pitch for a Wittgensteinian language game and non-essentialist approach to “religion,” and another by Ake Hultkrantz which contends that the key concept in “religion” is the supernatural. Because both articles deal with notoriously tedious definitions and theory, there have been complaints about how much time is spent on these matters. Like Justice Potter Stewart and porn, students sense they know “religion” when they see it.

Because spending the first week of class delineating the Western history and genealogy of “religion” is not an option, I’ve been searching for a solution and seem to have found one. A recent article by Jason A. Josephson, “The Invention of Japanese Religions,” makes most of the needed theoretical points simply by telling the story of how “religion” has been rendered in Japan. My sense is that students would prefer reading a concrete historical narrative or an actual case that deals with the category-concept of “religion.”

Josephson argues that the Japanese lacked not only a word but also an idea of “religion” that corresponded to the Western construct, so it had to be invented. During the late 1800s there was considerable debate about how “religion” should be rendered in Japanese:

Japanese intellectuals and policymakers proposed over half a dozen possible translations for “religion.” When faced with the European term, even Japanese scholars educated abroad had to go searching for equivalents, and they proposed several different contenders and tried to hang different understandings of religion upon them.

It seemed that “religion” could be a type of education, something fundamentally un-teachable, a set of practices, a description of foreign customs, a subtype of Shinto, a near synonym for Christianity, a basic human ethical impulse, or a form of politics (among other possibilities). This is clear evidence that it is glib to talk of Japanese religion projected back through the centuries.

What is more, not only did Japanese intellectuals produce different terms for “religion,” they also debated which indigenous traditions and practices fit into the category. It was not clear to them what religions there were in Japan. The sole “religion” on which everyone could agree was Christianity. More than anything else, this clearly demonstrates the foreign nature of the category.

This is a nice contribution from Josephson, whose “When Buddhism Became a Religion” I’ve long admired. I wanted to assign that article for my course last year but we simply ran out of time and never arrived at Buddhism in Japan.

Reference:

Josephson, Jason A. (2011). The Invention of Japanese Religions Religion Compass, 5 (10), 589-597 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00307.x

Those who understand Patterns of Culture as a psychoanalytic riff on national character probably haven’t read it. Nietzsche’s analysis of ancient Greek culture as an Apollonian-Dionysian dialectic is a tour de force; Benedict’s similar treatment of the Zuni, Dobu, and Kwakiutl is on par. And despite all the fieldwork-obsessed criticism of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, it is still read by the Japanese and nearly everyone interested in Japan.

About once a year, I am reminded of Benedict’s enduring relevance. It usually happens when I come across something she has written but which was not published or is hidden away. Because Benedict was prolific and her interests so broad, this happens surprisingly often. This year I came across her 1938 “Religion” essay in General Anthropology (open access), a massive tome edited by Benedict’s teacher and mentor Franz Boas.

Although Benedict pays homage to her particularist training and the description is thick, her assay of religion betrays a deeper interest in underlying patterns and themes. The tension is palpable. Her desire to explain is repressed.

Something similar can be found in “The Vision in Plains Culture” (open access), Benedict’s vivid account of the Native American vision quest and its varying deployment among tribes from coast to coast. Published in 1922, it remains the standard reference for those who study the distinctive vision complex of the Great Plains culture area.

Ruth Benedict with Blackfeet Informants

Benedict organizes her data around three patterns that others have considered characteristic of the Plains area vision quest: (1) the infliction of self-torture, (2) the lack of a laity-shaman distinction in seeking visions, and (3) the attaining of a guardian spirit. In typical Boasian fashion, Benedict then shows that while there may be some truth to these patterns, there are many variations and the generalizations don’t always hold. She does, however, identify one that does: in the Plains area, vision seeking is an “affair of maturity and not of adolescence.” Just east or west of the Plains and toward either coast, vision seeking is usually associated with liminal rites that mark passage from adolescence to adulthood.

In closing, Benedict mimics her mentor Boas and reminds us that all this variation argues against generalization:

The very great diversity of the vision pattern even in one culture area such as the Plains is therefore evident. Not only are the general traits unevenly and even entirely lacking in certain tribes, but local developments of one kind and another have overlaid the common pattern till it is at times hardly recognizable. A blanket classification under some such heading as the “acquiring of guardian spirits” leads us nowhere.

[T]he utmost diversity which makes of Plains “religion” a heterogeneity. Animism, magic, mana-ism, mysticism — all the known classifications of religion — jostle with each other in this one area; and after all these headings were tabulated, the real diversities would still remain outside.

These points are well taken. But as is so often the case with Benedict’s work, her appended admonition does little to obscure the larger patterns and explanations lurking throughout the article. Diversity is a pattern that tells us something important about nomadic supernaturalism: across time and space, it is fluid.

As is often the case with incisive thinkers and good writers, Benedict’s mere “description” is organized and presented in a way which smacks of analysis. By showing, she tells.

Reference:

Benedict, R. (1922). The Vision in Plains Culture American Anthropologist, 24 (1), 1-23 DOI: 10.1525/aa.1922.24.1.02a00020

I was reminded of this effect while reading an article about the “religious” beliefs and practices of a Scandinavian hunter-gatherer society, the Sami. The authors discuss these beliefs and practices using terms and concepts developed primarily in the context of Abrahamic religions. We are told that Sami “Religious practices included a variety of rituals and gestures connected to sacrifices. Offerings expressed veneration of the divine powers and established a relationship with the gods.” We also learn that the Sami worshiped a “sacred wooden idol,” which is considered to be a “deity” and tree carvings are “images of gods.” Elsewhere the authors talk about Sami “holy places.”

Sacrifice, divinity, god, holiness, idols, and deity sound suspiciously like Western rather than Sami constructs. Although we can trace these ideas back to the many polytheisms that first arose in Mesopotamia and then spread throughout the Mediterranean, they were systematically elaborated by the monotheistic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While it is possible that the Sami did in fact think and talk in these terms, there are several reasons for doubt.

The first comes from what might be considered naive or non-professional chronicling of native traditions. In most cases, our earliest knowledge of indigenous peoples comes from writings produced by explorers, traders, colonizers, and missionaries. They were not trained in ethnographic methods and inevitably recorded what they saw using concepts and language with which they were familiar. Our earliest accounts of indigenous people must be read with this in mind. The second doubt springs from the straightforward difficulties of language. Few of the earliest chroniclers were linguists and much was lost in translation. The third difficulty is the product of contact and diffusion. Ecumenical in their supernatural outlook, many indigenous peoples picked up on new ideas and incorporated them into their beliefs. Early chroniclers were often astonished to hear them talk about things that sounded suspiciously Christian, apparently without realizing that Christian ideas had long been in circulation.

Elsewhere in the article, we are told that Sami “religious beliefs were animistic, centered on animal ceremonialism.” While this seems simple enough, what does “animism” actually mean? I will confess to not having given this much thought until reading Nurit Bird-David’s superb history and analysis of the term. In “Animism Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology” (open access), she locates the origin of “animism” in E.B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1871) and sketches a genealogy of its deployment since that time.

For Tylor, animism was the attribution of life and personality to plants, animals, weather, and landscapes. He considered it to be a “primitive” trait that originated in dreams and thus was a form of error. Although most of Tylor’s ideas have been abandoned or substantially modified, Bird-David demonstrates that his thoughts on animism have been uncritically accepted and incorporated into the anthropological and historical mainstream. She convincingly shows that animism is an ossified and untroubled category that needs substantial revision.

For Bird-David, the anthropomorphism that characterizes animism is a form of relational epistemology and when viewed this way, it makes considerable sense. Because hunter-gatherers are profoundly and daily affected by plants, animals, weather, and landscapes, putting them into a personal or social relationship — one that is some ways negotiable — is a valid way of understanding and knowing the world.

Having intimate and life altering contact with plants, animals, weather, landscapes, and most importantly other people, hunter-gatherer epistemology does not begin with the individualistic and detached statement “I think, therefore I am.” This Cartesian construct, so deeply embedded (and essentialized) in Western thought, makes little sense to hunter-gatherers who consider relationships to be of paramount importance. Their first principle might thus be stated: “I relate, therefore I am.”

Animism is not, when considered this way, a simplistic or “primitive” way of knowing the world. It is a much richer (and more complex) idea that requires the careful use of concepts which differ from those used to construct the Western world.

References:

Bird-David, Nurit (1999). “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40 DOI: 10.1086/200061

Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., & Liedgren, L. (2008). Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars. Ethnohistory, 55 (1), 1-28 DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2007-044

In 1964 the sociologist Robert Bellah did just this in his classic paper, Religious Evolution. Taking as his premise Eric Voegelin’s idea that cultural history describes an arc that moves from “compact” to “differentiated” symbol systems over time, Bellah posits five stages in the history of religions: (1) Primitive, (2) Archaic, (3) Historic, (4) Early Modern, and (5) Modern. The kinds of religions that Bellah associates with each of these stages deserves a post of its own, but for our purposes the important points are that “Primitive” is shamanic, “Archaic” is diffuse cult polytheism, and “Historic-Modern” is textual and systematized. Most religions today are of the latter variety.

Despite cursory appearances, Bellah’s typology is neither progressive nor normative. As Bellah is at pains to emphasize, his is not a unilinear evolutionary model:

Of course the scheme itself is not intended as an adequate description of historical reality. Particular lines of religious development cannot simply be forced into the terms of the scheme. In reality there may be compromise formations involving elements from two stages which I have for theoretical reasons discriminated; earlier stages may, as I have already suggested, strikingly foreshadow later developments; and more developed may regress to less developed stages.

And of course no stage is ever completely abandoned; all earlier stages continue to coexist with and often within later ones. So what I shall present is not intended as a procrustean bed into which the facts of history are to be forced but a theoretical construction against which historical facts may be illuminated.

Because history is continuous and no stage is ever completely abandoned — each is incorporated into subsequent stages, we can find elements or traces of “Primitive” (i.e., earliest) religions in “Modern” (contemporary) religions. In concrete terms, this means that “modern” religions such as Christianity and Islam contain within them ideas and concepts characteristic of “primitive” religions, otherwise known as shamanisms. Shamanic beliefs and practices constitute the earliest forms of supernaturalism and prefigure all modern religions.

I was recently reminded of Bellah’s typology while reading about Sami shamanism and Phoenician polytheism. The Sami are (or were) hunter-gatherers living in the boreal forest areas of northern Scandinavia and Russia. They were known to the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote about them in 98 AD. At some point, the reindeer hunting Sami domesticated the animal and many became pastoralists. They interacted extensively with the Vikings, and were subjected to aggressive Christian colonizing beginning in the 1500s. Although their traditional ways of life had largely been destroyed by the late nineteenth century, there are numerous accounts of Sami beliefs and practices. In Bellah’s scheme, these would be characterized as “Primitive” or shamanic.

The Phoenicians were a trading and seafaring people who occupied the coastal areas of present day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and North Africa (Carthage). Organized into city-states which at times were in alliance and others in conflict, the Phoenicians dominated much of the Mediterranean from 1200 to 500 BC. Carthage persisted until 146 BC, when it was destroyed by the Romans in the final Punic War. Although it is unclear whether Phoenicians considered themselves to be a distinct ethnic group, they spoke a common language and developed the first phonetic alphabet. They interacted extensively with all Mediterranean peoples, prominently including the Greeks. In Bellah’s scheme, their religion would be characterized as Archaic (cult polytheism).

In “Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars,” Ingela Bergman and colleagues provide an introduction to the Sami, who believed that all things — animals and landscapes in particular — were imbued with spirits or spiritual power. Although the authors characterize this as “animism,” it is actually a kind of pantheism coupled with beliefs in a variety of major and minor spirits. This is precisely the sort of thing we would expect to find among people who are nomadic hunter-gatherers, and is in fact characteristic of such peoples across time and space.

What is unusual, however, about Sami supernaturalism is their intensive use of varro muorra, a concept that exclusively denotes sacred wooden objects. These objects included scaffolds that functioned as offering platforms and carvings that represented or contained spirits. While other hunter-gatherers are known for using wooden scaffolds (usually for mortuary purposes) and wooden objects (in medicine bundles), widespread and intensive usage of these items is uncommon in shamanic practice. It certainly makes one wonder whether earlier contact with Norse pagans and later interaction with Scandinavian Christians influenced Sami ritualism. It also demonstrates Bellah’s observation that a particular religion may be “compromise formations involving elements from two stages,” which in this instance would be Primitive (shamanism) and Archaic (cult ritualism).

Another example of mixed element religious practice comes from “Phoenician Cult Stones,” an article published by Eugene Stockton in 1974. Before surveying the many instances of Phoenician temples and cult stones proper, Stockton observes that sacred rocks belong to a “primitive substratum” of religion; indeed, unusually shaped rocks have long been a part of sacred shamanic landscapes and forager medicine bundles. Such rocks were often considered to be the residing place of ancient spirits. More recently but still before Phoenician times, incipient and early agriculturalists erected megalithic structures for ritual purposes. This appears to be a vestigial practice carried over from shamanic formations.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Phoenicians (and the Greeks) venerated stones, often erecting them in temples and other ritual spaces. Once in place and properly dedicated, the stones could either harbor deities or represent them. This is a practice with a deep history, one that manifests itself even in “Modern” religions. One need look no further than the ritual foci of Islam — the sacred Black Stone, embedded in the holy granite cube known as the Kaaba — to see this is the case. Indeed, the Black Stone most likely pre-dates Islam and was revered by nomadic Arabian pagans.

Where does all this leave us? First, it shows that Bellah’s stages are a useful heuristic for illuminating unsuspected or unnoticed connections between seemingly disparate religions. Second, it demonstrates that religious history is multilinear and diffusion works in two directions: from the “Primitive” to the “Modern” and vice versa. Finally, it attests to the fact that no religion is sui generis: all have a history and none stands alone.

References:

Bellah, R. (1964). Religious Evolution American Sociological Review, 29 (3) DOI: 10.2307/2091480

Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., & Liedgren, L. (2008). Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars Ethnohistory, 55 (1), 1-28 DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2007-044

Stockton, Eugene D. (1974). Phoenician Cult Stones Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology, 2.3, 1-27

Whitehouse is interested primarily in religious variation and sees religions as falling into one of two categories or modes: “imagistic” and “doctrinal.” As our correspondent at The Economist recently noted, Whitehouse links these two modes to different kinds of memory:

Psychologists distinguish two types of long-term memory. One, semantic memory, records things consciously learned without first-hand experience—history lessons at school, for example. The other, episodic memory, records memorable events from a person’s own life.

Harvey Whitehouse thinks these different ways of remembering are harnessed by what he sees as two distinct aspects of religiosity. The doctrinal religious mode, as he dubs the first of these aspects, favours frequent but not particularly exciting rites that allow large bodies of teaching to be stored in a person’s semantic memory.

The second aspect—the imagistic mode, in Dr. Whitehouse’s terminology—relies on rare but highly arousing events that are etched into the episodic memory by dint of their emotional salience.

If we suppose that “religions” can in fact be roughly divided into two types (I am always suspicious of overly neat binaries or dichotomies), and if we follow Whitehouse’s division, it seems that the “imagistic” religions describe the beliefs of most pre-state or small-scale societies, and that the “doctrinal” religions describe the beliefs of most agricultural and industrial societies.

If this is the case, then basic religious variation — or division into imagistic and doctrinal modes of religion — might be better explained as a difference in political economy. The basic difference, in other words, is that pre-state and small-scale societies generally lack the kinds of elites, institutions, and technologies that promote “doctrinal” modes of religion. They also tend to lack writing and books, which may be prerequisites for “doctrinal” forms of religion.

Another way of looking at this is to observe that until 10,000 years ago (i.e., before the Neolithic Revolution), all “religions” were shamanic and therefore imagistic. The domestication of plants and animals led to the development of city-states and resulted in a shift to more organized, systematic, and “doctrinal” forms of religion.

While it may be true that “imagistic” religions draw primarily on episodic memory and “doctrinal” religions draw primarily on semantic memory, this seems to be an historical effect rather than a biological cause.

Postscript: For those interested in Whitehouse’s ideas, I recommend his book Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (2004).

If you have ever attended a Star Trek Convention, you will not be surprised to learn there are people who actually profess belief in what they call Jedi religion. They have gotten together and formed The Church of Jediism. Their beliefs sound vaguely familiar:

In Jediism, we believe in the Force. The Force is a unifying energy which exists around us, in us, and is always present. It is the catalyst for life – it is the power that keeps the universe together. The Force is not something Jedi worship, rather it is something we concentrate on, and can relate to. The Force exists in many forms, but it is not something which can be seen. It flows through everything in existence as neutral energy, and according to the way we see, treat and act in life, can change it from neutral to positive or negative Force.

We believe the mind is like a sponge. As sponges, they soak up information daily – we are constantly learning new things. But not all of this information is stored as positive thoughts. There are always negative thoughts and information which can contaminate the mind, whether that is for a short time or a life time. We believe the practice of self enlightenment helps clear the mind, rinsing the sponge of all negative thoughts. This therefore makes more room for positive thoughts, and also changes one’s thought process and ability to take in and learn more information.

Our aim is to bring all of the world’s believers in the Force together for the power of good. We will form a community that does not have bias or any type of prejudice. A community that does not reject other religions, but in fact encourages their positive teachings. It is through positivity that we shall thrive, for that is the Light side of the Force.

The Force sounds suspiciously like something that theoretical physicists study and Jedi doctrine reminds me of westernized Buddhism. The master Jedi encourages everyone to study the Star Wars movies for additional insights.

This religion will not get very far without sacred texts and I am not sure that George Lucas’ original 13 page script will work. On the other hand, Scientologists have done far more with considerably less.

Copyright Illustration by John Perlock

If you are wondering whether this is all in jest, so is a Danish scholar whose study of Jediism will appear in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal for the Study of New Religions.

1. The Plaintiff is Thomas J. Ritter, Jr., an adult individual residing at 320 MacArthur Drive, Orwigsburg, PA 17961.

2. The Defendant is The Blue Mountain School District, 685 Red Dale Rd., Orwigsburg, PA 17961.

3. Logically, The Blue Mt. School District does teach that evolution without the possibility of a Creator is the only explanation for the existence of life.

(The Blue Mt. SD does teach evolution. See BMHS biology teacher Anne Creyer’s website @ http://cryerbio.wikispaces.com/. Kitzmiller v. Dover SD forbids any teaching of evolution that includes a Creator: “ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause of …the Constitution”. -ID is Intelligent Design).

5. This teaching in unscientific.

6. This teaching is actually Atheism (no Creator = no God).

7. Objectively, Atheism is a religion, albeit a silly and unscientific one.

8. This is like teaching Jesus is Lord.

9. Defendant wants to tax Plaintiff to support its scheme. (See exhibit A)

10. Plaintiff does object to supporting this scheme in any way.

Wherefore, Plaintiff does ask this honorable Court to find the Blue Mt. School District is an illegal body so long as it teaches Atheism, and is thus not entitled to pursue any further actions.

Although Ritter appeals to logic, the logic of his complaint is more than a bit muddled. I have always been baffled by the argument that atheism is a religion. Atheism/religion is a binary of opposition — atheism is the absence of religion.

Because Ritter filed the complaint without an attorney (i.e., pro se), the judge is required by the rules of pleading to try to make some sense of the complaint and given him some leeway. Even if the judge draws all conceivable inferences in Ritter’s favor, I fail to see how the complaint can survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

I first became aware of Craig’s work through various blogs and was immediately impressed by his thinking and writing – clear and incisive are words that come to mind. As I read more of his material, including several articles and his book (review forthcoming), it became clear that Craig has much to teach those of us who do not specialize in religious studies but whose scholarship addresses “religion.”

Researchers who approach religion from a cognitive or evolutionary perspective will especially benefit from Craig’s insights. When the object of your research is “religion,” it seems essential to understand the ways in which this non-neutral category is historically and socially constructed. Much of Craig’s work shows how such constructions are made and who benefits from them. Religion is not, in other words, an essential and apolitical category that can be uncritically plugged into an equation or evolutionary story.

I recently asked Craig for an interview to which he graciously assented. Our conversation follows.

Admin: Though this seems exceedingly odd, “religion” is a contested term that is hard to define.  How do you define it?

Craig Martin: In fact, I don’t define religion; the search for a definition of religion too often resembles a search for a Platonic form. I find it more useful to draw attention to how the word religion carries a variable number of normative associations, and consequently how the classification of something as “religion” can be used to advance a social agenda. For instance, I’m working on an essay right now that looks at how the distinction between “spirituality” and “institutional religion” seems always to be applied in a way that sanctions whatever is placed under the label “institutional religion.” “Institutional religion” functions like the word “cult”: it is useful primarily because it is pejorative. In principle, I’ve got nothing against a good stipulative definition of the word religion, but in practice I’ve never seen one that carries sufficient analytic usefulness.

Admin: Why religion?  What prompted your interest in this subject?

Craig Martin: My interest in religion started when I was in high school; I was a conservative, evangelical Christian. I went to Anderson University because I felt “called to the ministry” and they had a “Christian Ministry” major. I enrolled with a double major in “Christian Ministry” and “Bible.” However, the more I studied the Bible the less plausible conservative Christianity became for me. I loved studying the Bible academically, and once you have a B.A. in Bible, there’s not much else you can do except go on to graduate studies in religion (at Syracuse).

Admin: What were your primary research interests in graduate school?

Craig Martin: I’ve always been concerned with what are broadly termed “social justice” concerns. It’s probably not surprising, in retrospect, that one of my favorite books as an undergraduate was one that considered the Hebrew Scriptures as “ideology.” Despite abandoning biblical studies, I continue to have an interest in how the way people think, write, and speak is connected to relationships of power in society. The longer I study religion the more I’m interested in Marxist, Marxian, or neo-Marxist research, such as the work of Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, or Bruce Lincoln. I find that Marxist (or quasi-Marxist) approaches shed the greatest light on how religions work, or at least those things about religion that interest me.

Admin: Many people think that religious studies are akin to theology studies: learn a bunch of texts, doctrines, and rituals. How do you approach these issues?

Craig Martin: I think that most of what we call theology tends to reproduce rather than analyze or contest authority. Most Christian theology, for instance, appeals to the Bible as an authority; as such, it naturalizes the continuing authority of the Bible. Academic scholarship, I believe, should show how such authorities function, or even contest such authorities by denaturalizing them. I put it this way in my essay, “How To Read An Interpretation“:

Russell McCutcheon suggests – rightly, in my mind – that scholars should be “in the business of provoking unreflective participants in social systems into becoming reflective scholars of social systems.” Rather than convince my students that Jesus supports my own social agendas, I prefer them to see how the figure of Jesus can be utilized in support of various social agendas. Or, to put it differently, as instructors we can better serve our students by showing how ventriloquism works, rather than by attempting to out-puppeteer the communities we study.

Admin: What courses do you teach?

Craig Martin: I teach Intro to Religion, Hebrew Scriptures (my school calls it “Old Testament”), New Testament, Religions of the West (i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Religions of the East (i.e., Hinduism and Buddhism), The Evolution of Jesus, and a course on gender and sexuality in American Protestantism. I think my favorite is probably the introductory course. There I lay out a functionalist theory of religion for the students: the elements of religious traditions can be—and are—used to reflect and reinforce—and contest—group boundaries, social hierarchies, and social roles, social norms, behavioral practices, etc. There is a lot of Durkheim, Mary Douglas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Bruce Lincoln behind the course. Often students complain that it appears to be more about “sociology” than “religion”; these students seem to think they’ve been the victim of a bait-and-switch. On the other hand, I regularly have students tell me that the course got them to think about the world in ways they had never imagined, and that it was one of their favorite courses.

Admin: When teaching students who have never taken a religion course, what are your primary goals?

Craig Martin: My primary goals for teaching are, first, to demonstrate to students that societies are never set up in ways that serve everyone’s interests equally, and, second, to give them the skills to identify who benefits and who does not and how disproportionate social structures are legitimated and maintained. Obviously I think that the authoritative elements in religious traditions are often enlisted to legitimate disparity, domination, etc. Students tend to come into my courses thinking about religion in liberal terms (i.e., it’s a private matter between you and God, it’s basically good, it makes you a better person, it makes you happy), and my functionalist take on religion tends to challenge that. I think their liberal preconceptions are upset when I can persuasively demonstrate that religious traditions are used to legitimate disparity or domination, and that religion – despite pervasive rhetoric to the contrary – is never just a personal or private matter.

Admin: If you could recommend three books on religion, which three would you choose and why?

Craig Martin: Only three? That’s a tough task!

My first would probably be Bruce Lincoln’s Discourse and the Construction of Society. I think this book is paradigmatic of how we can be functionalists about religion without being essentialists. Reading this book in graduate school completely transformed the way I thought about religion; I can’t imagine a book more important for my own trajectory as a scholar of religion.

My second would probably be Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality. I know of no book more clear and comprehensive in its presentation of how societies work. It might not be the most sophisticated (it’s somewhat dated today), but it would be a brilliant first book on sociological theory for someone interested in critical theories of religion.

Last, I think I would have to put together a collection of essays by Russell McCutcheon. I would choose a couple from Critics Not Caretakers, a couple from The Discipline of Religion, and a couple from Religion and the Domestication of Dissent. I would specifically choose those essays that show the limits of liberal discourses on religion and the rhetoric of authenticity. McCutcheon exposes better than anyone else in our field whose interests might be served or what ends might be accomplished by the rhetoric of authenticity.

Admin: Let’s talk about your recent book, Masking Hegemony, which I will be reviewing here sometime soon. Can you give us an overview?

Craig Martin: Basically, I think that when people say that “religion is a private matter,” there is something incredibly fishy going on. In this book I show that not only is this false (there’s nothing particularly “private” about those institutions we called “religious”), but it’s also counterproductive as a rhetorical strategy to force religious institutions to be private. There’s no better way to construct a hegemony than to control education and the processes of socialization, and as long as there is “freedom of religion,” the socialization of many citizens is handed over to religious institutions (churches, families, etc.). There is absolutely no way that the effects of these processes of socialization can remain “private.”

I argue that saying “religion is a private matter” (which can be a descriptive or a normative claim) is a neat way of procuring and masking the means by which religious institutions can gain a hegemony over state functions. That is, on the one hand the freedom to socialize citizens is procured via the claim that religion is a private matter (“you can’t regulate what we do because it’s a private affair”). On the other hand, when liberals insist (in support of the right to abortion or the right for gays and lesbians to marry) that religion is a private matter, they are masking what religious institutions actually do and thereby permitting the work to continue. In the conclusion I suggest another vocabulary to think about religion and politics—that is, something other than the public/private vocabulary.

Admin: In the past decade or so, cognitive and evolutionary accounts of religion have become quite prevalent. What is your sense of this work? Do you think there is anything biological about religious belief?

Craig Martin: My biggest concern about these approaches is essentializing – treating religion as if it were hypostatized or a Platonic form. On the other hand, if we take Foucault and his treatment of “the body” seriously, we need to acknowledge that the body has a brain. Not everything can be explained in terms of discourse or social construction. There are probably aspects of what we call “religion” that can be explained in terms of what we call the biological sciences, but I am not qualified to comment on them.

Admin: Let’s close by talking about what can be a long and winding road. How did you get to St. Thomas Aquinas and how are things going?

Craig Martin: I was awarded a Ph.D. in Religion at Syracuse University in the summer of 2007. I found the job market to be dehumanizing. You spend 7 ½ years in grad school, only to find that the chance of getting a job in the field is as little as fifty-fifty. You spend hours and hours writing and submitting an application, and you’re left with the impression that your application might get a minute or two of attention before—as you fear—it’s thrown in the trash for a typo you missed. You adjunct in the meantime, and “real” faculty members look down on you as someone who must be inferior, otherwise you would have a “real” job. You feel inferior compared to your colleagues who have publications and/or jobs. Most of your non-academic friends and family have no real understanding of what you’re going through, since they have no idea what the academic job market is really like.

St. Thomas Aquinas College is good fit for me. I love teaching and I have a lot of freedom to teach what I want. My colleagues are wonderful and supportive; I found an instant rapport with quite a few of them. And there’s a terrific student body. I serve as faculty advisor to the Gay-Straight Alliance (a great group of kids!), and for the STAC House Band, a rock band I started (which includes students, faculty and staff). The weekly band rehearsals are probably the best part of my week.

Selected Craig Martin Articles:

“Delimiting Religion.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 21/2 (2009).

“On the Origin of the ‘Private Sphere’: A Discourse Analysis of Religion and Politics from Luther to Locke. Temenos, 45/2 (2009).

“How to Read an Interpretation: Interpretive Strategies and the Maintenance of Authority.” The Bible and Critical Theory, 5/1 (2009).

“Configured for Exclusion: Characterizations of Religion in Liberal Political Philosophy.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 19/1-2 (2007).

While the military has long been associated with (Christian) religion, this connection has taken on added poignancy over the last decade. It should surprise no one that the military is well-served having “Christian” soldiers fighting “Islamic” extremists.

The military cannot of course admit any of this. At least not publicly. This explains its emphasis on “spirituality” rather “Christianity,” and is the subject of Barbara Hagerty’s recent NPR story on the Army’s “Spiritual Fitness” test. Without divulging the bases for its claims, the Army asserts that “spiritual” soldiers are more “resilient” and it is testing for this aptitude. An Army sergeant described the test for NPR:

[T]he computerized survey asked him to rank himself on statements such as: “I am a spiritual person. I believe that in some way my life is closely connected to all of humanity. I often find comfort in my religion and spiritual beliefs.” The next question was: “In difficult times, I pray or meditate.”

[The sergeant] finished the survey, pressed submit, and in a few moments, he received an assessment: “Spiritual fitness may be an area of difficulty.” It continued: “You may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. At times, it is hard for you to make sense of what is happening to you and to others around you. You may not feel connected to something larger than yourself. You may question your beliefs, principles and values.” It concluded: “Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal.”

Then it suggested that [the sergeant] take a long computerized training module to teach him about different forms of spirituality, including prayer, meditation and attending church.

Camouflage, it seems, is not limited to battle. There are no monks in the military who teach meditation; there are chaplains who teach that “spirituality” is a matter of being Christian and attending church.

The obvious implication is that meaning, purpose, principles, and values are all dependent on this particular kind of belief, and that without it soldiers may find themselves adrift, unable to make sense of war. Worse yet, they may not feel connected to “humanity” and “something larger than themselves.” The irony here is so thick one hardly knows where to begin.

Imagine the group of people who consider themselves to be Christian and then attempt to imagine what their common or collective interests might be.  You will be imagining for a long time, primarily because they do not share the same interests or goals.  The same is true of the 1.5 billion people who consider themselves Muslim.  They are a rather diverse lot.

Despite this fact, there are some (who should know better) who use these terms.  Here is how a professor of Islamic studies recently described the WikiLeaked cables which show that several “Muslim nations” have urged the US to bomb or invade Iran, another “Muslim nation”:

The revelations so far about the Muslim world are eye opening. Muslims, even some American Muslims have raised criticism of American foreign policy to the level of religious ritual. Often Muslim radicalism and alienation is explained as a direct consequence of US foreign policy alone (the point being that US foreign policy is anti-Islam and subversive to Muslim nations). Therefore Muslim anger and radicalism against the U.S. while often expressed in unjustifiable ways is still understandable.

But now that the shenanigans of Muslim nations, most importantly their collusion with America’s so called anti-Islam foreign policy, is exposed, what will Muslims do? Will they also hate Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar and other nations just as much as they hate America? Or will they recognize that nation states have interests and they pursue them in whatever ways they can; and understand that US foreign policy neither advances nor targets any religion?

While these various assertions may or may not be true, what they show is that talking about the “Muslim world” and “Muslim nations” makes no sense.  It makes even less sense to ask how “Muslims” (which ones?) will react to all this, as if “Muslims” think and act collectively.  Because they do not, I have no idea who “they” might be.