The Ideal Religion

Kate Douglas has written an article for the New Scientist on what the “ideal religion” would look like:

What form would the ideal religion take? Some might argue that instead of redesigning religion, we should get rid of it. But it is good for some things: religious people are happier and healthier, and religion offers community. Besides, secularism has passed its zenith, according to Jon Lanman, who studies atheism at the University of Oxford. In a globalised world, he says, migrations and economic instability breed fear, and when people’s values feel under threat, religion thrives.

Jacobs lists off four categories or basic functions of religion (sacred party, therapy, mystical quest, and school) and describes how most of the existing world religions do one of these very well and ignore or fail to excel at the others. Jacobs’s ideal religion would excel at all four:

While each appeals to a different sort of person, they all tap into basic human needs and desires, so a new world religion would have a harmonious blend of them all: the euphoria and sensual trappings of a sacred party, the sympathy and soothing balms of therapy, the mysteries and revelations of an eternal journey and the nurturing, didactic atmosphere of a school.

Numerous festivals, holidays and rituals would keep followers hooked. “Rites of terror” such as body mutilation are out – although they bind people together very intensely, they are not usually compatible with world religions (New Scientist, 19 December 2009, p 62). Still, highly rousing, traumatic rituals might still feature as initiation ceremonies, because people tend to be more committed to a religion and tolerant of its failings after paying a high price for entry.

The everyday rituals will focus on rhythmic dancing and chanting to stimulate the release of endorphins, which Robin Dunbar, also at Oxford, says are key to social cohesion. To keep people coming back, he also prescribes “some myths that break the laws of physics, but not too much”, and no extreme mysticism, as it tends to lead to schisms.

With many gods and great tolerance of idiosyncratic local practices, the new religion will be highly adaptable to the needs of different congregations without losing its unifying identity. The religion will also emphasise worldly affairs – it would promote the use of contraceptives and small families and be big on environmental issues, philanthropy, pacifism and cooperation.

I’m not sure about downplaying the value of mysticism or the necessity of pacifism, but the interesting thing (as pointed out by Sannion over at the House of Vines) is that Jacobs has basically described ancient Greco-Roman pagan religion.

As Apuleius Platonicus pointed out, Jacobs’s description is lacking in a few other areas as well. Such an ideal religion ought to honor human sexuality and celebrate reason and learning.

But these are honestly quibbles that could be worked out in the long run, or better yet, there would just be room within this kind of big-tent religion for different viewpoints. Most importantly, however, as pointed out by paosirdjhutmosu is that this kind of article and this kind of thinking undermines the notion of religions progress that people like Rodney Stark sell so hard, and that so many people seem to accept as a given, the idea that the course of human religious history has somehow been a linear progression from a darker mirror to a clearer one, and that therefore modern religions are necessarily better than older ones. Like all notions of progress, this is an extremely suspect assumption, with very little to back it up other than plain-old-fashioned massive bias in favor of the current status quo. Now must be better because it’s now. That’s nonsense. Social and cultural change happen for a host of reasons, and there’s nothing in the process that makes sure that the end-product is more functional or healthier for human beings.

I don’t think articles like this are going to turn people towards the old gods in massive numbers or anything, but I like that we see this kind of thinking more and more.

I also definitely want to point out that while this “ideal religion” describes ancient Greco-Roman polytheism fairly well, it wound not specifically have to be Greco-Roman polytheism. I for one would gladly welcome an open, mystical, transcendental, green Christianity with room to give proper honor to saints, angels, ancestors and local kindred spirits of the earth.

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Eating Is Sacred

Eating together is an act of communal worship. It is–or should be–a celebration of one of the fundamental human experiences, of something intimately connected with life and death. We kill to eat, we eat to live. Hunting, farming, and agriculture are intimarely bound with life, sex, and death. They cannot meaningfully be separated. We eat at funerals, we feast to celebrate major life events. We eat, or refrain from eating, all the time in religious contexts.

Sources of food are sacred. The growing, raising, harvesting, preparation, and ultimate consumption of food are sacramental acts. We are sick because we have forgotten this and we have disassociated ourselves too much from a basic aspect of human existence. We are less human because of it. This is why we are unhealthy; this is why we are crazy.

Eating is holy. Food is holy. hunting, gathering, and growing are holy. To do these things we have to go out and interact with the earth, getting caught up intimately in the web of life, sex, death, and eating that interweaves the living earth in a way that is impossible when we just go to the supermarket to pick up our groceries.

We are fat because of our blasphemy. I am overweight because I have failed to appreciate the holiness of eating. I have become less human because I have learned to be casual about something that is sacred because it is so closely bound up with what it means to be human.

Eat mindfully, and you will have no problem making time for spirituality, because the most spiritual things are also the most mundane, the very things we do all the time for survival. They are sacred precisely because they are done for survival. If we can stop being casual about sacred things–and stop being mindless about eating–then our lives can be saturated with spirituality. We can live closer tot he quick, closer to what it means to really be living.

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She Blinded Me With Christian Science

Today my wife and I went to a service at the Church of Christ, Scientist. We’re not sure that Cedar Ridge Community Church is a good permanent church solution for us, and we were in the mood for something different. I actually found an Episcopalian parish I wanted to attend, but they’re on some kind of weird summer schedule (I guess most Episcopalians don’t go to church in the summer) where they only have an 8:00 am Rite I Eucharist service (old style, and with no music). I was kind of annoyed about that.

Alternately, we’ve been thinking about visiting an Orthodox church again, but we hadn;t hear back from the OCA parish in Bethesda about whether they have child care during the liturgy.

So instead, we decided to go on a wacky adventure to the Church of Christ, Scientist!

I should co ahead and say that I’m not actually interested in joining the Church or practicing Christian Science. But the church is odd and quirky (much like Mormonism) and I wanted to at least visit. Plus, I’ve been keen for some time on getting my hands on a copy of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science And Health With Key To The Scriptures, just out of pure theological curiosity.

Anyway, there was child care available, which was good (without it, we would have just had to go home, because there’s no way our one-year-old can quietly sit through, well, pretty much anything).  The service was kind of boring- Christian Scientists have no preachers, because the Bible and Science and Health are their preachers.  That means the sermon is just a set of collected readings from those two books.  It takes up most of the hour, and it’s hard to sit still and pay attention.

There were also some responsive readings, which I always really like in a religious setting, and some hymns.  It was nice to sing hymns after six months of nothing but contemporary Christian praise music.  Did I mention that I like hymns?

One of the readers sounded hilariously like a Mormon General Authority- actually like a cross between Thomas S. Monson and L. Tom Perry, I thought.  My wife mentioned that the man had sounded like a GA, and I laughed because I had been thinking that the whole time.

The meeting was not well-attended, although the church was in a really nice building.

The topic of the sermon/readings was Life, and it was all about how life, mind, and spirit are real and  how matter and death and illness are illusory, which I think is pretty much the gist of the religion.

At the end, when we went downstairs to fetch the little one, the nice lady there gave us a copy of Science And Health, and that pretty much made my day.  Also, it was really nice of her, because I think the book cost something like ten dollars.  The thing was, the cover was glossy and it hurt my eyes in the car on the way home when the sun reflected off it.  So she really did blind me with science.  As in, Mary Baker Eddy blinded me with Christian Science.

Incidentally, Christian Science is not the same thing as Scientology.

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