Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

Chapter 4

Religious history

John Wolffe

Introduction

Religious history is both one of the oldest and also one of the most recent approaches to the study of religion. Sometime in the later first century ce the Christian writer of the Gospel of Luke announced his intention ‘to write an orderly account’ of ‘the things that have been fulfilled among us’ in order that his readers might ‘know the certainty of the things you have been taught’ (NIV 1982: Luke 1:1–4). The intention was to compile a work of history, in the general sense of describing past events, but it was a history that had an explicit religious purpose in enabling readers to ‘know … certainty’, a certainty that was implicitly assumed to be self-evident from the narrative that followed. Some nineteen centuries later when Sidney E. Ahlstrom embarked on his seminal survey, A Religious History of the American People, he claimed that his theme was ‘one of the most intensely relevant subjects on the face of the earth’, but he did not profess to offer any ‘certainty’ for religious believers. On the contrary he was at pains at the outset to point out that religious history

enjoys no rights of sanctuary, no immunity from the demands for evidence and plausibility that are made on historians generally. The historian cannot claim supernatural or divinely inspired sources of insight; nor on such grounds can he place one body of holy scripture above another.

(Ahlstrom 1972: xiv)

Ahlstrom went on to insist that religious history should also include the study of ‘secular’ religiosity and moral seriousness; that it must attend to the ‘radical diversity’ of actual religious movements and experience; and that the social context of religious activity ‘must ever be borne in mind’. These aspirations, foundational to the critical academic study of religious history as it developed in the later twentieth century, would have seemed very alien to the mindset of religiously-motivated historians at the time that the Gospel of Luke was written.

The scope of the concept of ‘religious history’ is a matter of significant confusion and debate. It is possible to discern a broad trend over time from the history with a religious purpose of the Gospel of Luke and other foundational ancient texts to the detached objective investigation of the religious dimensions of ‘the larger frame of world history’ (Ahlstrom 1972: xiv) that characterizes the contemporary academic discipline. Aspects of the older approach persist however, for example in the view of the editor of a collection of essays on

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Historians of the Christian Tradition that ‘for the sovereign God of Scripture, history is a tool for His own purposes’ and his definition of religious historians as those who deal with ‘people, ideas and events in a theologically informed fashion’ (Baumann and Klauber 1995: 3, 11). For Ahlstrom, theology is subordinate to history, with theological developments presented in a ‘historically conditioned’ context, but for Baumann and Klauber the interpretation of history remains subordinate to their underlying theological convictions.

Alongside approaches in which history and theology are primary, is what might be characterized as the religious studies approach to the past, originating in the development in Germany around the turn of the twentieth century of the concept of Religiongeschichte. This word is normally translated into English as ‘comparative religion’ or ‘history of religion(s)’. One leading British practitioner of religious history has pithily remarked that ‘The academic subject called “The History of Religions” turns out to have nothing to do with the discipline of history’ (Collinson 1999: 154). Central to the Religiongeschichte approach is the comparative study of different religious traditions, identifying commonalities and contrasts. The history of religions (in the plural) acknowledges the distinctive historic characteristics of various religious traditions, whereas implicit in the history of religion (in the singular) is a perception of religion as a universal human phenomenon in which the similarities between different traditions and cultural and geographical manifestations ultimately are more significant that the differences. Both approaches though yield results that are very different from the religious history written by scholars such as Ahlstrom and Collinson, who were trained as historians, and are concerned much more with understanding the detailed historical context of religious activity in a specific time and place, than with making comparisons across traditions, cultures and societies. A further difference of emphasis between history of religion(s) and religious history lies in the tendency of the former to give considerable attention to the origins and early history of religious traditions, whereas the latter is focused primarily on their later development. Nevertheless, as in relation to the explicitly theological history advanced by Baumann and Klauber, the issue is confused by fluid use of the term ‘religious history’. For example the English translation of Hans Kippenberg’s survey of the development of the discipline of comparative religion, Entdeckung der Religiongeschichte, was given the title Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age when ‘Discovering the History of Religions …’ would have given a more accurate representation of its content (Kippenberg 2002).

A broad understanding of religious history thus overlaps significantly with other approaches to the study of religion, with theology on the one hand, and with the comparative study of religion on the other. In this chapter, however, a narrower working definition will be adopted, in concentrating particularly on that approach to the study of religion that is essentially a branch of the discipline of History, analogous for instance to anthropology of religion as a branch of Anthropology or sociology of religion as a branch of Sociology.

Religious history is founded on the historical methodology of rigorous analysis of the printed and archival records of the past in awareness of their cultural, political and social context. Institutional and official records (such as censuses) yield fascinating insights not only into organizational developments, but also into the grassroots realities of religious practice, especially when studied in conjunction with more personal documents such as letters, diaries, and oral history recordings. As in any branch of history the outcomes of such investigation have to be interpreted, and such interpretation will more or less subtly reflect the presuppositions of the particular scholar. However the underlying aspiration to reconstruct a specific milieu in the past as fully and objectively as possible distinguishes religious history

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from the overt confessional commitments of what might be termed theological history and the broader comparative ambitions of history of religion(s). It must be stressed, however, that methodological boundaries remain fluid, and that it is more useful to think in terms of a spectrum of different approaches to the study of religion in the past than of hard and fast distinctions.

Before turning to discuss the development of religious history in its modern form from the eighteenth century onwards, and more particularly during the second half of the twentieth century, it will be useful to provide a brief survey of much more longstanding traditions of theological history.

Antecedents

The uses of theological history

The term ‘theological history’ is used here in a general comparative sense to denote historical writing in any tradition that explicitly articulates or is clearly shaped by its underlying religious ideas. An early example of the genre was the ancient Chinese Spring and Autumn Annals, reputedly the work of Confucius (c551–479 bce) and infused by Confucian morality and beliefs about the interplay of earthly events and heavenly judgements on them (Ng and Wang 2005: x). Probably broadly contemporary with Confucius were the historical books of the Hebrew Bible which recounted the chequered spiritual record of the people of Israel in their dealings with the Almighty (Halpern 1996). Half a millennium later the historical books of the Christian New Testament gave accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, his death and resurrection, and the subsequent initial development of the Christian Church. While the extent to which such texts record actual objective historical events has been much debated (for contrasting perspectives see Brettler 1995; Wright 1992), their importance in shaping the consciousness of their respective religious traditions is undeniable (Sterling 1992: 17). The historical approach of such Jewish and Christian writings, locating events within a particular chronological timeframe, contrasts with the great Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramāyāna. Although many believe that the events recounted in them actually took place – as was apparent when in 1992 Hindu militants demolished the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya because it was believed to be on the site of a temple built by Lord Ram – their religious power arises from a perceived timelessness that transcends chronological specificity (Frykenberg 1996: 166, 173; Kurien 2007: 170).

As the passage of time gave Christianity a past of its own, it began to acquire its own historians, most notably Eusebius of Caesarea (c260–c340), who recounted the history of the church from its beginnings to his own times in the reign of Constantine, and Bede (c673–735), who described the early history of the church in England. The histories of Eusebius and Bede were both shaped by their strong theological vision of divine providence and redemption, but they also provided much factual information that would otherwise have been lost to posterity. Meanwhile in The City of God, written between 413 and 426, Augustine of Hippo provided a seminal work of theological history, profoundly influencing subsequent Christian thought about the overall shape of the past, but saying little about the detail of specific events (Bauman and Klauber 1995: 59–116Â.)

The emergence of Islam in the seventh century ce in due course gave rise to a particularly rich tradition of historical writing. Although the Qu’rān itself is a work of prophecy not history, Muhammad transmitted to his followers a strong sense of his own place in history, a perception reinforced by the dramatic expansion of Muslim power in the decades after

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his death (Rosenthal 1968: 26, 129). Early Islamic historical writing was fragmentary in character, but al-Tabari (d. 923 ce), who lived in what is now Iraq, achieved both an impressive synthesis of earlier sources, and a theological vision of ‘the idea of the integration of all prophetic missions in history, and also the idea of the unity of the umma’s experiences’ (Duri 1983: 159). Al-Biruni (973–1048 ce) compiled his Chronology of Ancient Nations, a strikingly evenhanded gathering of information regarding the ritual calendars and religious development of Christianity, Judaism and other non-Muslim traditions of his time, as well as of Islam itself (Sachau 1879). From the eleventh century ce onwards theological concerns came increasingly to shape Islamic historiography, but there was also an enduring capacity to provide valuable factual accounts of contemporary events, as for example in Ibn Shaddād’s vivid narrative of the siege of Acre in 1191 (Rosenthal 1968: 143; Robinson 2003: 147–8).

Religious conflict, both within and between traditions, also left a strong imprint on historical writing. Some of the earliest quasi-historical narratives from early Christianity are accounts of martyrdoms, which were accorded great religious significance because of the analogy they presented with the death of Jesus himself (Musurillo 1972). Similarly, ‘the divisive history of martyrdom’ dating back to the death of al-Husayn at Karbala in 680 has dominated Shi’ite historical consciousness and operated as a major factor perpetuating separation from the majority Sunni Muslim community (Cook 2001: 58–9). Christian and Muslim accounts of the events of the Crusades perpetuated rival interpretations of their religious purpose and meaning (Gabrieli 1969; Peters 1971). The division of Western Christianity in the sixteenth century gave a major stimulus to historical writing because the legitimacy of the Protestant Reformers depended on interpreting the past to claim that they were seeking to restore the purity of apostolic times that had been corrupted by the Catholic Church. Such a perspective was presented by writers such as Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75), Lucas Osiander (1534–1604), and John Foxe (1516–87), whose Acts and Monuments… of the Church linked a Protestant reading of Christian history to accounts of the sufferings of the martyrs under Queen Mary, and a patriotic assertion of special role of the English people in the purposes of God (Cameron 2005: 122–40; Bauman and Klauber 1995: 117–38). The Roman Catholic response was led by Caesar Baronius (1538–1607) who in his Ecclesiastical Annals sought to marshal historical evidence for the continuity and validity of Catholic beliefs and practices (Cameron 2005: 141–4).

Theological history provides otherwise irrecoverable evidence of the distant past and an awareness of the place of religion in a wider historical landscape. Such texts can also be invaluable for understanding the outlooks of writers and their contemporaries: for example Foxe’s very widely read work played a major role in shaping the religious and political culture of early modern England (Haller 1963). Contrasts and fluctuations in the historical activity of religious communities are also revealing. The widespread perception that Buddhists and Hindus lacked a sense of history is belied by texts such as the Mahāvamsa, which developed in Sri Lanka from the sixth century ce onwards (Frykenberg 1996: 152–3; Maraldo 2004: 332– 3), but, outside China, levels of activity and interest in South and East Asia were low relative to the strong Christian and Islamic traditions of historical writing. There was also relatively little historical writing in diaspora Judaism between the second and fifteenth centuries ce, except when a need was felt to record the bitter experience of persecution (Myers 1997).

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The impact of the Enlightenment

The origins of later approaches to the writing of religious history are to be found in the eighteenth century. Leading historians of that period represented a wide spectrum of personal religious beliefs, from the overt scepticism of David Hume (1711–76), through the measured cynicism of Edward Gibbon (1737–94) to the committed but moderate Protestantism of Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (c 1694–1755) and William Robertson (1721–93). They were all, however, inspired by a characteristic Enlightenment aspiration to rational detachment, which although imperfectly achieved, still represented a significant break from polemical theological history.

Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88) is an established classic of secular historiography, but it was also a seminal work of religious history that gives due weight to the role of Christianity, but eschews Christian triumphalism and gives extensive attention to other religious traditions. Thus a penetrating analysis of the development of Christianity and its relationship to the Roman government (Chapters 15 and 16) is balanced by a sympathetic account of the attempt of the Emperor Julian to restore paganism (Chapter 23), and a critical judgement on the eventual suppression of paganism under Theodosius (Chapter 28). Gibbon gave an Enlightenment cast to the usual Protestant polemic against Roman Catholicism, by representing the subsequent ‘degeneracy’ of the Catholic Church as an assimilation of residual polytheism and pagan ‘superstition’. A later chapter (50) provides a full assessment of the ministry of Muhammad and its immediate aftermath, with judgements that are mixed but overall by no means negative (Gibbon 1998).

Mosheim sought to write ‘unpartheiischen und gründlichen’ (impartial and thorough) church history. His work was translated into English in 1765 and was widely read in the English as well as German-speaking world. He attacked historians who imposed their own value judgements on the past, but though he eschewed the traditional prejudices of his Lutheran heritage he manifested the newer prejudices of the Enlightenment in readiness to characterize religious practices he disliked as ‘irrational’, ‘superstitious’ or ‘fanatical’ (Cameron 2005: 149–52). Robertson was similarly highly critical of earlier historians. In his History of Scotland (1759) he wrote with reference to the reign of Mary Queen of Scots:

But as the same passions which inflamed parties in that age have descended to their posterity; as almost every event … has become the object of doubt or of dispute; the eager spirit of controversy soon discovered, that without some evidence more authentic and more impartial than that of such historians, none of the points in question could be decided with certainty.

(Robertson 1996a: vi)

He went on to list the original sources that he had himself consulted. For him too, however, a Protestant polemic against the pre-Reformation Church as false religion was replaced by an Enlightenment characterization of it as bigoted, superstitious and illiberal (Robertson 1996a: vol. 1, 145–57). He also retained a strong sense of underlying divine providential purpose in the unfolding of human history and the progress of Christian civilization (Robertson 1996a: vol. 1, lix). In paradoxical contrast to his sceptical friend David Hume, Robertson emphasized the political rather than religious character of the Reformation, whereas Hume in his History of England (1754–9) portrayed it as a religious movement, whose very excesses were an implicit argument against religion itself (Fearnley-Sander 1990: 331).