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

76â Key approaches to the study of religions

place, such as the Garden of Eden, but that of the earliest stage of religion – any time and anywhere. Therefore even the ‘historical’ origin was as much recurrent as one-time.

The questions of recurrent origin and of function are connected, and few theories theorize about only the recurrent origin or only the function. Ordinarily, the answer to both questions is a need, which religion arises and serves to fulfill. Theories differ over what that need is. Any theories that do concentrate on only the recurrent origin or on only the function typically either attribute the origin of religion to an accident or else make the function a byproduct. Yet ‘accident’ and ‘byproduct’ really refer to the means, not the ends. Unless religion, however accidental its origin or coincidental its function, serves a need, it surely will not last and surely will not continually re-arise. Still, origin and function are distinct issues, and to argue on the basis of the sheer fulfillment of a need that religion arises in order to fulfill the need is to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

The issues of origin and function can each be divided into two parts: not only why but also how religion arises or functions. In explaining the ends of religion, theories do not thereby automatically explain the means. Some theories explain how religion arises, others how religion functions, others both, still others neither.

For example, the Victorian anthropologist E. B. Tylor (1871), who epitomizes the purportedly nineteenth-century focus on origin, roots religion in observations by ‘primitives’ of, especially, the immobility of the dead and the appearance in dreams and visions of persons residing far away. The ‘why’ of origin is an innate need to explain these observations, which trigger the need rather than implant it. The ‘how’ of origin is the processes of observation, analogy, and generalization. Independently of one another, primitive peoples the world over create religion by these means and for this end. Later stages of humanity do not re-invent religion but instead inherit it from their primitive forebears. They perpetuate religion because it continues to satisfy in them, too, the need to explain observations. Similarly, religion changes not because the need changes but because believers revise their conceptions of God. Religion gives way to science not because the need changes but because science provides a better, or at least more persuasive, means of satisfying it. The ‘why’ of function is the same as the why of origin: a need to explain observations. The ‘how’ of function is the one issue that Tylor ignores.

Truth

Most twentieth-century theorists forswear the issue of the truth of religion as beyond the ken of the social sciences. One exception is the sociologist Peter Berger, who ever since A Rumor of Angels (1969) has been prepared to use his theory to confirm the truth of religion (see Segal 1992: 6–7, 16, 117–18). Most nineteenth-century theorists were not at all reluctant to take a stand on the issue of truth. But they based their assessment on philosophical grounds, not on social scientific ones. Instead of enlisting the origin and function of religion to assess the truth of religion, they assessed the truth on an independent basis and, if anything, let their conclusion about it guide their theorizing about origin and function (see Segal 1992: 15–17). They thereby circumvented the possibility of committing either the genetic fallacy or what I call the functionalist fallacy: arguing that either the origin or the function of religion refutes – necessarily refutes – the truth of it. But Sigmund Freud, in The Future of an Illusion (1964 [1961]), did offer a way of using the origin of religion to argue against the truth of religion without committing the genetic fallacy (see Segal 1989: ch. 7). And the philosopher and psychologist William James tried to use the function, or effect, of religious mysticism to

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argue for the truth of religious mysticism without committing the functionalist fallacy (see Segal 2005).

Theories from religious studies

The key divide in theories of religion is between those theories that hail from the social sciences and those that hail from religious studies itself. Social scientific theories deem the origin and function of religion nonreligious. The need that religion arises to fulfill can be for almost anything. It can be either physical – for example, for food, health, or prosperity – or intangible – for example, for explanation, as for Tylor, or for meaningfulness, as in the highest stage of religion for Max Weber. The need can be on the part of individuals or on the part of society. In fulfilling the need, religion provides the means to a secular end.

By contrast, theories from religious studies deem the origin and function of religion distinctively religious: the need that religion arises to fulfill is for the experience of God. There really is but one theory of religion from religious studies. Adherents to it include F. Max Müller, C. P. Tiele, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Raffaele Pettazzoni, Joachim Wach, and Mircea Eliade.1 For all of these ‘religionists,’ religion arises to provide contact with God. Like many social scientists, many religionists confine themselves to the issues of origin and function and shy away from the issue of truth. Just as social scientists entrust the issue of truth to philosophers, so religionists entrust it to theologians.

For religionists, human beings need contact with God as an end in itself: they need contact with God because they need contact with God. To ask why humans need that contact is to miss the point. An encounter with God may yield peace of mind and other beneficial byproducts, but the need is still for the encounter itself. The need is considered as fundamental as the need for food or water. Without the contact, humans may not die, but they will languish. Because the need is for God, nothing secular can substitute for religion. There may be secular, or seemingly secular, expressions of religion, but there are no secular substitutes for religion. Religionists consider the need for God not only distinctive but also universal. To demonstrate its universality, they point to the presence of religion even among professedly atheistic moderns.

Strictly speaking, there are two versions of the one religionist theory. One is the form just described: religion originates within human beings, who seek contact with God. The exemplar of this form is Eliade, who stresses the yearning for God or, so he prefers, the sacred: ‘But since religious man cannot live except in an atmosphere impregnated with the sacred, we must expect to find a large number of techniques for consecrating space’ (Eliade 1968: 28). Sacred places, or spaces, are one venue for encountering God. Religious sites, such as churches and mosques, are built on those spots where God is believed to have appeared – the assumption being that wherever God has once appeared, that God, even if formally omnipresent, is more likely to appear anew. Sacred times, or time, is the other venue for encountering God. Myths, which describe the creation by God of physical and social phenomena, carry one back to the time of creation, when, it is believed, God was closer at hand than God has been ever since: ‘Now, what took place “in the beginning” was this: the divine or semidivine beings were active on earth… Man desires to recover the active presence of the Gods … [T]he mythical time whose reactualization is periodically attempted is a time sanctified by the divine presence …’ (Eliade 1968: 92).

This version of the religionist theory bypasses the issue of the existence of God. The theory is committed to the existence of only the need for God, not to the existence of God. The

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effusively are Mary Douglas (1966, 1973), Victor Turner (1967, 1968), Clifford Geertz (1973, 1983), Robert Bellah (1970), Peter Berger (1967, 1969), and Erik Erikson (1958, 1969). These social scientists are pitted against classical ones like Tylor (1871), Frazer (1922), Durkheim (1965), Malinowski (1925), Freud (1950), Jung (1938), and Marx (1957).

What is the difference between classical and contemporary social scientists? The difference cannot be over the importance of religion. Classical social scientists considered religion at least as important a phenomenon as any of their contemporary counterparts do. The power of religion is what impelled them to theorize about it. Similarly, the difference cannot be over the utility of religion. While for Frazer, Freud, and Marx, religion is incontestably harmful, for Tylor, Jung, and Durkheim it is most helpful. For these three, religion is one of the best and, for Durkheim, the best means of serving its beneficial functions. Contemporary social scientists grant religion no greater due.

The difference between contemporary and classical social scientists must be over the nature of the function that religion serves. In contrast to classical theorists, for whom the functions of religion are nonreligious, contemporary theorists purportedly take the function of religion to be religious. But do they? Where religionists attribute religion to a yearning for God, contemporary social scientists attribute it to a yearning for, most often, a meaningful life. Contact with God may be one of the best means of providing meaningfulness, but even if it were the sole means, it would still be a means to a nonreligious end. For Douglas, humans need cognitive meaningfulness: they need to organize their experiences. For Turner, Geertz, Bellah, Berger, and Erikson, humans need existential meaningfulness: they need to explain, endure, or justify their experiences. Existential meaningfulness as the function of religion is not even new and goes back to at least Weber, who, to be sure, limits the need for meaningfulness to the ‘higher’ religions (see Weber 1963: Chapters 8–13). But even if this function were new, the need would remain secular. In short, the divide between social scientific theories of religion and the religionist theory remains (see Segal 1989: Chapter 4).

The religionist argument

What is the case for the religionist theory? The case tends to be presented negatively. It appeals to the inadequacy of social scientific theories, which should properly include contemporary theories. All social scientific theories are supposedly inadequate because in deeming the origin and function of religion nonreligious, they necessarily miss the religious nature of religion. Only the religionist theory captures the religious nature of religion.

In actuality, social scientific theories do not miss the religious nature of religion. On the contrary, it is what they mean by religion. The religious nature of religion is the starting point of their theorizing. It is the datum to be theorized about. Far from somehow failing to perceive that adherents pray to God, sacrifice to God, and kill others in the name of God, social scientists take for granted that adherents do so. The question for social scientists is why they do so. The religious nature of religion is the starting point of theorizing. It is not the end point. If social scientists somehow missed, let alone denied, that Christians go to church, sing hymns, take sacraments, read the Bible, and devote their lives to God, and do all of these things because they believe in God, they would be left with nothing to explain. Religiosity, far from being overlooked, is the preoccupation of social scientists.

Against social scientists and others, religionist Eliade, in a famous passage, declares that ‘a religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped as it own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such a

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phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other is false’ (Eliade 1963, p. xiii). But Eliade conflates description with explanation, not to mention description with metaphysics (essence). No social scientist fails to recognize religion as religion. That is why there exists the anthropology of religion, the sociology of religion, the psychology of religion, and the economics of religion. There would be no social scientific theories of religion if the distinctiveness of religion went unrecognized. But the recognition of religion as religion does not mean the explanation of religion as religion.

It is as believers in God that Christians go to church, but it is also, for example, as members of a group that they do so. While acknowledging the difference between a religious group and a team, a family, or a gang, sociologists explain religion in the same way that they explain a team, a family, and a gang: as a group.

At the same time no sociological account of religion can be exhaustive. There is a point at which any sociological account must cease – the point at which a religious group differs from any other kind of group. But to acknowledge a stopping point for sociology is not to dismiss a sociological approach. Sociology can account for religion to whatever extent religion does constitute a group. How fully religion constitutes a group, it is up to sociologists to establish. The more group-like they show religion to be, the more successful their account. Sociologists are to be commended, not condemned, for attempting to account as fully as possible for religion sociologically. Their inevitable inability to account for it entirely sociologically marks the limit, not the failure, of the sociology of religion.

Religionists would reply that the attempt to ‘sociologize’ is inherently futile, for the origin and function of religion can only be religious. Otherwise religion ceases to be religion and becomes society. But this conventional rejoinder, offered like a litany, misses the point. Nobody denies that religion consists of beliefs and practices directed toward God rather than toward the group. But Durkheim, for example, is not thereby barred from matching a believer’s experience of possession by God with an individual’s experience of participation in a group. Durkheim is not barred from asserting that the euphoria and power which individuals feel when they amass precede religious experience, parallel religious experience, and thereby account for religious experience. Participants, thinking their state of mind superhuman, attribute it to possession by God, but Durkheim attributes it to ‘possession’ by the group.

Still, Durkheim is not maintaining that religion originates exclusively through group experience. After all, the group is not itself God, just god-like. The concept of God and attendant practices must still be created.2 Durkheim offers his account of religion as a necessary but not quite a sufficient one. What must yet be accounted for is precisely the step from group to God. But to concede that there is more to an account of religion than the group is not to concede that religiosity is all there is to an account. For Durkheim, religion is to be accounted for sociologically and ‘religionistically’ – with the sociological element predominant. For all other social scientists the same is true: a predominantly sociological, anthropological, psychological, or economic account of religion must be supplemented by a religionist one.

The final religionist rejoinder is the appeal to symmetry. If the effect is religion, the cause must be religionist. There must be a match between cause and effect. A sociological cause can produce only a sociological effect. Explained sociologically, the product is the group, not religion.

This rejoinder, too, misses the point. Of course, there must be symmetry between cause and effect. Causes must be similar enough to their effects to be capable of producing them. But a sociological account of religion does not purport to account for the nonsociological