{"id":1330,"date":"2008-05-23T22:40:01","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T03:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1330"},"modified":"2008-05-23T22:40:01","modified_gmt":"2008-05-24T03:40:01","slug":"an-alternate-definition-of-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1330","title":{"rendered":"An alternate definition of religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazingly enough, the battle between the atheists and the theists is still going strong. Someday, perhaps the atheists will realize that all they are doing is playing the Christian game, by letting the dominant Christian tradition define what religion is. So here’s an alternate definition of religion, from the introduction to The Twenty-first Century Confronts Its Gods: Globalization, Technology, and War<\/em>, a collection of scholarly essays edited by David J. Hawkin (SUNY Press, 2004):<\/p>\n

It is difficult to define what religion is. It seems easy enough at first: most would say that religion entails belief in a god or gods, involves ritual and worship, and has a system of beliefs…. Yet this definition does not include, for example, Theravada Buddhism, which does not have a transcendental being in its belief system. Nor does this definition reflect that in popular usage the term “religion” is used very broadly (as in, for example, references to New Age “religion”). Paul Tillich recognized this when, in Dynamics of Faith<\/em>, he defined religion as being grasped by an “ultimate concern.” What Tillich meant was that for most people all other concerns are preliminary to a main concern that supplies the answer tot he question, “What is the meaning of my life?” What makes this primary concern religious is that it is the primary motivating concern of one’s life: it makes an absolute demand on one’s allegiance and promises ultimate fulfillment. Using this definition, we may distinguish three types of religion. First, theistic religions<\/em>, in which the object of ultimate concern is a transcendental being (as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Second, non-theistic religions<\/em>, in which the object of ultimate concern is some higher principle or abstract power (as in Theravada Buddhism and some types of Hinduism). Third, secular<\/em> or quasi-religions, where the object of ultimate concern is such that it resembles theistic or non-theistic religions. What the person holds as ultimate concern gives that person’s belief a character (often unintentional) similar to that found in more traditional religions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure that my own faith community, Unitarian Universalism, fits neatly into this broad-brush typology of religions, since we have both theists and non-theists. You could argue that what holds Unitarian Universalism together (if indeed something is holding us together) is a higher principle, thus plunking us into the category of non-theistic religions. I’d be more likely to argue for a fourth category that mixes theistic and non-theistic approaches to religion. In any case, the real point is that the atheist\/theist debates only work within the context of the first type of religion, the theistic religions; and we’re not a theistic religion; therefore the atheist\/theist debate is a waste of time within Unitarian Universalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazingly enough, the battle between the atheists and the theists is still going strong. Someday, perhaps the atheists will realize that all they are doing is playing the Christian game, by letting the dominant Christian tradition define what religion is. So here’s an alternate definition of religion, from the introduction to The Twenty-first Century Confronts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}