Taxonomy of Religions

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Taxonomy of Religions

• Flow Charts to Believe In!

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TAXONOMY OF RELIGIONS Taxonomy the science or
technique of classification To perform taxonomy,
one must develop a variety of categories, which
function as vectors of classification
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Vectors of Religious Taxonomy

• Distance between Sacred and Human Realms
• Number of Deities
• Philosophic Cosmology
• Scope of Membership and Recruitment
• Social Organization (Basic Types)
• Social Identities and Locations (class, race,
  status, gender, education, etc.)
• Types of Practices and Modes of Knowledge
  (literate/oral, legal/mystic, ritual/philosophy)

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Micro- and Macro-Levels

• Religion functions at the level of organizing
  daily existence (micro), through such mechanisms
  as formulating codes of behavior, marking
  life-cycle events with rituals, and dictating
  community norms.
• Religion also functions at a larger ideological
  level by providing a framework for meaning,
  determining what is significant and what is
  inconsequential.

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SIGNIFICANCE

• The word significance is related to sign
• Religious world-views recognize life-cycle events
  as significant (birth, death, war, illness,
  coming-of-age, etc.)
• Each religious world-view also accords unique
  significance to persons/events/places that would
  not be immediately understood as significant -
  these instances of created significance form
  incommensurate differences between religions
• Examples who Jesus is to Christians, what Mecca
  means to Muslims, what Mt. Tamalpais means to
  Coast Miwok, etc.

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Hierophany

• Word derived from hieros sacred, phanos to
  see, know
• Means any manifestation of the sacred
• Grand hierophany defies our perceived rules of
  nature (i.e. a miracle)
• Intimate hierophany is a deeply-felt experience
  with cosmological dimensions and insights

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Hierophanies reveal the universe
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Cosmology

• In religious studies terms, all religions are
  socially-constructed cosmologies. A cosmology
  interprets the universe by providing organizing
  principles. These principles distinguish between
  what is significant and what is considered
  unimportant, accidental, or inconsequential.
• Astronomers, physicists, and philosophers also
  use cosmology, but do so in a less
  socially-constructed and behavior-motivating
  manner than religions. The use of the term in
  these fields is more descriptive than
  prescriptive. In religion, cosmologies often
  lead to normative regulation

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Examples of Cosmological Organizing Principles

• Afterlife
• Justice, Balance
• Hierarchy
• Stasis and Motion (Being and Becoming)
• God/desses, Supernatural Beings
• Distance between Humans and Gods
• Status of Animals and Nature
• Conflict or Harmony (War and Peace)
• Gender, Sex, Sexuality

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Four Basic Types of Human Social Organization

• TYPE
• Gathering/Hunting
• Nomadic Raiding
• Small-scale Agricultural (Villages)
• Urban (Large-scale Agricultural)

• SOCIAL EFFECTS
• Relative equality and little job specialization
• Preference to young, male, physically able
• Relative equality and little job specialization
• Hierarchic, increasing job specialization

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Religious Cosmologies and Social Organization

• Religion makes cosmologies real when it builds
  institutions, articulates codes of behavior, and
  sets social expectations.
• Religion thus establishes authority.
• Authority and social institutions seek to
  maintain the existing social order, rather than
  change it they are inherently conservative,
  meaning both that they conserve what exists and
  that they have a political bias toward
  maintaining traditional ways.

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Religious Cosmologies and Social Organization

• "Religion legitimates so effectively because it
  relates the precarious reality constructions of
  empirical societies with ultimate reality" -
  Peter Berger in The Sacred Canopy
• Meaning religion assures us that our form of
  social organization has divine sanction. But,
  the moment one begins to reflect comparatively,
  this assurance is under assault!

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Hierarchy

• Word literally means government by those who are
  closer to, or have access to, the sacred.
• The religious basis for authority of all kinds
  (political, military, familial, etc.) is deeply
  rooted - watch for examples in our current
  politics, despite the USA being an officially
  secular nation.

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Centralized Authority

• While all religions have authoritative figures
  and stories/writings, some religions have a
  tendency to centralize that authority, usually in
  a pyramidal manner.
• The Catholic Church, with a strict hierarchy of
  officials culminating in the Pope, is an example
  of centralized religious authority.
• Ancient city-states, from Egypt to Mexico to
  Mesopotamia, literally organized their societies
  around such centralized authority, both religious
  and political.

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Pyramidal Hierarchic StructureCatholic Church
as Example
Pope
Cardinals
Archbishops
Bishops
Priests
With each ascending layer, there are fewer people
in the category.
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Decentralized Authority

• Hinduism has multiple centers and sources of
  authority. As a result, it cannot, and does not,
  impose universal agreement in its communities, or
  in its belief system.
• Hinduism is, thus, polycentric, which means
  having many centers. This matches its
  polytheism.
• Catholicism, by contrast, is monocentric, which
  means it has one center. This corresponds to
  that faiths monotheism, cosmologically.

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Religion and Community

• Because religion marks many life-cycle moments
  (birth, death, illness, etc.), religion functions
  as a major way of experiencing community.
• Exclusive religions insist that you can only
  belong to one religion at a time the
  monotheistic religions are insistent on this
  point.
• Inclusive religions allow for participation in
  multiple systems.

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Inclusive Religion in Asia

• Religious communities in extensive areas of Asia,
  including India, China, and Japan, have most
  often allowed, and even encouraged, inclusive
  religious practices and the participation of
  people in more than one religious system.
• For instance, in Japan, it is common for people
  to go to Shinto shrines for New Years Day
  celebrations, to Buddhist temples to ask
  forgiveness for their failings on New Years Eve,
  and to a Christian Church for a wedding.

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Politics and Religion

• If politics concerns the organization of society,
  then its alliance with religion is a natural one.
• Because religions are cohesive, organized
  interpretations of the meaning, significance, and
  structure of the universe, politics can be seen
  (and has been seen in many traditional societies)
  as a subset of religion, a micro-level of human
  organization which should reflect the macro-level
  of divine/sacred cosmology.
• Religious hierarchies and political hierarchies,
  while often separate, have also often been
  mutually reinforcing.
• Religious and political leaders can often
  enhance, or add luster to, each others authority.

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Five Heuristic Relationships Between the Sacred
and the Human

• Transcendent the sacred is much more powerful
  than we are, it is separate from us, and it is,
  at best, apathetic toward us
• Interventionary the sacred is much more powerful
  than we are, it is separate from us, and it is
  deeply concerned with us. This concern leads to
  its intervention on our behalf in the form of
  revelation or direct contact
• Overlapping the sacred realm and the human realm
  overlap in some places/people, in other ways the
  sacred extends beyond our knowing, and there are
  also areas in the human realm which are
  dangerously void of sacrality
• Immanent/Pantheism the sacred realm and the
  human realm are co-terminous with each other
  everything is sacred
• Panentheism the sacred realm entirely contains
  the human realm, but the sacred realm is much
  larger than the human realm.

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Five Heuristic Relationships Between the Sacred
and the Human

• Transcendent
• Interventionary
• Overlapping
• Immanent/Pantheism
• Panentheism

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Number of Deities

• Monotheism - a religious system which postulates
  that there is a single deity. Normally it is
  understood that this deity is a universal deity,
  whose acts and judgments affect the entire world,
  not just those who worship this deity.
• Polytheism - a religious system which has a
  multitude of deities, related to one another in a
  pantheon. These deities can be understood as
  universal or local, depending on the philosophic
  outlook of the religious system.
• Kathenotheism - a special case of polytheism,
  loosely translated as "one-god-at-a-time-ism."
  Here the deities' heirarchic relation to each
  other is fluid, as the god or goddess who is
  being invoked or prayed to at a given moment is
  given precedence and supremacy over all others at
  that time. Also called Henotheism.
• Pantheism - means "all-is-god" a religious
  system which postulates a one-to-one unity
  between sacred being/deity/deities and the
  universe.
• Panentheism - the understanding that the universe
  is a partial manifestation in unity with the
  sacred being/deity/deities. The name loosely
  means "all-is-god-and-god-is-more."
• Transtheism - a system which includes deities,
  but maintains that they are not ultimate. For
  example, in Jainism and Mahayana Buddhism the
  existence of deities is acknowledged, but human
  beings can transcend these deities by reaching
  various forms of enlightenment.
• atheism - no deity (atheism ? no religion there
  are forms of Buddhism and Ethical Culture which
  are religions without deities)

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Philosophic Categories of CosmologyHow Many
Things Are Therein the Universe?Possible
Answers Are1 Monism, gt 2 Pluralism2 that
oppose each other Dualism2 Ends of a Continuum
Complimentary
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Philosophic Categories of Cosmology

• Monism - belief/theory that there is a
  fundamental unity to the substance, energy,
  and/or structure of the universe. Synonyms
  include "singularism" and "henism" ("hen" is a
  Greek root meaning 'one' - it is also present in
  the words "kathenotheism" and "panenhenic")
• Pluralism - belief/theory that there is a
  thorough-going diversity of substances, energies,
  and/or structures in the universe
• Dualism - belief/theory that there are two
  fundamentally irreconcilable, polarized
  oppositional structures in the universe
• Complimentarity - belief/theory which understands
  seeming opposites in a unified way, as two sides
  of the same coin, as equally necessary and
  characteristic of the nature of reality. Also
  called duality.

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Continuum and Oppositional Logics

• Complimentarity is also sometimes called
  duality. Complimentary systems understand the
  coexistence of life/death as paradoxical, as part
  of a continuum, and/or as transformative.
• Nirguna/Saguna operate in a complimentary
  manner.
• Dualism and Complimentarity take oppositional and
  continuum approaches to reality, respectively.
  Dualism is best known as a good v. evil
  cosmology. No reconciliation is possible one
  must defeat the other. Complimentarity looks for
  reconciliation and dialectic relation, as in the
  relation between light and dark.

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Dualism and DualityA playful way of illustrating
it!

• Dualism assumes a Duality assumes a
• Battle - its Hot vs. Relation
  hot and cold
• Cold, and only one can are relative
  concepts,
• win choose wisely! that define
  each other.

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Monism Monotheism

• Monism and monotheism are not identical. This is
  because monism is about underlying unity more
  than it is about singularity.
• from Eck, page 20 Hindu thought is most
  distinctive for its refusal to make the one and
  the many into opposites. For most, the manyness
  of the divine is not superseded by oneness.
  Rather the two are held simultaneously and are
  inextricably related.

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Nirguna

• The divine/sacred cannot be accurately described,
  and therefore all qualities (because they are
  qualifications), must be avoided, or denied
• The term literally means formless.
• Another Sanskrit term, neti, neti, meaning not
  this, not that, is also frequently used in
  philosophic descriptions of nirguna.

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Saguna

• Describing the divine/sacred is an additive
  process all that is, must be expanded
  exponentially to even begin to adequately
  describe the divine
• Flowery epithets, multiple names, grandiose
  titles, attributes and other highly positive
  qualifications are approaches to describing the
  divine through saguna

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Holding Opposites Together

• Continuum Logic is well-suited to resolving
  opposites
• Nirguna and Saguna co-exist in almost all Hindu
  philosophies
• What Eck refers to as the cultural genius of
  India is the ability to embrace diversity, so
  that diversity unites, rather than divides (page
  18)

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Siva Nataraja

• a.k.a. Dancing Siva, Siva as Lord of the Dance
• Siva holds creation (the drum enables time to
  commence) and destruction (fire) in his hands he
  moves vigorously yet maintains meditative focus.
• Siva unites opposite and disparate energies