Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters

by Christian Smith

Overview

A groundbreaking new theory of religion

Religion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book advances an innovative theory of religion that goes beyond the problematic theoretical paradigms of the past. Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and personalist social theory, Christian Smith explores why humans are religious in the first place—uniquely so as a species—and offers an account of secularization and religious innovation and persistence that breaks the logjam in which religious scholarship has been stuck for so long. Certain to stimulate debate and inspire promising new avenues of scholarship, Religion features a wealth of illustrations and examples that help to make its concepts accessible to readers. This superbly written book brings sound theoretical thinking to a perennially thorny subject, and a new vitality and focus to its study.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691191645
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	838,029
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and was founding director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. His books include To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

What Is Religion?

Come, Agni, praised with song, to feast and sacrificial offering:
— HINDU SCRIPTURE, SAMA VEDA (1:1:1:1,5–7,10)

Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
— CHRISTIAN HYMN, ISAAC WATTS (1719)

The first step to understanding religion is identifying what religion is. What are we even talking about? Scholars have long argued over many rival definitions of religion. Some have given up trying to define it. Others have decided that religion does not even exist "out there" to be studied and understood, but is only a modern, Western invention imposed on the world for political and religious purposes. I think, on the contrary, that religion is a real, distinctive, and enduring part of human life, and that we can describe its nature in specific terms.

To properly identify what religion is, however, we need to do three things. First, we must turn our attention away from various debated concepts of religion and focus instead on the reality of religion as it is found in actual human lives and societies. Our initial point of reference needs to be not the many different ways one can think about religion, but the concrete realities of religions in the world that we are trying to think about. Second, we need to put on hold our interest in the ideas and beliefs of religious people, and concentrate on their religious practices, that is, on repeated, religiously meaningful behaviors. The common bias toward an "intellectualist" view of religion needs to be corrected with a primary focus instead on people's reiterated actions. Third, we must do more than ponder the various arguments for and against different views of religion. We also need to make rational judgments about which approaches seem better and so deserve our assent. We need to choose between the best alternatives and move the discussion forward.

What, then, is religion? Religion is a complex of culturally prescribed practices, based on premises about the existence and nature of superhuman powers, whether personal or impersonal, which seek to help practitioners gain access to and communicate or align themselves with these powers, in hopes of realizing human goods and avoiding things bad. The most common of these hopes is to avert misfortunes and receive blessings and deliverance from crises of many kinds; but other, more "spiritual" other-worldly, and sometimes sublime goods and bads are also often part of religious concerns. This definition of religion includes all the concepts that need to be included and avoids all the "accidentals" that ought to be excluded. It is specific and precise where it needs to be, yet also general and inclusive where needed. Let us unpack its meaning, phrase by phrase.

Superhuman powers is the pivotal idea in this definition. "Superhuman" here means that these powers are (believed to be) able to influence or control significant parts of reality that are usually beyond direct human intervention. That is why humans need their help. Normally these superhuman powers are also not directly observable by human senses. Their sphere of influence may concern personal experiences, human social life, the natural environment, and life after death. Superhuman powers can make happen things that human powers cannot, at least in some situations — that is what makes them superhuman. This emphasis on power, on capacities to make things happen or prevent them from happening, is central to the reasons humans have for producing religion.

A second defining feature of "superhuman powers" is that — according to the religious communities that take their existence and nature as premises — they are not human creations. Part of the very superhuman-ness of these religious powers is that they are (believed to be) not dependent upon human invention, activity, or production to exist. People may need to feed, please, or replenish the superhuman powers, but they do not create them. This feature is crucial for distinguishing the superhuman powers that define religion from other types of superhuman powers that emerge from human activity but that are not religious. Examples of the latter — which I will call humanly emergent superhuman powers — include the Internet, global capitalist markets ("the invisible hand"), and state institutions. These (and nearly every complex human social institution) are "able to influence or control significant parts of reality in ways that are usually beyond direct human intervention"; they possess superhuman powers to exert forces of downward causation on human persons. Humans also engage in various practices to try to access and realize goods from these powers. But the key difference is that they are the products of human design and activity, and so are not powerful in the way that religious superhuman powers are.

This definition purposefully avoids the ideas supernatural, transcendent, ultimate, God, gods, spirits, higher beings, holy, numinous, ultimate concern, and the sacred, for good reason. Debates about defining religion have taught us that none of these terms are adequate. For example, the idea of "the supernatural" presupposes a distinction between the natural and supernatural; yet some religions do not believe in anything supernatural but instead understand everything in existence as belonging to nature, with even superhuman powers belonging to the natural order of things. A similar problem compromises the idea that religion concerns the "transcendent," since many human religions have conceived their superhuman powers, the spirits of trees and streams, for instance, as immanent to this reality, not transcending it. Likewise, the idea that religion is about "ultimate" realities or concerns does not work, since many religions are concerned in part — and some are almost wholly concerned — with this-worldly, even mundane issues, like fertile crops and healing sickness, not ultimate things like eternity or "the meaning of life." God, gods, spirits, and beings are a problem because, again, not all religions believe in a God, gods, spirits, or higher beings. The notion of "the sacred" also fails to demarcate religious things for three reasons: Many things that some people treat as sacred (the nation, golf, shopping, etc.) cannot reasonably be considered religious, not all aspects of all religions are viewed as sacred, and the conceptual opposite of sacred is not secular or non-religious but profane. Human cultures always involve sacred things, but those things are not always religious. Among all the possible concepts available to define religion, only one captures the crucial feature of all religions, and that is the idea of superhuman powers.

The phrase "whether personal or impersonal" means that the superhuman powers in any given religion may or may not be believed to possess things like consciousness, thoughts, desires, intentions, and feelings. Some superhuman powers may be God, gods, spirits, sprites, ghosts, or demons with properties analogous to those of human persons, such as mind, will, and emotions. But others may be non-conscious forces, energies, or dynamisms, such as a common view of Hinduism's Brahman, which some humans believe they can tap or align themselves with through religious practices. What kind of causal capacities do impersonal powers possess? Karma, for instance, exercises the inexorable force of causing all actions to be followed by their fitting consequences. The Tao, in some views, is a natural principle, essence, flow, or energy that, when properly known and followed, results in harmony, liberation, and happiness. Dharma operates similarly for many. Which kinds of superhuman powers religious practitioners seek to access, whether personal or impersonal, depends on what their practices assume about them.

Religion consists in part of a complex of culturally prescribed practices. "Practices" are culturally meaningful behaviors that are intentionally repeated over time, such as making yearly offerings to the spirits of one's ancestors or praying every night before going to sleep. All four of those elements — meaning, behavior, intentionality, and repetition — must be present in the activity (though not necessarily in the mind of the practitioner, as I suggest below) to count as a genuine practice. One person's mindless behavioral habit, such as repeatedly scratching his chin, is not a true practice by this account, since it is not culturally prescribed, is hardly intentional, and has no broader cultural meaning.

Religions are formed from networks of practices grouped together into complexes. A single practice does not make a religion. One does not simply burn some incense or read the passage of a text and thereby have a religion. Religions are composed of conglomerations of interrelated practices, sometimes so many that it takes a lifetime to learn to perform them well. Each of the practices has its own meaning, and each usually adds extra meaning to the others in the larger complex of practices to which they belong. Take a simple example: Folding one's hands for prayer and speaking the words of a prayer are distinct religious practices, neither of which absolutely requires the other. But when they are combined, each enriches the meaning of the other: The folded hands enact a reverence that is appropriate to the prayer and the prayer provides an expressive purpose with content for the folded hands. The combined meaning is more than the sum of its parts. Complexes of religious practices, which are part of even the simplest of religions, thus generate synergies and experiences that individual practices alone do not.

Practices, by this account, also need to be specified and commended by some culture or tradition. Religious practices are never random, idiosyncratic, or arbitrary. If they were, then they could not be meaningful. They would simply be the strange doings of odd people. Religious practices are always culturally prescribed. The stipulations may cover which practices to perform; how to perform them correctly; and when, where, and in what situations to perform them. Often only certain people — shamans, mediums, priests, ordained clergy, laypersons — are allowed to engage in particular practices. In addition, some religious practices are prescribed to be undertaken by individuals, some by groups, and some by entire nations or societies. Some religious practices are meant to be enacted once in a lifetime, while others are expected to be sustained over a period of time or even an entire life. Still other practices are supposed to add up to one whole, comprehensive way of life. Institutionalized cultural orders or systems thus always tell practitioners when and how to repeat the meaningful actions correctly, and who may repeat them. If a practice is not conducted properly by the right person, then it is often considered invalid and ineffective. This is why religions are almost invariably social activities — communities of memory engaged in carrying on particular traditions (figure 1.1). In fact, in the absence of inherited historical traditions, most new religious movements simply invent them as needed. Communal memory and the authority of historical tradition give religions some of their formative power, but because it is difficult to transmit practices faithfully across generations, they also make religious continuity challenging to sustain over time.

A long tradition in the sociology of religion, reflected in the theory of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, among others, has insisted on a sharp distinction between religion and magic. In this view, religion is by definition a social fact, socially constituted and practiced, and therefore requiring collective practices to exist. Magic, by contrast, is thought to be a different species of human activity, partly because it is often an asocial practice performed by individual clients for instrumental, personal reasons, rather than taking place socially as a matter of group solidarity. Making this distinction between religion and magic was necessary for Durkheim and his followers because they believed that religion is the collective representation of that which a community considers to be sacred about itself. But this distinction does not matter for us. The collective performance of practices is not an essential feature of religion, by my account; nor is Durkheim's emphasis on the sacred. Magic can and usually does involve "complexes of culturally prescribed practices" oriented toward superhuman powers, as this book's definition specifies. So, following Riesebrodt, I see no need to divorce religion and magic conceptually. When magic is practiced in ways that fit the definition of religion advanced here, then it belongs to religion.

One could never enumerate a comprehensive list of religious practices. However, it is possible to compile a list of various practices from religious traditions past and present, both common and unusual. Such a list is compiled in no particular order in table 1.1. Later I try to sort these specific practices into some major types.

Linking the practices just discussed and the superhuman powers discussed earlier is the phrase based on premises about. Practices are culturally prescribed and performed because of presuppositions about the existence and nature of superhuman powers that those practices are meant to access. If the superhuman powers were not believed to be able to influence matters of interest, their help would not be sought. The point here is simply that the imperative to perform practices references beliefs that some superhuman powers exist and have capacities for causal influence that humans can access through certain practices.

We see, then, that, while the definition of religion developed by Riesebrodt and being advanced here is clearly centered on practice, it does not overlook the importance of religious beliefs. Religious practices are based on religious premises, and premises are beliefs of a certain kind. There is no religion without some beliefs. The beliefs need not be central to religion, or to its academic study, but they cannot be excluded, either. The role of beliefs in religion is also entailed in the very notion of practices itself. Practices are culturally meaningful behaviors intentionally repeated over time. For behaviors to be culturally meaningful, some beliefs must be operative. Meaning is more than beliefs, but it always depends upon some beliefs. Belief-less meanings do not exist (even if the emotional sensations that often accompany meanings do). And so, to initiate some religious practice, some people at some time must hold some beliefs. But even beyond that, the motivation to carry out practices presupposes a purpose for them. The presupposition of religious practices specifically is some premises about the existence of some superhuman powers that those practices aim to access. Thus, some beliefs are essential to religion's constitution, even if, again, they are not central to its performance and study.

Religious practices are also not prescribed aimlessly but have a definite central purpose: They seek to help practitioners gain access to and communicate or align themselves with the postulated superhuman powers. This purpose should be broadly construed to include steps like making contact with, sustaining a relationship with, attuning oneself to, learning the will of, worshipping, attempting to manipulate, winning the attention of, honoring, pleasing, appeasing, feeding, bargaining with, and more. Which purpose is being pursued will vary by the religious tradition, the prescribed practices, and the nature of the presupposed powers. For this theory it is important to grasp that religious practices are not simply initiations of offers to make exchanges. Practices come in many forms and embody and express various modes of communication, interactions, and relations with superhuman powers. Exchange is only one of those possible modes, and in some religious traditions it is not emphasized. Religious practices in some traditions can just as well seek to foster connections to superhuman powers characterized by love and gratuitous gift-giving or pure spiritual well-being.

I intentionally include both "communicate with" and "align themselves with" in order to accommodate both religions with personal superhuman powers and those with impersonal superhuman powers. It is hard to imagine communicating with a force or power that is impersonal. Some religious traditions do not postulate personal gods or spirits, but instead affirm superhuman powers, forces, or dynamics, such as Brahman or karma. It is better to describe the practices of these religions as seeking to attune or align practitioners to or with these impersonal superhuman powers than to say they intend to "communicate" with them. For this reason, I added the phrase "align themselves with" to my definition.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface ix

Introduction 1

1 What Is Religion? 20

2 What Causal Powers Does Religion Produce? 77

3 How Does Religion Work? 135

4 Why Are Humans Religious? 190

5 What Is Religion’s Future? 234

Conclusion 261

Appendix: Research Questions 263

Index 275

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Articulate, accessible, and engaging, this book is recommended for students as well as seasoned scholars."—Roger Finke, Pennsylvania State University

"One commonly hears that ‘religion influences people.' In this deeply informed and accessible book, Christian Smith ignores the postmodern claims that religion is merely a discursive category and provides a critical realist account of what it means to speak of the causal power of a set of religious practices. The result is a social scientific theory that explains why religions continue to be powerful entities operating in the world."—Kevin Schilbrack, author of Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto

"A significant reinterpretation of religion that will be very useful to a wide range of scholars."—Ann Taves, author of Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths

"Smith uses his incredibly broad knowledge to develop a definition of religion derived from critical realist and personalist assumptions, and deploys this logic to identify the powers that religion has, how it works for people, and why people are religious in the first place. This book will take its place next to the other prominent comprehensive theories of religion."—John H. Evans, author of What Is a Human?: What the Answers Mean for Human Rights

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 2018 SSSR Distinguished Book Award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

From the Publisher

…[a] substantial, richly informed book…For Smith, the paradigmatic expression of religion is something like praying to God to cure your wife's cancer, or beseeching a cloud spirit to bring rain to your withering crops. Having surveyed religious traditions across the world and throughout history, he sees religion, at its core, as a set of "culturally prescribed practices" that aim to help people access "superhuman powers" in the hope of "realizing human goods" and avoiding bad things, typically "in conditions and situations they cannot control and with problems that they cannot solve." Smith is quick to acknowledge that this is not all religion provides, nor the sole reason people practice religion. But he maintains it is the "central" reason.

The New York Times Book Review - James Ryerson

"[A] well-argued, interdisciplinary, and richly researched book that is very likely to give a new direction to the study of religion."

Critical Research on Religion

"Written by a leading sociologist, this fascinating and important book analyses what religion is, how it works and why it matters, using an approach combining critical theory with personalist social theory. . . . [It] sheds a great deal of light on religion, its workings and influence and as such should be widely read, not simply by scholars."

Paradigm Explorers