Neutrality in the Study of Religion

The Archive is a feature of the Bulletin in which previous publications are reprinted to reinforce the modern relevance of archived arguments. “Neutrality in the Study of Religion,” originally published in 1981, comes from Dr. John H. Whittaker (1945-2019), who was the Department Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University until 2006. This article is relevant 30 years after its original publication, as it explores an ongoing debate in the field: the limits of objectivity in religious studies. Whittaker critiques a claim made by sociologist Robert Bellah in order to argue that religion can and should be taught from what he terms a “neutral” standpoint that encourages critical inquiry. The role of the scholar of religion as a researcher, observer, and teacher is one that remains contended across the field of religious studies today.

Is Religion Dead?

The rise of strident movements of religious nationalism seems to signal a resurgence of religion. But such movements can also be read as the last gasp of religiosity as it succumbs to the inevitability of secular globalization. Which is correct? Has religion revived, or is it in its death throes? Part of the issue is statistical: adherence to religion seems to be on the rise in some parts of the world (Islam in Africa, for instance), though on the decline in others (Christianity in Europe and increasingly in the United States) and under attack in China. But part of the issue is definitional: what is meant by religious adherence—social identity or metaphysical belief? Scholarly attempts to define religion are various, though an interesting new definition is provided by the late sociologist Robert Bellah, who described religion as “alternative reality.” With that definition, one can posit that religiosity is a fundamental part of the creative imagination, a constituent of culture as certain as art or music. The question then becomes not whether religion will survive, but in what way it will survive. The popular religious choice of millennials, “none,” may be consistent with the multicultural religiosity of the old Protestant liberals, a tradition now in decline. Liberal Protestants have not disappeared but have transformed into the bearers of a global morality and spiritual sensibility. Hence we may be witnessing the emergence of new forms of spirituality and ethical community that resonate with the alternative reality of traditional religious experience but that have no name and no organization. But these may become the global religion of the future.

Religion as Alternative Reality

Chapter 3 explores the notion that, like war, religion is an imagined alternative reality. The chapter begins with the remarkable success of the Left Behind novels, Evangelical Protestant novels that imagine the end of the world at the time of the rapture, when righteously saved souls are transported to heaven and the ordinary world struggles with the control of the Antichrist. Though extreme, this vision is characteristic of all religion: it presents an alternative view of reality. All religion is imagined in that they are constructions of an alternative view of reality, as the sociologist Robert Bellah has argued. Like war, religion is a response to a perception of deep disorder, though in the case of religion it is often the fear of one’s own demise, the fear of death. For this reason most religious traditions have incorporated violence and death into their rituals and images (the Christian cross is an obvious example), as a way of showing that in the religious imagination the fear of chaos is overcome and death has been defeated. As does war, religion provides an imagined scenario of chaos conquered.

How ritual might create religion: A neuropsychological exploration

Several models of the evolution of religion claim that ritual creates “religion” and gives it a positive evolutionary role. Robert Bellah suggests that the evolutionary roots of ritual lay in the play of animals. For Homo sapiens, Bellah argues, rituals generate a world of experience different from the world of everyday life, and that different world of experience is the foundation of later religious developments. Robin Dunbar points to trance dancing as the original religious behavior. Trance dancing both alters ordinary consciousness and generates trance experiences that will give rise to religious concepts and also, through the production of endorphins, bonds people into tight-knit social groups whose social bonding gives them a survival advantage. The role of ritual in social bonding has been well established through the research on the production of endorphins by synchronized activity and the role of endorphins in social bonding. The role of ritual in generating religious experience has been much less developed. Drawing on the extensive research on the ways in which bodily activity can impact and transform our sensory and cognitive processes, and the ways in which sensory and cognitive processes are neurologically connected with somatic processes, this article will propose one neuropsychological model of how ritual activity might give rise to religion. Starting from bodily activity means that here religion will be understood more as a set of practices and less as a set of beliefs. Theological implications of this model will be discussed.

TRANSCENDENDO O TEMPO E O ESPAÇO: INTERESTELAR, RELIGIÃO CIVIL NORTE-AMERICANA E A TORÇÃO DAS REGRAS DO GÊNERO DE FICÇÃO CIENTÍFICA

A religião civil, conforme delineado por Robert Bellah (1976), diz respeito a uma ferramenta discursiva mobilizada na esfera pública estadunidense. Tal conceito se estabelece alegando que o campo político dos Estados Unidos tem uma dimensão religiosa essencial para o desenvolvimento, a mudança e manutenção da vida pública desse país. O presente artigo argumenta que esse aspecto também foi significativo para a conformação dos discursos de outros campos, tais como a indústria do entretenimento e, especificamente, Hollywood. É com esse intuito que as regras do gênero de ficção científica são dissecadas e, por contraste, o filme Interestelar (Interestellar, Nolan, 2014) é analisado, compreendido como um documento a partir do qual se pode entender a disseminação da religião civil por meio de filmes.

Postures of Piety and Protest: American Civil Religion and the Politics of Kneeling in the NFL

Over the past ten years, athletes Tim Tebow and Colin Kaepernick have become famous for kneeling on the NFL football field. However, public reactions to these gestures varied significantly: Tebow’s kneeling spawned a lightly mocking but overall flattering meme, while Kaepernick’s stoked public controversy and derailed his NFL career. In order to interrogate these divergent responses, this article places the work of sociologist Robert Bellah and philosopher Michel Foucault in dialogue. It argues that spectator sports are a crucial space for the negotiation and contestation of American identity, or, in Bellah’s terms, civil religion. It then draws on philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of the docile body to explore the rationales behind and cultural reactions to the kneeling posture. I argue that Tebow and Kaepernick advance divergent civil religious visions within the “politics of the sacred” being negotiated in American life. In this process of negotiation, American football emerges as both a space for the public cultivation of docile bodies and a crucial forum for reassessing American values and practices.

The “Disenchantment of the World” or Why We Can No Longer Use the Formula as Max Weber Might Have Intended

The “disenchantment of the world” is a famous formulation of Max Weber’s, one taken up in Walter Benjamin’s “Elective Affinities” essay. This chapter analyzes Weber’s conception of disenchantment in the context of his work. Two aspects of his discussion can be distinguished: religious-historical and scientific-historical. Weber’s preference for principled consistency, for instance, in the Calvinist sects, is normally evaluated positively. But it can be shown to cloud his vision of much more complex issues, such as the problem of “meaning.” Weber identified the decisive consequences of disenchantment with a loss of meaning. But disenchantment does not eo ipso have to signify a loss of meaning in life. In this respect Weber was a child of his times, trapped in a cultural context characterized by a newly established Christianity born from the failed revolutions of 1848, as well as by the process of industrialization. A role was also played by Nietzsche’s widespread influence. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Weber’s conception of disenchantment in relation to the contrasting views of Benjamin and Robert Bellah.

Why the Covenant Worked: On the Institutional Foundations of the American Civil Religion

Scholars of American civil religion (ACR) have paid insufficient attention to the micro-level processes through which civil religious ideas have historically influenced beliefs and behavior. We know little about what makes such appeals meaningful to average Americans (assuming they are meaningful); nor do we know much about the mechanisms through which abstract religious themes and imagery come to be associated with specific policy aims, or what Robert Bellah called “national goals.” This article argues that a renewed focus on the relationship between civil religion and organized religion can help fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, I draw attention to three mainline Protestant institutions that for much of the twentieth-century were instrumental both in cultivating respect for the national civic faith and in connecting its abstract ideals to concrete reform programs: namely, the clergy, the state and local church councils, and the policy-oriented departments of the National Council of Churches (NCC). Finally, I argue that a fresh look at the relationship between civil religion and “church religion” sheds new light on the (arguably) diminished role of civil religious appeals in the present. If, as Bellah claimed in his later writings, ACR appeals have lost much of their power to motivate support for shared national goals, it is at least in part because the formal religious networks through which they once were transmitted and interpreted have largely collapsed.