Defining Religion

To solve the problem of properly conceiving of "religion" and its relation to other social institutions, it is first necessary to break down social life in general into its constituent elements. These are: interpretive frameworks (systematic ways of organizing and perceiving reality), practices (including habits, techniques, and ritualized behavior), discourse (particular ways of using language), relationships, and artifacts. All of these things are absolutely necessary for mutual understanding and the coordination of collective ends. Without any of these things society would not be possible.

Now, interpretive frameworks include what we understand as "belief" and "morality"; practice includes public and private ritual; discourse includes liturgy, prayer, scripture, symbols, and "religious language"; relationships often involve hierarchy and authority; and artifacts include what are deemed sacred objects, relics, churches and cathedrals, vestiments, books, and so on. The question then becomes, what quality makes any of these things particularly or essentially "religious," as opposed to "normal" or "secular"? What makes them special?

The answer is nothing. Religion does not have an essence and nothing is in its essence religious. Religion is, rather, a social construction, and as I mentioned in a previous post, the concept of "religion" as we know it today was a product of the social processes and institutional rearrangements that resulted in the modern world order. In some sense (and running the risk of sounding functionalist), the concept of "religion" was needed to create space for new institutions and domains of authority (the state, science, capitalist enterprises: the trinity of the capitalist mode of production) that were independent of previous relations of power. And, to some degree, elements that were associated with these older power structures were reformulated as "religion": an entity that could be separated from public life as it was organized by the state and capitalism.

To the extent that this explains the emergence of the concept of "religion," it is interesting to note the complementarity in the definition of religion and modern social institutions. For example, as it is differentiated from the domain of science, religion takes the form of a set of propositional beliefs, primarily concerning the existence of various beings and states (and the notion of "existence" and "being" is exactly that which underpins the positivist philosophy of science). The thing that separates this new concept of "religion" from science is that science is concerned with the existence of "natural" beings and states (and remember how instrumental the construction of "nature" is to state formation), while the beings and states affirmed by religion are "supernatural."

Digression. Just as the concept of "nature" emerged around the time of the Enlightenment, so too did "supernatural," as its complement. The hypothetical alien who visits earth might wonder, isn't reality, reality? Certainly, for some people a spirit might be just as real as a tree. So why isn't it "natural"? But that is just the point. The concept of "supernatural" is in itself a judgement about the reality of that to which it applies. In a sense, it is the imposition of a perspective that already presumes what entities are and are not contained in the universe. And just as there is nothing essential about religion, there is nothing essential about the supernatural. Invisibility and immateriality, for example, are not exclusive properties of the "supernatural"- they apply equal well to certain elements of the "natural." Furthermore, a thing can belong to the realm of "nature" even if there is no evidence for its existence; usually the "thing" in question arises from logical or mathematical deduction. But that means that what are usually given as the defining characteristics of the "supernatural" (invisibility, intangibility, lack of evidence) can also apply to the "natural." Which is only to say, once again, that these two categories are historically contingent social constructions and not distinct essences. I make no claims about whether the existence of a superstring is just as likely as a god, because that is missing the point entirely. End of digression.

Politics and religion are also defined in a complementary way, using the common grammar of the individual subject. Religion is ideally contained in the "private" realm, compartmentalized within an individual's life, while the civic dimension - the individual as the citizen - takes precedence in the constitution of one's identity. Of course, as I mentioned before, the religious idea of the "sacred man" with divinely bestowed rights forms the foundation of the "citizen." In this way, religion never was and could never be relegated completely to the "private." Still, it is interesting to note that the phenomenon of nationalism contains many of the same elements attributed to religion: particularly the symbols, rituals, pageantry, use of the senses and emotions, relics and monuments, "scripture" (like constitutions), and appeal to authority (founding fathers) and interpretation thereof. Yet, nationalism is not a religion, and that is not because of any essential differences between the two. It is due to their differential historical positions and relations to the state and other modern institutions.

What these complementarities (between religion and science and religion and politics) demonstrate is that, not only were certain aspects of the old social order brought together under the category of "religion," but all of the things so labeled were also reformulated on new terrain and brought into complex relationships with the emerging domains of authority associated with "modernity." Thus, it would be wrong to conclude that everything belonging to "religion" is some sort of "survival" or hold over from the past. Because it has transformed and integrated itself into the modern world, it is simultaneously new and modern as well.

So how would I define "religion"? Perhaps as a historically emergent category that contains a teleology and a vector of change, and as a concept that is created by modern institutions even while it supports and makes possible these very institutions by articulating a dimension of human subjectivity that is employed in modern power relations. Or, it is the necessary element of "modernity" that is not considered modern.