Christian Smith on the Power of Religion

Thank You Gregor thank you for the Chicago humanities festival for inviting me to this I'm very pleased to be here and most of all I'm honored that you all have come out to hear what I have to say this afternoon so thank you I hope what I have to present is interesting to you and valuable for you and living your life and thinking about how the world works so as we've heard here the theme of the festival is power and one of the powers in the world today as we all know is religion so that's what I want to focus on and talk about here the power of religion now up until the mid to late 1970s thinking about religion and academia and in the world in general was was the following most thinkers expected religion to decline and perhaps die out as societies modernized meaning the more modern a society becomes the less religious it becomes the theory describing this in academia is called secularization theory the more modern the more secular well if anything happened on the way to secular society and that is a major religious resurgence in the late 1970s and through the 80s which hasn't stopped since then now it's just the religion was always there it's not like it went away and then came back but it's public face the public expression of religion really all over the world a whole series of events showed people who believed in secularization theory they were basically wrong or they weren't entirely right so what were some of these events many of you in this audience I'm sure can remember these but thinking about some of these faces we're talking about everything from Jerry Falwell and the emergence of the Christian Right in South Africa was an anti-apartheid movement in the 80s led by many religious figures it wasn't a secular movement it had secular dimensions but many religious leaders are involved in this the ayatollah khomeini in in Iran overthrew and the late Jimmy Carter era secular Shah of Iran and replaced it with a an Islamic Republic which the United States is still wrestling with every single day now how to deal with and respond to in the late 70s a Polish Pope was elected John Paul the second and played a significant role in what was eventually to become the the falling apart of the Soviet Union confronting first of all helping to confront with through the Solidarity movement in it which was a very religiously infused movement is very Roman Catholic ly infused movement solidarity confronting the communist government in Poland and then totally other continents in Latin America we had a progressive Church if you've heard of liberation theology throughout Latin America in the 70s most of the governments when it became authoritarian became dictatorships and and there was a massive violation of human rights in Latin America all of the institutions of Latin American society that could have resisted these dictatorships were repressed were done away with except for one the church especially the Roman Catholic Church could not be totally done away with and so the church took up the role in the 70s and 80s in Latin America of of the major defender of human rights of ordinary citizens and this if you know who that is is anybody know who that is yeah as a Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who was gunned down by know by the powers that be while saying mass and and anyone know who these are yeah religious cisco flick religious sisters who were murdered in in El Salvador for being for defending the people for for sticking up for human rights and someone here we have in who knows who that is anyone Ernesto Cardenal is a Catholic priest in Nicaragua who served as the Minister of Culture and then under the Sandinistas in Nicaragua so what we see here is a whole array on lots of different sides of political spectrums of religious actors suddenly being like being geopolitically and economically and in many ways very important actors in the world and people thought religions disappearing like the dinosaurs what's all this about and then this of course continues into the 80s and Beyond where the moral majority morphed into the Christian Coalition it doesn't always have to be political here in Brazil huge spread of Protestantism in Brazil and they have hundreds of thousands of marchers every year in the sort of parade for Jesus thing going on and it doesn't have to be Christianity that Dalai Lama is a significant global player the saffron revolution Buddhist monks leading resistance against the repressive military regime in in just at less less of a global level in cities for decades now religious leaders have helped to lead resistance to chew mining of welfare programs or whatever the local situation would be a sense of hey there's something about our religion that compels us to fight on behalf of the weak the marginal the vulnerable and so on then you have here the patriarch of the Russian Catholic that the Russian Orthodox Church which since the Cline of the Soviet Union people like Putin would like to have a kind of Russian nationalism that grows closer to the church and in India we have Hinduism that has turned into a significant political party and of course we have in the world there a whole variety of forms of militant or however you want to label it but let's say militant Islam that that obviously is a major force of power and significance in the world today so where some decades ago religion would have thought to be a set of a marginal doesn't matter relevant thing since the late 70s you can hardly think of a major geopolitical issue or problem or opportunity that's going on in the world today that doesn't have some significant religious dimension if it's not a central to what's going on the religious dimension so we've had that throw secularization Theory to the side and rethink what in the world is going on here how do you explain this so I want to give you a 1-1 account of how to explain this and keep the that focus on religion in my talk today I want to in order to help understand religions power and its future I want to first define religion and then talk about why people practice religion and then talk about religions causal powers that is what can relate what does religion do in the world what powers does it have to make things happen in the world and where does that come from and then think a little tiny bit about the future of religion reminder I am a sociologist I'm not a theologian I'm not an ethicist I'm not a member of the clergy I'm a sociologist some here neither to promote nor to condemn religion my job as a scholar is to try to understand it as best as I can and to explain its role in the world so that's my position ality as I give this talk today first what are we talking about what is religion scholars have been debating definitions of religion forever it's a contentious topic among some scholars and in fact it's become so contentious that a lot of scholars have just given up on it saying we're not gonna define this thing it's impossible it's too amorphous whatever well I don't agree with that so I think I have a pretty good definition of religion here actually my definition has benefited tremendously by the thinker the thinking of Martin Rees abroad who who is a former University of Chicago Divinity School they bury in social theorists of religion so I'm very dependent upon sort of Chicago thinking he's since passed on then but he has a great book called the promise of salvation who I'm relying on a lot here so I want to give credit where credit is due Martin Rees is a really good thinker about this so what are we talking about because our explanations of religions power and religions future are driven by our conception of what we're even talking about in the first place so we need to think that through first of all unfortunately it requires a really long definition to spell this out but I'm gonna break this down piece by piece and I hope it makes sense to you so first religion is a complex of culturally prescribed practices the approach that Martin took and that I take focuses on practices a practice in this definition is a meaningful repeated behavior we humans engage in practices all the time a practice is not a one-shot thing and a practice is not something that has no meaning like just scratching the back of your head if you do that a lot that's not necessarily practice the practice has a meaning it's significant and it's repeated and it's an action that's what makes a practice of practice a lot of people have thought about religion in terms of beliefs and especially Protestants tend to think about religion in terms of beliefs you get the right beliefs you get the right Creed you believe them that's what makes religion religion this approach says more and people do have beliefs and there are beliefs running in the background but what really matters more or what practices people engage in so religion consists of a complex there's a lot of practices that are interconnected in religions of culturally prescribed meanings there's a culture or a subculture or a counterculture there's some cultural system that says that prescribes these practices prescribes basically to do this when you have a baby do that when you get married do this every Sunday do that right is life has sort of organized by a culture that says here's what you do at certain times and situations of life so that's the first part those practices that are culturally prescribed or based on premises so there are beliefs here premises about the existence in nature of what we call superhuman powers superhuman is an unfortunate term it's the very best term in terms of precision it's a problematic term because then we start thinking about spider-man and whatever but that's not what we mean here what superhuman here means is this these powers have the capacity to do things that people can't do and the second qualification is people didn't invent them and people didn't construct them so there actually are certain superhuman powers or if we think in these terms we can conceive there are certain kinds of superhuman powers that humans constructed that can do things that no individual humans can do I'm thinking about everything from the modern nation-state to the Internet to neoliberal capitalism whole host of things that are much bigger they have huge power to do all sorts of things in the world but they are the product of human constructions all right for religion the superhuman powers that the practices are oriented toward are those that have capacity to make things happen that people can't make happen and people didn't construct them people they have their own existence so to speak it makes sense one other qualification whether personal or impersonal some religions have superhuman powers that are something like persons they have consciousness they have will they might have emotions so theistic religions Allah the Holy Trinity Yahweh whatever the the deity is it has something like a personhood a personality or at least as we think analogically as persons we think well God is something like a person there has personal qualities but some religions don't have that what's involved isn't more at the superhuman power is more impersonal some but not all of these are Eastern religions but we're talking about religions that teach things like the DAO Dharma samsara I'm not going to go into defining all these Karma you probably have the something above and like take karma which you may be familiar something above and beyond and more permanent and more powerful than any individual life or even a state that can make thing that that works hit things just work a certain way you can't resist it you can't stop it it's the way things are it's a power but karma isn't a personal judge say of how you behave it's a power it's a force it's just a reality of the world so the important point here to not exclude religions that are really religions but they're superhuman powers are not personal we say the superhuman powers whether personal impersonal all right you follow so far what do those practices why do people practice them they practice them immediately because the culture prescribes them why does the culture prescribe them well those practices are basically oriented toward gaining access to and to communicate with or at least to align with to get like in touch with and on the same wavelength or in sync with these superhuman powers and that's what the practices basically do they get people who are not aligned with not in touch with not resonating with not on the same page with the superhuman powers the practice is one way or another are believed to communicate with to open the window of communication with or to get oneself on the same wavelength with the superhuman power if we just put a period there that would be a great definition of religion I add another thing because I think that this is true we could debate this it's an empirical question but why do people want to gain access to superhuman powers why do people want to communicate with superhuman powers usually if you take these things broadly it's in hopes of avoiding misfortune obtaining blessings and receiving deliverance from crisis you have to interpret this very broadly this could be your eternal destiny after you're dead I don't want to squabble about this but I think much of human religion if you study it has to do with usually it's not like even my eternal destiny it's like what situation my in in now they have to do with things like most religions most practices have to do with health life security healing safety so these practice deliverance is an avoidance in all that what the religious practices are oriented toward can be everything from my eternal destiny to I'm late for a meeting and I need a parking lot and you start praying that a parking lot opens up right so it can be everything from very immediate like that and that we were sort of like really that's what religions about but for a lot of people it is to to just sort of I feel really bad I didn't study for this exam I really need hell it can also have a therapeutic aspect to it but anyway this is the general definition religion is just to run through it one more time a complex of culturally prescribed practices based on premises about the existence in nature of superhuman powers whether personal or impersonal which seeped seek to help practitioners gain access to and communicate or align themselves with these powers in hopes none of its guarantee there are a few religions that are like gumball machines you do this you're guaranteed to get that most of them are like you have the hope you have the expectation there's a trust that this will happen of avoiding misfortune obtaining blessings and receiving deliverance from crises okay so that's the definition let's move forward from there let's think a little bit about practices there are so many practices that religions can prescribe I'm not gonna write read through this whole list but you can just sort of scan your eyes around here and see that there are so many many different things when when probably for many of us when we think about religions we either go see prayer reading scripture you go to worship something like that but really religions can can prescribe nearly anything almost any human activity is within the realm of possibilities of prescription for practices that are relevant to so just a few visual examples here reading holy scripture and praying and prayer can take a lot of different forms a lot of practice there are different sorts of practices and scholars sort of sort them out some of the practices have to do with life event practices around significant transitions in life getting married bearing children getting sick dying etc right these are like major life transitions and religions usually have something to say about them and some not just an idea you're supposed to have in your head when that happens but something you're supposed to do a meaningful behavior which is what a practice is so reading scripture and praying having a baby baptized in position of atlases for many but not all Christians on right the imposition of ashes and what gets said by the priest when the ashes are put on the forehead is yeah from dust you have come and to dust you overturn remember that you are mortal we are like the grass not all these things now on the lab writing on it obviously but it's this the idea so there's a belief that's embedded in this there's a whole worldview that's behind this but that the core the thing is a practice and it's not just again this theme of my it's not just an idea in the head it's embodied if any of you have done this and I have there's a it's a powerful thing ashes dead dead organic matter on your forehead that you wear for the day and you'll be told oh remember you're gonna be dead it pretty soon it's a powerful thing other communal not individual but gathering fellowship praise worship prayer these are other practices that some relate many religions have a community aspect to them pilgrimage not every religion does this but many religions have this idea there are holy places or at least there are holy tracts and you should end and a good just practitioner at the right time in life we'll go do this thing they will move their body through some space and arrive at some other space right and so this is a crucial thing it could be that there's some special water at the end it could be that the process of doing the pilgrimage itself is the experience it could be that it's a holy city that's go being gone too it could be that miracles are believed to be expected to be performed at the end and so on but but pilgrimage is another sort of practice offering sacrifices engaging in procession organized kind of processions together these are food sacrifices not everything has to I mean religious practices can be of all sorts is sex is not out of the possibility there we there are various religions that have sort of fertility rites or that have temple prostitutes or what the west end up calling temple prostitutes etc cetera so this is the theme here is nothing is necessarily off-limits of the possibility nothing out no human activity is necessarily off-limits of the possibility that religions would say engage in this in this way at this time and it will have this kind of consequence not all the practices are like like here's a really nice isn't this sweet isn't that nice invite all the family members etc that's a lovely time we'll all go up to brunch after but not all religious not all religious practices are like that there are some religions that involve the gods demand human blood humans are sacrificed I've been to some of the sites where this has happened it's it's a pretty interesting thing but there's power involved here also again notice a lot of these things involve very primal elements of material water food blood stone fire etc okay practice is often evolved around then the last one just to it was and this is partly because I don't want to give this impression like our religious practice is so nice and all the some religions what we would judge to be kind of horrific or at least they're demanding or at least they involve huge sacrifice this one there's anyone know what this one is this is the pre Israelite Canaanite religion of Moloch so Moloch is a bronze statue of a bull that you put a you burn a fire inside and it heats up totally burning hot and then firstborn babies are put in the Bulls hands and are burned to death in a public ceremony I just want to I'm not something I like I'm interested in religion but religions can be all sorts of different things not just nice baptisms so and this isn't another example of a culturally prescribed practice in order to do in order to get in touch with the superhuman power of in this case Moloch okay now let's think about powers a little bit more if that's what religion is what powers does religion have meaning what can it do in the world if we think about causal powers we're talking about the capacity to make a change happen were to prevent a change from happening that's what essentially causal powers our ability to make something happen or to prevent it from happening well what are religions causal powers so here's the way I think about it once you get a religion started so to speak once you get it going that is you get a culture that says we have these premises about superhuman powers and if you do this that in the other practice you'll be able to get in touch with those powers and accomplish X Y & Z once you get that started then religions develop what we call emergent powers it now has take it now produces the capacity to do new things to produce new outcomes to make new things happen in the world as see if I can make this a little bit concrete here religions can give people identities I am an X we are at a why it has the power to give people community we belong together I belong to this group has the power to provide meanings for people here's what reality is here's the world is put together here's what the cosmos is all about it has the capacity to provide cultural expressions art architecture dance all kinds of cultural expressions it has the kapow ER to generate in people experiences transcendent experiences religious experiences whatever if there wasn't the religion maybe they'd have a different kind of experience but it wouldn't be what we call a religious experience right there are many ways that people can have community but one thing I would argue is religions bring a particular kind of character to a community that makes it a religious community religions can provide legitimacy like know the way we're doing things here our King deserves power and our priests say-so our Kings give them given power by the gods say would be one way to think about this that's legitimizing an institution religions give human beings the power of social control this is the way it's going to be done you do it this way don't do it another way ok I I conceptualize all of this like a tree this is just one metaphor image but the idea here is that the trunk of the tree the heart of things of religion is not community or identity the heart of religion is practices that engage superhuman powers that's what it's it is at its core okay but once you get the tree growing and its nourished out of the community and the connection with superhuman power then it can give rise to all sorts of new things like legitimacy and social control and experiences and meaning and community and identity these religion has the power to generate these things in human life and in some ways it's one of the most powerful generators of identity and community and so on there are a lot of scholars now arguing that it's not first that civilization and politics arose and then they had to invent priests to legitimate it it's that religion was the first thing civilization is the product of religion not the other way around so there's something very primal and powerful about religious traditions and then the next we think about why would that be the case where does the power come from but this image is just that religion can produce those powers but it's grounded at least in my theory in the core of engaging in practices meant to get in touch with superhuman powers okay so just quickly running through some of these identity can be personal group identity social identity so here's one visual example here's a woman what's her identity I am a Buddhist she has a place set aside in her house whether were there offerings there are candles there's statues and it clearly for this person it matter well clearly we can imagine that for this person the fact that her Buddhism the part of who she is identity my very self is what identity is about has to do with the religious tradition that she's part of in the practices that she engages in community there's community belonging their solidarity like it holds us together it's a glue religion can be a glue that holds people together or social support many people rely on religions for social support so here's this one example of that here's a football team after the game they're praying together like what's going on here sociologically like you think socio like what in the world the coaches the players probably half the people in the team don't even believe in prayer and yet they're doing it so there's something about religion that gets brought to the sport that helps to do well like what are the functions of this to create solidarity to create a sense of oneness to create we're all in this together whether we win or lose this is still a good thing I mean there's so many dynamics acausal dynamics at work here but this this sense of community meaning meanings can involve moral order like how is the universe put together morally or cosmic or life meaning or theodicies how do you explain the odyssey is how do you explain suffering how do you make sense of suffering and religions are one of the main ways that people make sense of suffering so here here we're talking about meaning here here's a ritual that people undergo called baptism and this is not just like oh let's go out and do something fun in the country this is like you have died to an old life and you have risen to a new life you're a different person your past has a new ontological status in relation to your future etc etc it's a practice but it's embedded in a whole worldview and a whole sense of who you are what your community is and what's meaningful in the world expression we could do religions give rise all kinds of artistic creations aesthetic expressions transcendent experiences subjective for individual persons so for some that can be in worship and prayer you can have a religious experience there are many many many versions of this I'm just sort of giving us a few indications of the possibilities here legitimacy again this has to do with individual legitimation like why should we follow this institution why is it legitimate why why does anyone believe in this way of doing things politically or economically religion can provide the answer to that political legitimacy historically regimes have often relied on religion to explain why the rulers get to rule but it can also be legitimacy of dissent it's a religion is a two-edged sword in this way religion can say the ruler is just the ruler must be obeyed it can also say the compared to God's law say the ruler is violating God's law and therefore must be challenged and therefore protest is necessary for religious believers so this is more recent and here are people who say on the basis of their religious commitments that certain political practices are illegitimate and they're not going to put up with it they're at least gonna protest against it okay social control obviously a human life can be chaotic the question is how do we order it and keep everything under some control that can be done internally people internalize and they regulate themselves it can be done through interpersonal controls it can be done through formal social controls there's a lot of ways that humans control themselves in each other and religion has the power to help make that happen here's a here's a photo of a group of young soon-to-be Mormon missionaries in Provo Utah being trained and being sort of formed to go out into the world for a year and a half so the question is how do you get a whole bunch of 18 19 year old guys at that's sort of the prime when they should be in college and starting their businesses to decide to become brother X and go with a stranger to someplace that they haven't chosen and not be able to talk with their parents to go talk to a lot of people who for the most part think they're crazy and don't want to talk to them how do you do that well religion has the power to make that happen and these guys do it and most of them come back and say that was the best experience of my life you know it really solidified this and I learned about the etc etc so the Patt religion is power to make things happen in the world it goes back in my theory to practices engaging super time to communicate with superhuman powers as the core and then up from that can grow so many different new capacities to make things or to prevent things from happening in the world okay let's see where I have untied all right why do people do religion well it just follows naturally from my definition individuals do religion for a lot of idiosyncratic reasons like well I married this guy and he's that so I guess I'll do that or I was like had this profoundly transformative experience and I can do no other than to now follow with that there are lots of reasons why individuals do religion but if we fix sociologically in big terms why our species does this believes in superhuman powers and and such and then Ginn gages practices it's an interesting puzzle why well if you go back to my definition the answer is pretty simple first people do religion in hopes that superhuman powers will grant blessings and prevent misfortunes and aid in crises skeptics and atheists and so on is just a crotch it's for weak people and da da da da da well it turns out that human beings are vulnerable we are finite we are limited we don't know what's happening in the future we can't control the news as we're gonna get in the next minute about our family or our businesses or our bodies if you think about the finitude and the vulnerabilities and the challenges and the difficulties of human life you suddenly it becomes less and less mysterious why if people believed there were superhuman powers they would be interested in having those super pou human powers help them it's not mysterious at all that's like totally obvious why human beings would be like that it also turns out and cognitive scientists have been saying this for a couple decades now thinking religiously is not a weird thing for the human race the kind of brains we have are very natural it's very easy for humans to think about superhuman powers and to for religion to be plausible what's really weird for humans is to think scientifically like let's take everything we believe and call it into question and then let's put it into formal propositional hypotheses and like scientific ways of thinking is really unnatural to think the world operates religiously and these are not religious cognitive psychologists these are mostly atheists and they're they're natural they say there really isn't a god but human brains are really set up to think religiously it's just the way it is this is a big shift away from old psychological like Freud and these guys that were selected for psychopaths and so on now it's like now cognitive scientists are much more like religion really wouldn't make sense and the human brain it's very easy to generate religion for the human brain so given that people this is one reason human beings engage in religious practices the other is that religion is able to generate all kinds of goods for humans that they like and want that I've described identity community meaning expression aesthetics ecstasy control legitimacy the religion has the power to provide so much that human beings like or absolutely need it's impossible to be a human being without an identity hey who are you I have no idea I mean you can't do that you have to know where to whom do you belong like what is your community what what are you part of I don't know I'm just floating around as a nonentity you have to be somewhere you have to be with some people you we need identity we need community the point is not religion is the only place that provides that you can get identity and community all this stuff from other places but religion historically has been a central place this has come from and even in the modern world it's a powerful place for many people to find these sort of goods so why are people religion because it provides them all sorts of things that they consider to be good now what are the mechanisms I'm gonna burn through this quickly because I have good at eight minutes left the question here is how does religion shape the world again I'm trying to follow the theme of power this question here is how does religion make this happen a lot of people tend to think very on the surface that religion works by teaching things that people hear and then they internalize and then they more or less act on okay that's one way that things happen religions happen religions religious powers are exerted in other ways so here are just some quick examples so prescriptive teachings is what I just described but also social influence of network ties people are oftentimes influenced just by their friends and relations in what's going on around them relation in terms of social networks net of what they believe or what they heard taught so religions can influence the world through social relational networks another is contextual ecological effects this is really interesting kind of reached quantitative research that gets done the chose your the outcomes of people's lives are affected not just by their individual characteristic but by the ecological characteristics of the of the areas they live in okay so for example does it matter what religion you are if you live in a county that has a high proportion of hearin some Catholic or mainline Protestant you're gonna live longer than if you live in a county with a high proportion of Angelica's net of all sorts of other controls you know electricity used in average income and wha all that you control for all that there's something there's a context that religion creates an ecology and environment at a county level that shapes the proud like when you're gonna die I can point you to the article if you want to see that but there other things like let's take it down in high school there's a phase when some religious traditions taught you should take a virginity pledge and so scholars showed that virginity pledges work sometimes and not others when they worked is when a certain number of people in the school took the virginity pledge but not too many so it's not what you did it's not that making a pledge it's the the ecology in which one makes the pledge has to do like if they're not if almost nobody did theirs like why am I gonna and or if it's like everybody do I can't mean anything so this the the point here is a sociological one the the number that the environments were in and religion can shape environment okay I got five minutes I'm gonna keep going social service programs religions provide billions and billions and billions maybe trillions in the US economy of goods through social service provision that's a huge influence on the world the way it is it's a very specific thing but it's very powerful if you just subtly took religions and evaporated them out of the u.s. society all sorts of things would just fall apart simply on number-four account generating social capital and you may be heard this turn social capital relationships of trust that people have with each other more social capital you have just like the more economic capital you have the better off your life is generally going to be social capital is a good thing for democracy it's a good thing for lots of things the the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has this older book now but called Bowling Alone in which he estimates half of all the social capital in the United States is generated by religious congregations okay so that's a huge way that religion influences the world it's very different from just a little religion teaches me I should love my neighbors so I guess I'll be a little bit nicer person it's totally different mechanisms another is religious institutions secularized so you may be you exercise at the YMCA or the YWCA what does the C stand for career I mean it used to be like Sunday School it's been secularized but there's this whole instant set of institutions that are out there because at one point some religious people started it for religious motives and then if you start to think in those lines there's a whole host of things like weird Habitat for Humanity come from where did the Baptist Hospital or the Jewish Hospital come from it's like just so much in the institution that in our society that religion has generated secular transposition of religious disposition okay this is something like if I'll just leave it at this if you know mocks vapers Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism the argument is weird Protestant doctrine of eternal predestination by by some Calvinists got set up this whole thing that helped to generate modern capitalism it's a transposition of one way of thinking to another I won't go into it any more than that because I'm at a time institutional legal codes why is it that the United States until recently has been very like who gets who's allowed to get married legally heterosexuals that's not just like a rational like this is obvious in the world it's a specifically religious heritage on legal codes direct interventions by religious authorities religious authorities again this is a long list of ways that religion forms the world it's not just through it teachers and then people act on the teaching it's all sorts of mechanisms I won't try to talk about that so the future some if not many humans will continue to practice religion secularization theory is somewhat true but not totally true so if we think well what's gonna happen in the future of religion a lot of people are going to keep practicing it Japan is a pretty from a lot of points of view a kind of a secular society but they still shouldn't oh another religion still are significant and people still practices not just going to disappear humans will continue to generate new religions anybody know what the Santa morta in Mexico is a sort of a combining of folk Catholicism and a sort of ancient Aztec veneration and-and-and fascination with a dead it's basically a new religion and it's a significant religion growing in Mexico all living religions will be internally qualitatively transformed over time so religious traditions the idea of a tradition is continuity over time in reality things are always changing they just do there's no way not to here's an example of that this is Liberty University with with our beloved president speaking there and if you know anything about the fall well so Jerry Falwell Jr is a huge Trump supporter Jerry Falwell senior was that one of those photos up there was like one of the founders of the moral majority but for most of his life Jerry Falwell senior was a fundamentalist who taught if you're a good Christian you never get involved in politics you save souls well Jerry Falwell senior changed on that in the mid-1970s so religions changes so now we have like don't even get me started on the transformation of American evangelicalism but this is just an illustration of that some religions will grow and some won't they'll decline so here's Joel Olsteen search in Houston it taken over a basketball arena this is not secularization happening folks this is big-time religion and then you have some religious traditions and and so on institutions that are dying or dead and then you have atheism which is growing the number of non-religious in the US has grown immensely since 1991 okay coming down the homestretch beyond that the future is hard to predict it's just if somebody tells you they know what's going to happen in the future stop listening to them so for example in early modern Europe if you were thought what's the future of Judaism it could have been pretty like not certain about that but lo and behold in you go to New York City and there's Orthodox Jews like they're a significant presence they're institutionally important and not just because of not I'm sorry not just be in spite of modernity but in part because of modernity right cellphones like they've like religious traditions can use modernity and not just resist it ok one last thing and then I really will be done Lena the demographic paradox this is important thing to get economically the developed world has been in a somewhat secularizing in some countries is a huge amount of secularization happening but at a global level religion is growing in the world population how can you have secularization and the growth of religion at the same time well the main part of the answer to that is demography in this religious people have a lot more babies secular people when you get secular as I don't want five kids I don't want two kids I don't know if I want one kid and so the more secular society stop having babies so they're less fertile so to speak religious people that there's something pronatalist about real it most religions and so what you have is even if the world is going secular in some ways the parts of the world that are not are having more babies and sort of the aggregate result of that is the world becomes more religious even though there are very powerful forces of secularization at work also in some religious traditions are spreading in the global south so in some we've talked about what religion is and its promises and powers that it provides people in societies we've talked about which helped it and how that helps to explain why humans practice religion and we talked about secularization theory and why it's only somewhat proven true so far what happens now and in the future is fascinating and uncertainty and but religion is going to be around and it's going to be a power in various ways at various times it'll always be complicated but the idea that religion you cannot worry about is ridiculous [Applause] [Applause] hello so Kelly and I will be circulating with two mics we just ask that you please keep it to questions no comments and speak directly into the mic so I have one house left right here hasn't religion also contribute to water to Horus round the kind around the world historically Wars that was started over religion and all that continued and has continued to this very day Wars and religion that's the question right so here's my thinking which i think is correct religion has incredible capacity to start wars and to motivate in tenth greater intensity of wars and so on that's true that's absolutely true however qualified in two ways one is actually another Chicago connection bill Kavanaugh of DePaul University Lincoln Square has a great book called the myth of religious warfare and which he analyzes very very closely early modern war and chose the secular West has really been into the narrative that religion is so damn dangerous because it started all the early modern wars between Protestants and Catholics and that's it's true it's unlevel a lot of early modern warfare was not exactly religious it was driven much more by political and other forces so if you're interested in that it just needs a balancing then that the received narrative needs a balancing out the myth of religious warfare I'll leave it at that I mean clearly I'm not trying to say religion is opacifier by any stretch it's a it's a it offers a huge challenge but the I guess part of what I want to say is this the conflict and violence that religion can generate religion can just as well generate peacemaking reconciliation and so on it'll vary by the context it'll vary by the historical period but religion the point is religion has multiple powers that can work in lots and lots of different directions so yeah yes I'll leave it at that I mean it's a huge big discussion but yeah war is a and - in today's world and 9/11 was like a symbolic like how could you get that out of your mind vision of that but it's very complicated and some of the narratives that we've received or not are too simplified put it that way okay we have a question here on the left you had a picture of Joel Osteen and an audience sitting in the stadium is that kind of community or that style in this case of evangelical Christianity capable of being politicized or is that spectator religion and not particularly political potential I don't know can what do you think I think I can't get started talking because in the interest so in general that kind of religion is capable of being politicized Liberty University is an example of it was another slide you have to study that particular religious tradition the particular religious community that's the Joel Olsteen style is not about politics it's not about conflict it's mostly about therapeutic feel better or you know figure out your life it's an inspect ater but it's not impossible sociologically for large groups with a charismatic leader that's very media oriented it's not impossible for that to be captured by politics or to give rise to its own political interest so I'm not somebody who believes in a positivist philosophy like if you have this then you'll have that if a then B if X then Y things are much open and fluid and different lots of different possibilities and we have to study particular contexts to see what are the actual forces that make whatever happens there happened there thank you dr. Smith I am under the of the opinion that all theology is practical theology that is if you have a really stupid theological idea that doesn't work it's going to go away eventually but I don't think I'm right on that don't understand why for example the prosperity gospel continues because it manifestly doesn't work but nonetheless multitudes of people around the world embrace it eagerly and there we could come up with a great many other examples how is it that these ideas keep coming through and keep lasting so well that's conflict I mean the answer to that is complicated one has to do with the word hope remember I said nothing is guaranteed in hopes of human beings have never I would say an evolutionarily primal incapacity for living with despair and like things don't work so there's always there's always a readiness to hope for things the other thing is human beings and I don't mean this as an ant as a religiously slamming statement it's just an obvious truth to me human beings are not that rational not that evidence attentive we're much more driven by identity emotions things we wish to believe again cognitive scientists show this immense biases we have I mean not just dumb people us have immense biases in what we're willing to think and what we pay attention to and I'm members of my family like they'll just they'll only see what reinforces what they already believe so that's part of it too and again it's not just certain people it's it's common to human cognition it takes a huge amount of work to overcome those kind of cognitive plays another thing is oh I don't know use the word works religion how could people believe in something that doesn't work well what we need to do is step back and say what do you mean by work and what are the criteria of something working a lot of times we're imposing our criteria of whether something works or not when other people are working with very different sense of what works so does it work to sacrifice your the firstborn child of X Y & Z family to a bronze statue that doesn't work any possible sense unless you have overpopulation but then but then you have to think about Oh works by what criteria who's deciding what works so and a lot of times we need to step back I'm now repeating myself as not just project what we think is workable but take again take kind of an anthropologist from that point of view what would make sense in terms of working that's a totally incomplete answer but those are a few thoughts maybe a question has left thank you have you seen a correlation in decline in religion or secularization in societies where women have attained more rights or more control over their own lives yeah there is a correlation but I'm not sure it's a causation or it's an indirect mediated causation there are so many complicated factors that lead to secularization one of them is sort of enlightenment philosophy one of them that some people argue is when the state takes on more and more responsibility to care for like welfare states in northern Europe say you don't have to go to a church to be taken care of right so the more gut so there's a displacement effect the more government takes care of human welfare the the less people are need religion to do that I mean a government's can't keep people from dying but the one core there there is it more of a direct correlation in this sense but it's a very short term I would say American mid 20th century sense and that it but it's very very limited it's not a huge dynamic and that is there was a time when given this sort of breadwinner male breadwinner ideology there was a time when there are a lot of housewives who were not in the paid labor force who had a lot of time to make religious institutions work and then in the seven is huge influx of women into the paid labor force which is all another discussion why that happened but basically if you're a religious institution a lot of your free volunteer labor just disappeared and now that somebody else is paying them and it's harder to pull off a religious institution that's rich and thick and it has an awesome kitchen you know whatever however it would have been so that that's one very specific but that hardly explain sort of secularization at a macro level so it's definitely connected the other thing is religion is highly gendered everywhere in the world except for Israel women are more religious and they're social scientists argue like why is that what's going on so religion and gender is a huge topic of interest and importance and so on but it's connection to secularization is very complicated so we have time for just one more question in the center Thanks so I feel like you talked a lot about the religious aspect of like the first part of your question but in terms of like the development aspect of it like development leading psychos ation was the initial theory you know it seemed like I didn't hear as much about you know even though the world religious population is growing are those it seemed as though you were suggesting at the end that isn't necessarily the place where development which I realize is not like necessarily development as a whole other thing that you'd have to define but it seems as though in the countries that might you might consider to be more developed like Western Europe or North America secularization has increased which would seem to confirm the secularization theory so I'm just wondering you know and then you think about some of the countries in Europe that are backsliding like Hungary or Poland or something like that where religion is so it's becoming a much bigger force I would argue that there may be undeveloped and the state religion seems to be tied up in that so I'm just wondering like it seemed like the development piece of it didn't come up as much I mean I barely got through what I have here so but yeah so secularization I mean this is a central concern of mine I think it's fascinating I guess I would just say it's very complicated if you take the question is what is your pérignon okay paradigmatic case if Western Europe is your paradigmatic case you see things in a certain way if the United States is your pérignon case you see seeing things in a certain way there is definitely something about becoming more modern in the way the West is thought about modernization although then you have to think what's the difference between modernization and westernization and what about westernization has to do with enlightenment which is a very particular Western kind of movement anyway but let's think about other cases China China has been is like Mass unbelievable growth development modernization case in the last 30 years and religion has been growing and growing and expanding so that's not like that doesn't disprove what's happened in Europe but it provides like sand in the gears of like this theory so and it's particular to the case is sort of like well the old communist ideology didn't provide the meaning and like a lot of these things and so there's a there's a lot of reasons for this but there's vacuums of things that have going on precisely because China is modernizing and developing economically that has led to incredible growth in religion not just Christianity but including Christianity and other religions so I guess my bottom line is my theory in the book basically says secularization is happening it is absolutely but it's not the only thing happening there are many complex things happening and depending on the civilization we're talking about if you believe in that's such as like the cultural tradition you know what it means to come out of an Indian Indian subcontinent civilization is very different than what it means to come out of any state so the cultural background matters the particular relationship with States has there been a state church or not so the United States is very different than Europe where there were state churches and we haven't so there's so many factors so basically what I'm saying is yes but it's complicated [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Chicago Humanities Festival

Views: 2,075

Keywords: chicago humanities festival, chf, humanities, chicago, festival, religion, philosophy, history of religion, faith, faith practice, spirituality, society

Id: c1IR8asatMU

Length: 58min 49sec (3529 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 13 2019