What is religion?

A non-believer starts Divinity School.

I’m a month into divinity school at Harvard. My classes are probably not what you’d picture for a school centered around religion.

Even so, in one month I have been exposed to more context for the idea of “belief” than I could have imagined possible, and not only in an academic way. I am surrounded by people of all sorts of faith backgrounds. My classmates are also people attending the Kennedy School of Government, the Law School, and beyond, who are also interested in the same topics (because students can cross-register for classes at any Harvard school).

Of course, the disadvantage of pandemic schooling (aka online) is that you never really get to have private conversations with any of the new people you meet, beyond a line or two exchanged behind the professor’s back via the chat. The picture of who I am studying all of this with is only very slowly getting filled in, each person a rectangular zoom puzzle piece.

As a non-religious person, I find myself wondering how many of the people I learn with are personally religious. What does their religion mean to them? I feel a bit stunted when it comes to religion, because of my template. Religions take so many forms beyond the benchmark I had for the concept, and the religions I have yet to learn about take a million other forms. How does it feel to be religious in ways other than the ways I was? What do I even mean when I talk about religion? I do believe in… something. I don’t think I’d be here, studying this, if I were an atheist (though, atheists: believe me, I get it).

Religion is a problematic term. It’s been defined by scholars a million different ways, depending on their starting point. To some, it’s a social construct (Émile  Durkheim), to others, it’s a collective neurosis (Sigmund Freud). Theologian Paul Tillich saw religion as having the ability to give a taste of the “Holy” or transcendent, but with a frequent tendency to shamefulness at the same time. Religious groups frequently elevate themselves to the level of “the ultimate,” but in the process estrange people from their true being, and what ultimately matters in life.

I agree. We can get caught up in their religious rituals and laws and beliefs, and miss the point of religion. Durkheim (mentioned above) said that religion is society worshipping itself. That fits with my own past experience of religion.

What is religion to me, now, then? All of these dead white men got to say what they think - I will too.

To me, religion, when it is functioning at its best, isn’t top down. That is to say, no other human being should be dictating the rules and terms.

One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.

-       Reinhold Niebuhr on the Mike Wallace Interview show, 1958. (Obama is a big fan of Niebuhr).

Next, if there really were the kind of “person-God” we are taught about in many religions, I believe that he/she/it would have made every question of life a lot more clear (attempting to pin down a pronoun for God just bears out how ridiculous this idea of a person-God really is).

One lifelong atheist scholar (I missed his name when I was told this anecdote by a professor) on his death bed put it well: “If there is a God, why must he mumble?”

What do you do with all of this murkiness, though, if you can’t believe in “nothing?”

I think that when we stop warring against the realities of life, we find the truths. For me, religion set up impenetrable buttresses behind which I could hide from all kinds of painful truths.

One of these truths is that we have a lot to figure out for ourselves. I don’t think that is unachievable. But it’s impossible to understand the point of life if we refuse to accept the reality of death, or suffering, or the unknown. There is no life without these realities, for human beings. There’s also a lot we’ll never understand, which, if nothing else, keeps things interesting.

Of course, this is not to say that because traditional religion hasn’t suited me, all religion serves no purpose or is bad. But because I have an aversion to being in a religion yet still find myself having what I might call “religious experiences,” I am starting to think that there may be a problem of mislabeling.

Paul Tillich, referenced above, saw true religion not as something external to us, but rather “the dimension of depth in all of its functions,” meaning the drilled down experience of spiritual life in all its depths: the intellectual, the emotional, the creative, the moral.

I think that some of what we are seeking from religion is to be able to make sense of the sacred, non-rational aspects of life as a human being on this planet. We put into the box of “religion” things that lay beyond explanation. But we can be religious without religion. Religion can be more than that.

I think real religion, for lack of a better term, involves many things beyond belief in a religious faith. I think it is found everywhere in life. Flowers coming back every spring. A baby born, becoming a something where nothing existed before. Learning. The feeling of love. The creative act of a conversation with someone. Stories that resonate across time and culture. Kind acts to another. Taking action against injustice. The movement of our bodies. Intuition. The light as it changes color throughout the day. Deep suffering, even.

We put religion in a box, but it doesn’t have to be there.

Amber

PS... For anyone interested in the classes one takes at divinity school, here’s what I’m taking in my first semester: one on women’s historical agency. Another on the future of democracy (I basically took that one as election therapy). One more on “theories and methods of studying religion,” which is, as far as I can tell, people (usually old white men) coming up with a theory for why religion exists or how it should be evaluated, and then someone else arguing 10, 50 or 100 years later as to why they were wrong. It’s great!