Imagine no religion

Updated September 29, 2010 11:56:48

If you ever tune in to the ABC's flagship religious affairs programme Compass after the bonnet drama of a Sunday night, then you could be forgiven for thinking that the group of people labelled 'the religious' are those who wear funny hats.

As the opening title sequence of the show scrolls by, viewers are treated to a veritable facebook of curious millinery - along with some impressive facial hair.

To the average ABC viewer, watching as they iron their work clothes, the message is clear: these people are not 'us'. They are definitely 'the other': a group or groups of people to be observed, categorised, wondered at - and sometimes even frightened of.

But is there such a category as the 'religious'? Does 'religion' even exist?

I am not convinced that it does - at least, not in the sense that the word is commonly used. The concept of 'religion' operates as an anthropological term, which like most academic language, enables the object under examination to be placed at a scholarly arm's length. Like exotic butterflies, religions are to be caught in the wild, observed under the microscope, described in minute detail according to their visible forms, and then pinned to polystyrene.

There are three enormous traps into which this method steps - and the result is a colossal misunderstanding of the 'religious'. Categorising things is so much a part of our approach to life that we can imagine it promises more understanding of a subject than it can deliver.

The first mistake is that we think we have discovered a coherent concept because we can describe things that the various religions apparently have in common. If the religions are to be understood because of the things they seem to have in common, it is not too much of a stretch to imagine that the things they have in common are the really important things about them.

The problem is that the massive differences between the faiths are then ironed out. After all, termites and elephants both have legs.

The second trap comes with the triumph of imagining one has discovered the single catch-all concept at the heart of all 'religions'. The scholar with this sort of claim - and believe me, they aren't modest about it - imagines herself sublimely objective in this, uniquely capable of divesting herself of all vestiges of her home culture and its variety of faith.

For example, it is no accident that scholars from Christian backgrounds have gone looking for a 'God of love' as the core idea of all other religions. It's a peculiarly Christian way of homogenising other faiths.

We can see this in the work of John Hick - and Hick's lesser hack, John Shelby Spong.

Thirdly, if we think in terms of 'religion' we will become far too distracted by the external and cultural forms of religion. This is what I call the 'silly hat' problem.

When I was chaplain at an Anglican school, I was often sent sample 'Studies in Religion' textbooks. They were uniformly hopeless, in my opinion, because they concentrated almost entirely on ceremonies, rituals, ecclesiastical haberdashery and religious festivals. Was this what 'religion' was about?

Perhaps - if you are looking in from the outside, as someone who is not 'religious' in this sense. But you do not understand Christianity (I speak only for my own faith) at all by observing its outward forms. In fact, you may completely misunderstand it.

In its most hostile forms, at the hands of a Dawkins or a Hitchens, the idea of 'religion' is a means of dismissing it. If you pollute the concept with enough human evil - and goodness knows, there's plenty of that to share - you can make it start to look like a concept we'd be better off without.

You end up implying that the lady across the road who goes to church each week is just as evil as Osama.

But more often, using the term 'religion' is a way of taming the phenomena collected under this heading. If it can be boiled down to its core elements, and if I can then see that these core elements are available without 'religion', then …well, why would I bother?

I don't look good in hats, and I like to sleep in on the weekends.

So, I want to invite you to (to borrow from John Lennon)'imagine no religion'. If you are really interested in understanding those people we call 'religious', then realise that that thinking in terms of 'religion' is getting in the way.

And what's more, you will continue to think of yourself as 'not religious', if you keep believing in 'religion'.

Why deny yourself the chance of being challenged - and even changed - by what you discover?

Topics: community-and-society, event, world-politics

First posted December 23, 2009 07:00:00