Posted on 08/28/2016 3:41:22 PM PDT by Lorianne
P eople rarely mean the same thing when they say “religion”, nor do they realize that they don’t mean the same thing. For early Jews and Muslims, religion was law. Din means law in Hebrew and religion in Arabic. For early Jews, religion was also tribal; for early Muslims, it was universal[i]. For the Romans, religion was social events, rituals, and festivals –the word religio was a counter to superstitio, and while present in the Roman zeitgeist had no equivalent concept in the Greek-Byzantine East[ii]. Law was procedurally and mechanically its own thing, and early Christianity, thanks to Saint Augustine, stayed relatively away from the law, and, later, remembering its foundations, had an uneasy relation with it. For instance, even during the Inquisition, a lay court handled the sentencing.
The difference is marked in that Christian Aramaic uses a different word: din for religion and nomous (from the Greek) for law. Jesus, with his imperative “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”, separated the holy and the profane: Christianity was for another domain, “the kingdom to come”, only merged with this one in the eschaton. Neither Islam nor Judaism have a marked separation between holy and profane. And of course Christianity moved away from the solely-spiritual domain to embrace the ceremonial and ritualistic, integrating much of the pagan rites of the Levant and Asia Minor.
For Jews today, religion became ethnocultural, without the law — and for many, a nation. Same for Syriacs, Chaldeans, Armenians, Copts, and Maronites. For Orthodox and Catholic Christians religion is aesthetics, pomp and rituals, plus or minus some beliefs, often decorative. For most Protestants, religion is belief with neither aesthetics, pomp nor law. Further East, for Buddhists, Shintoists and Hindus, religion is practical and spiritual philosophy, with a code of ethics (and for some, cosmogony). So when Hindu talk about the Hindu “religion” they don’t mean the same thing to a Pakistani as it would to a Hindu, and certainly something different for a Persian.
When the nation-state idea came about, things got much, much more complicated. When an Arab now says “Jew” he largely means something about a creed; to Arabs, a converted Jew is no longer a Jew. But for a Jew, a Jew is someone whose mother is a Jew. (This has not always been the case: Jews were quite proselytic during the early Roman empire). But Judaism, thanks to modernism, somewhat merged into nation-state, and now can also mean a nation.
In Serbia-Croatia and Lebanon, religion means something at times of peace, and something quite different at times of war.
When someone discusses the interests of the “Christian minority” in the Levant, it doesn’t mean (as Arabs tend to think) promoting a Christian theocracy (as I said earlier, the church has always been uneasy in its relationship with the profane; full theocracies were very few in Christian history, just Byzantium, a short attempt by Calvin and few other episodes). He just means “secular” or wants a marked separation of church and state. Same for the gnostics (Druids, Druze, Mandeans, Alawis).
No, for Baal’s sake, stop calling Salafism a “Religion”
The problem with the European Union is that the naive I.Y.I. (intellectuals yet idiots) bureaucrats and representatives of the talking “elites” (these fools who can’t find a coconut on Coconut island) are fooled by the label. They treat Salafism as just a religion –with its houses of “worship” — when in fact it is just an intolerant political system, which promotes (or allows) violence and refuses the institutions of the West –those that allow them to operate. Unlike Shiite Islam and Ottoman Sunnis, Salafis refuse to accept the very notion of minorities: infidels pollute their landscape. As we saw with the minority rule, the intolerant will run over the tolerant; cancer requires being stopped before it becomes metastatic.
IYIs, being naive and label driven, would have a different attitude towards Salafis if theirs was labelled as a political movement, similar to Nazism, with their dress code an expression of such beliefs. Banning burkinis may become palatable for them if it were made similar to banning swastikas: these people you are defending, young IYI, will deprive you of all the rights you are giving them, should they ascend to power and would force your spouse to wear a burkini.
We will see in the next chapter that “belief” can be epistemic, or simply procedural (pisteic) –leading to confusions about what sort of beliefs, are religious beliefs and which ones are not, disentangled through signaling. For, on top of the “religion” problem, there is a problem with belief. Some beliefs are largely decorative, some are functional (they help in survival); others are literal. And to revert to our metastatic Salafi problem: when one of these fundamentalists talks to a Christian, he is convinced that the Christian is literal, while the Christian is convinced that the Salafi has the same oft-metaphorical concepts to be taken seriously but not literally –and, often, not very seriously. Religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, and Shiite Islam, evolved (or let their members evolve in developing a sophisticated society) precisely by moving away from the literal –for, in addition to the functional aspect of the metaphorical, the literal doesn’t leave any room for adaptation .
So not only Salafism is not a religion, but it is not even a workable political system; just something someone came up with to emprison people in the seventh century Arabian Peninsula.
...
Note: Islam, ironically, has not always been purely law. The Ottoman Empire managed to do a separation between Islam as law and the state as Qanun, with a body of laws imported from the Byzantines. So did the Umayads relying on Christian diwan (the subjects in the educated class were Greek-speaking Syrians), importing notions from Roman law, particularly those concerned with commercial matters.
— — — — —
[i] Ibn Tamiyya
“As for the previous nations, none of them enjoined all people with all that is right, nor did they prohibit all that is wrong to all people. Furthermore, they did not make jihad (struggle) in this cause. Some of them did not take up armed struggle at all, and those who did, such as the Jews, their struggle was generally for the purpose of driving their enemy from their land, or as any oppressed people struggles against their oppressor, and not for sake of calling the people of the world to guidance and right, nor to enjoin on them right and to prohibit to them wrong.”
There is no such thing as religion when talking about...
good Curry.
How many will get it?
What we talk about when we use Raymond Carver titles to talk about talking.
Wow can't wait for that one.
Got a link, Lori? Checked pretentioustrash.com, couldn't find this article listed.
Elaborate exercise in bloated semantics.
Religion is the practice of DOING that which MAN “THINKS” God expects of him.
Faith is the reliance upon that which God has promised him.
Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. -James 1:27
I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it’s only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I’m crawling on your shore.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
I went in seeking clarity.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgwM1Ky228
“Religion is the practice of DOING that which MAN “THINKS” God expects of him. Faith is the reliance upon that which God has promised him.”
But you’re not going to get the promise without having faith and doing what is expected of you (James 2:24; John 15:10, etc.). And: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (KJV James 1:27)
>>> But you’re not going to get the promise without having faith and doing what is expected of you
There is a reason why I capitalized and put quotes around the word “THINKS”.
Obeying God’s commands is not religion... it’s obedience.
“Obeying God’s commands is not religion... it’s obedience.”
Of course it’s religion. That’s exactly what the root word of religion means. The Latin root word has to do with being bound or constrained to something.
Hey! Be gentle with us philsophers! ;-)
The question a out religion, knowledge or faith, is actually kind of important. If you think as many Muslims do, that all you can know or need to know about righteousness is that Allah says it’s just — and he could say that about anything, then there’s very little possibility of common ground or even a reliable accommodation among different “persuasions.” (This wouod be the “faith” view.)
If, on the other hand you think that nearly everyone can work out basic principles of justice because of the common endowment of reason — even if revelation refines, guides, and, well, reveals thinks humans couldn’t work out on their own, then there are likely to be commonalities on which we can work out a modus vivendi. (This would be the epistemic or knowledge view.)
So it’s not all bibble-babble.
Not bad for a popular essay.
I met a Japanese exchange student, years ago. She was a Baptist. When I asked about her parents “religion,” she answered, “They practice the Tea Ceremony.”
>>> Of course it’s religion. That’s exactly what the root word of religion means.
I think you should do a little research in the bible to see what Jesus had to say about “religion”.
There is a difference.
Religion is the vehicle that those who don’t get the meaning of the New Covenant use to try to be worthy by their own efforts - they were rebuked for having fallen from Grace....
“I think you should do a little research in the bible to see what Jesus had to say about “religion”.”
Already have. Jesus never condemns true religion, just false religion, the religion of the Sadducees, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and so on.
“There is a difference.”
There is - but not the one you apparently imagine.
“Religion is the vehicle that those who don’t get the meaning of the New Covenant use to try to be worthy by their own efforts - they were rebuked for having fallen from Grace....”
The problem with that view is that it has more to do with late 20th early 21st century nihilism than it does with historical Christianity. It’s real popular now because we have so many people who want to empty Christianity of any absolute values that affect the believer’s actions. It’s all just a side show to the “Just Me and Jesus” movement - which has nothing to do with historic Christianity. Christ sent the Church into the world. He did not send a sentiment. He sent a Church with a visible hierarchy. He did not send youtube videos with a “I Love Jesus but Hate Religion” theme.
Satan works all the time. What he’s doing now is what he has always done. He’s attacking the Church - only this time people are actually believing they are supposed to be anti-Church to be Christian by proclaiming that there’s a difference between practicing the Christian religion and being a disciple of Christ. In reality, you can’t have one without the other, because they are properly one in the same thing.
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