Signpost #1--What is Religion, Anyway?

Statistics tell us that we in the United States are approaching the point at which a majority of people do not consider themselves "religious."  Western Europe reached that point a while ago.  But behind those statistics is the question of what the survey recipients might mean by "religious" or "religion."  The popular understanding of this word, an understanding that I think is shared by both the folks who consider themselves religious as well as those who don't, is that religion has to do with an identification with a particular institution or tradition that is organized around transcendent questions and/or the engagement with a set of practices that have something to do with those transcendent practices.  So, one is religious if one identifies oneself with The Episcopal Church, or the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, or Reform Judaism, or Baha'i, or engages in practices that are associated with one of those entities, or (more likely) both to some degree.

By that standard, I am definitely "religious," and I have been so all my life.  On March 19, 1978, at the age of a bit more than a month, I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, and as such became a formal member of the Roman Catholic Church.  From that date until the summer of 2016, I practiced on a more or less consistent basis the rites associated with the Roman Catholic Church.  Beginning in the summer of 2016, I shifted to the worship practices of the Episcopal Church, and I officially associated myself with the Episcopal Church in the fall of 2017.  I have been an active member in good standing of the Episcopal Church ever since.

The thing is, though, I don't really think that's a good definition of what religion is, notwithstanding its popularity.  I think that's mistaking two expressions of being religious for what religion actually is.  I would suggest that religion is a personal disposition toward seeking some transcendent meaning in life.  Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval Western Christian theologian and philosopher, framed religio as a virtue (Summa Theologica II-II, Question 81, Article 2), and in Aquinas's Aristotelian-influenced understanding of virtue that means an internal disposition that one cultivates within oneself.  Aquinas defines religio as the seeking of God, but I think (for reasons I will get into more in the next post) that means both more and less than many might assume.  Here, though, I think the key is not to get hung up right now on the specifics on what is being sought.  So long as one is seeking toward some horizon of meaning, then one is engaged in religio.  

Also, by "transcendent," I merely mean (at least for now) something that is outside of yourself and has relevance to objects other than yourself.  If one believes in some principle of justice that applies not just to you, but to others as well, that is a transcendent horizon of meaning.  To the extent you are seeking out what that principle might be, you are engaged in religio.  Beyond the kinds of forms and institutions we usually associate with "religion," I would definitely say that various sorts of political and social forms would qualify as expressions of religio under my proposed definition.  20th Century Communism certainly would count as religio, and I would argue that some of the more expansive understandings of Capitalism would as well.  I even think that a certain sort of environmentalism qualifies.

The point in saying this is not to suggest that those who view themselves as non-religious are operating under some sort of "false consciousness," nor to get into a conservative-inflected debate about how certain (usually left-leaning) political programs are a substitute for, and thus opposed to, "traditional religion."  I would instead suggest that many, or perhaps most, of the people who describe themselves as "non-religious" (accurately, according to the commonly understood definition) are nevertheless engaged in religio to one extent or another.  I would also suggest, along the lines offered by Aquinas, that the action of being religious, religio, is at a fundamental level the same act regardless of the particular path that one might take or the end that one seeks.  This is not to say in some reductive way "all paths are true," or even less so "all paths are the same;" merely that the act of walking the path is the same regardless of the path walked.  

Indeed, one thing that seems to be common across many of the great traditions is the use of travel as a metaphor to describe the act of religio--walking a path, climbing a mountain, going out into the desert, etc.  The idea, consistent with the framing of religio as a virtue, is that one must do something in order to discover and "live into" the transcendent horizon of meaning.  This is why "religion" is associated with a set of practices, the doing that is the development of one's orientation toward the transcendent.  In other words, practices of various sorts are a necessary part of religio, but the practices are a product of religio and not religio itself.  This core metaphor of travel also suggests that the doing of religio will have ups and downs, twists and turns.  I am not aware of anyone who would describe the search for meaning in their own lives as being completely free of variation and change over the course of the process, nor am I aware of any account or system that promises such an outcome.  I think the ups and downs are an inherent, perhaps even necessary, component of religio.

I suppose it would be conceptually possible to engage in religio in a completely independent basis, without reference to anyone else's process of religio.  I don't think anyone actually does this, though.  Instead, as a practical matter we all engage with this process armed with some signposts to look out for in our individual journey.  This is particularly true as the prospect of seeking out and discovery transcendent meaning is, well, kind of overwhelming.  Where do I start?  What even am I looking for?  How will I know if I find it?  Having some tradition as, at a minimum, a starting point is I think basically essential and unavoidable.  And this is where the idea of "religion" gets entangled in institutions--which of the traditions have you situated yourself in?  As with practices, this institutional attachment is inherent to religio, but is not religio itself.  Practices and traditions are a second-order element of religio, where the journey itself is the first order.      

What is the point of all of this?  As the statistics show, the concept of "religion" and "religious" is becoming increasingly alienating to many folks.  And, because it is so alienating, folks have a tendency to tune out whenever a certain sort of talk that they associate with "religion" begins.  I get that, and I am not interested in fighting over terminology or telling people that their associations with those terms are wrong.  At the same time, the fact that folks increasingly don't associate with "religion" does not translate into being uninterested in transcendent meaning, or religio as I have described it here.  After all, the self-identification we see for people who do not engage in religious practice is "spiritual but not religious."  There is a seeking there.  Even though I happen to identify with a rather traditional expression that would certainly qualify as "religion," I feel that there are is a baseline commonality between everyone who is engaged in walking the path (as I believe that the act of walking the path is a singular act, there is a sense in which all possible paths are "valid," though I don't really think that's a particularly helpful or meaningful framing).  I hope to be able, in some small way, to provide anyone who finds his or her way to these posts some basis for talking about our respective journeys.   

It is to that journey that the rest of these posts is going to attempt in some small way to speak to.  This series is going to framed almost exclusively through the lens of a particular path, Christianity, for two reasons.  First, I think the only serious way to talk about a path is to do so in terms of one's own practice of walking that path, and my practice has been exclusively that of Christianity (and of a particular sort, that I would describe as small-c catholic Christianity).  Otherwise, you end up with an encyclopedia article, quoting facts about "religion" as opposed to speaking to religio in a deeper and more interesting way.  The second reason is that Christianity is really the only one of the great paths that I feel I know enough about to speak intelligently regarding.  I know a little bit about Judaism in the way one must (or should, at least) as a Christian, but beyond that my knowledge of Islam, the traditions of the Indian subcontinent, other Asian traditions, or those of the pre-Columbian Americas is very scant.  And, for reasons that perhaps will become clear, I think the more modern "political" and social paths like Communism, or something like a purely materialist scientific system, are insufficient to explain the bigger questions we all have, so I don't really think it's worth propounding the answers they provide that I think are unsatisfying.  But, that's just me.    

Anyway, let's begin.