Dr. S.N. Balagangadhara is director of the Research centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap (Comparative science of cultures) at Ghent University, Belgium. Balagangadhara argues that the classic view of cultural differences is the product of the social sciences, that is, this view originates in the way how Western culture has described the world and itself. Characteristic of the West's understanding of cultural differences is the assumption that all other cultures are constituted by religion or worldview, and that cultural differences are the expression of a difference of beliefs. He argues that this understanding is rooted in Christian theology, and that it is not a valid hypothesis for the scientific study of cultures. The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). ... The social sciences are a group of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... For the scientific journal named Science, see Science (journal). ...
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The Heathen in his Blindness
Contrary to the classic view of religious studies that recognises Western and Eastern religions, Balagangadhara offers a fundamental rethinking of the entity 'religion'. It could be said that Balagangadhara argues that there is a fundamental, paradigmatic difference between Abrahamic religion and non-Abrahamic entities, in the sense that the former generates a culture shaped by religion and the latter generates a culture shaped by ritual. Religious studies is the multi-disciplinary, secular study of religion. ... Religions, sects and denominations Note that the classification hereunder is only one of several possible. ... Since the late 1800s, the word paradigm (IPA: ) has referred to a thought pattern in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. ... Abrahamic religions is a term used in the study of comparative religion to describe those religions deriving from a common ancient Semitic tradition and traced by their adherents to Abraham, a patriarch whose life is narrated in the Hebrew Bible, and who is also important in the New Testament, and... A ritual is a formalised, predetermined set of symbolic actions generally performed in a particular environment at a regular, recurring interval. ...
These are some of the theses he tries to account for in his book "The Heathen in his Blindness" (1994):
- Religion is an account of the Cosmos that claims to be handed over to mankind by the Creator of the Cosmos. It is an explanatory account of the Cosmos in the sense that it claims that the universe is caused by God. But religion is more than a causal explanation of the universe. It is an account that makes the universe intelligible, that is, religion makes the universe into the embodiment of Gods Will. The universe (including all events) is not only caused by God, it is also the purpose of God: things do not only happen because God caused them, but because Gods wants them to happen. Or, in other words, things do not just happen, they happen because they were intended to happen.
- Hence, to be religious requires more than the belief in God as the Creator of the universe, it requires faith in Gods Will as embodying the purpose of the universe.
- As an an explanatorily intelligible account of the universe religion turns the universe into such an entity. It inculcates the experience of the universe as embodying a particular kind of order. This order is hidden and consists of the fact that phenomena express a deep underlying constancy. This constancy is the Will of the Creator.
- When religion states that everything in the universe is the expression of Gods purpose, this also holds for itself. In other words, religion is what it says about the universe and about itself. For humans this poses the problem of circularity - what someone says about himself is not necessarily what he is - but not for religion. Indeed, religion is not part of human reasoning, but an expression of the Will of the Creator. Hence, when studying religion human beings can not accept religion's self-description, or they will be engaging in theology. This is precisely what has happened in the study of religion untill now: the study of religion(s) has been fundamentally shaped by the Christian religion's self-description. The language of religion - Christian theology - has become the language in which is spoken of all cultures, and their "religions": religion has become its own meta-language.
- As fundamentally requiring belief and faith, religion shapes our goings about in the world: it makes us see actions as expressions of belief. In this way, religion creates a specific way of going about in the world, and of learning to go about: religion generates a configuration of learning. It teaches (the need) to know before one acts: as creatures (of God) one can not just act, one needs to know about the world (or about Gods intentions with His Creation) before one can act. The underlying idea is that acts have to be coherent with what there is in the world - one has to be true to his faith, one has to enact the Word.
- As embodying the Will of the Creator religion must become universal. Hence, religion is destined to proselytize. However, religion must also secularize. To accomplish its mission for mankind religion must not only spread horizontally, but also 'vertically'. Religion needs to acquire a less abstract form, it has to secularize its religious way of going about in the world. In short, the univerzalisation of religion is propelled by both proselytization and secularization. Balagangadhara calls this the double dynamic of religion.
- Secularism is a typically Western, religious entity: it arose in the West in the context of rejection of the religious command that mortals should submit to Gods Wil. Moreover, secularism built extensively on the critiques of Catholic practice by the Protestant Reformation, and on the latter Protestant work ethic. True to the religious way of going about, Protestantism(s) accused Catholicism of having a false religious practice, that is, they were accused of having a practice that is not in accordance with true faith, i.e. with Gods Will as revealed in His Word. Protestantism(s) proceeded then to reform this false practice and proclaimed its/their own practice as the true Christian faith. Secularization then further de-Christianized Protestant faith and enabled religion to take another step towards universalization.
- Not having received the explanatorily intelligible account of the Cosmos from the Creator, whatever there exist in the east are not religions. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, though it is said they are religions, don't exist in India. They are products of Western academics and missionaries who took the religious account of the Cosmos for universal truth: as religion states that the whole universe is created by God, this implies that religion is a cultural universal. Yet, this reasoning is part of the account that is religion, and belongs exclusively to Abrahamic entities.
- Religion is an entity that is not proper to Asia. The Hindu, Buddhist and Jain way of going about in the world was not shaped by an explanatorily intelligible account of the Cosmos or by a religious configuration of learning, but by the description of the Cosmos as ritual, offers Balagangadhara.
- (Comparative) Religious studies can only have Abrahamic religions as their object of study: religious studies dealing with non-Abrahamic cultures are de facto theological. To break out of this theological trap, the study of different societies will have to be pursued from the viewpoint of culture, taking into account that some peoples' culture is shaped by the dynamic of religion, and other peoples' culture is not.
The cosmos is thought of as an orderly or harmonious system. ... The creator god is the divine being that created the universe, according to various traditions and faiths. ... A causal system is a system that depends only on the current and previous inputs. ... Purpose is deliberately thought-through goal-directedness. ... Look up belief in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article discusses faith in a religious context. ... Metalanguage can refer to: An intermediate step in the compilation/assembly/interpreting process. ... The English language word proselytism is derived ultimately from the Greek language prefix pros (towards) and the verb erchomai (to come). ... Secularization is a contentious term because the concept of secularization can be confused with secularism, a philosophical and political movement that promotes the idea that society benefits by being less religious, whereas the opposing view is that the values and beliefs implicit in religions support a more moral and, therefore... The English language word proselytism is derived ultimately from the Greek language prefix pros (towards) and the verb erchomai (to come). ... Secularization is a contentious term because the concept of secularization can be confused with secularism, a philosophical and political movement that promotes the idea that society benefits by being less religious, whereas the opposing view is that the values and beliefs implicit in religions support a more moral and, therefore... // Definition Secularism means: in philosophy, the belief that life can be best lived by applying ethics, and the universe best understood, by processes of reasoning, without reference to a god or gods or other supernatural concepts. ... // History and origins Roots and precursors 14th Century and 15th Century Anti-hierarchical movements: Catharism, Waldensianism, and others Avignon Papacy (Babylonian Captivity of the Church), Avignon, Great Schism Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, William Tyndale Northern Renaissance Unrest in the Western Church and Empire culminated in the Avignon Papacy (1308 - 1378... The Protestant work ethic — also known as the Puritan work ethic — is a biblically based teaching on the necessity of hard work, perfection and the goodness of labor. ... This article considers Catholicism in the broadest ecclesiastical sense. ... Hinduism (सनातन धर�म; also known as San�tana Dharma, and Vaidika-Dharma) is a worldwide religious tradition that is based on teachings of the Veda scriptures. ... A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddh�rtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. Buddhism gradually spread from... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... An Abrahamic religion (also referred to as desert monotheism) is any religion derived from an ancient Semitic tradition attributed to Abraham, a great patriarch described in the Torah, the Bible and the Quran. ... World map showing location of Asia Asia is the central and eastern part of Eurasia, defined by subtracting Europe from Eurasia. ... A ritual is a formalised, predetermined set of symbolic actions generally performed in a particular environment at a regular, recurring interval. ... Religious studies is the multi-disciplinary, secular study of religion. ... An Abrahamic religion (also referred to as desert monotheism) is any religion derived from an ancient Semitic tradition attributed to Abraham, a great patriarch described in the Torah, the Bible and the Quran. ...
References
- S.N. Balagangadhara "The Heathen in his Blindness...". Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion., Manohar Books (2nd edition), New Delhi, 2005. ISBN 8-17-304608-5
- Cultural Dynamics: Symposium Volume S.N. Balagangadhara, "The Heathen in his Blindness..." : Asia, The West and the Dynamic of Religion. Sage Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), 8/2 (1996). ISSN 0921-3740 (contributions by Vivek Dhareshwar, Philip C. Almond, David Loy, David A. Pailin, Henry Rosemont Jr., Narahari Rao)
- Will Sweetman "Hinduism" and the history of "religion": Protestant presuppositions in the critique of the concept of Hinduism', Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 15/4 (2003); 'Unity and Plurality: Hinduism and the Religions of India in Early European Scholarship', Religion, 31/3 (2001); The prehistory of Orientalism: colonialism and the textual basis for Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's account of Hinduism', New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 6/2 (2004).
- Brian K. Pennington "Was Hinduism invented?" Britons, Indians and the Colonial Construction of Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2005. ISBN 0-19-516655-8
- J. Jayakiran Sebastian Conversion and its Discontents, Bangalore Theological Forum, 22/1 (2000).£
- Jakob De Roover An Unhappy Lover of Theology: Feuerbach and Contemporary Religious Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 71/3 (2003)
- Arvind Sharma (McGill University, Montreal, Canada) An Indic Contribution Towards an Understanding of the Word "Religion" and the Concept of Religious Freedom
- Vincent Geoghegan (Queen's University, Belfast, Ireland) Utopia and the Memory of Religion
See also
- Religion
- Comparing Eastern and Western religious traditions
- Religious studies
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
- Secularization
- Secularism
- Post-colonialism
Secularization is a contentious term because the concept of secularization can be confused with secularism, a philosophical and political movement that promotes the idea that society benefits by being less religious, whereas the opposing view is that the values and beliefs implicit in religions support a more moral and, therefore... // Definition Secularism means: in philosophy, the belief that life can be best lived by applying ethics, and the universe best understood, by processes of reasoning, without reference to a god or gods or other supernatural concepts. ... Post-colonialism (also known as post-colonial theory, or post-oriental theory) refers to a set of theories in continental philosophy and literature that grapple with the legacy of 19th century British and French colonial rule. ...
External links
- S.N. Balagangadhara "On Colonial Experience and the Indian Renaissance"
- Research centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap (Comparative science of cultures)
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