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A critique of "religion" as a cross-cultural category1

TIMOTHY FITZGERALD

Abstract

This article has three related purposes. One is to argue the inadequacy of the

concept of religion as an analytical concept. I point to vagueness and impreci-sion in the use of the notion of religion in religious studies texts and I also referto my own research in India and Japan to substantiate my claim that religion is

virtually useless as a cross-cultural analytical concept. The second purpose is to

suggest ways of representing and re-representing the extensive and importantwork which is being produced by scholars who work in religion departments. Ialso try to place my argument in a wider context of western ideology. I con-clude that the confusion generated by the concept of religion cannot be ex-

plained only as a category mistake. Instead, it is better understood as a form ofmystification generated by its disguised ideological function.

1. Introduction

For analytical purposes, in this article I will distinguish between the theo-

logical and the non-theological uses of the word "religion" and related ex-

pressions such as "religions" and "world religions". In reality, many scholarsmuddle up different uses of the word, often in the same text, and this is truewhether they do or do not have a tacit theological agenda. Further, I as-sume that phenomenology is fundamentally a form of liberal ecumenical

theology, and phenomenologists tie the meaning of the word "religion" to

"faith or belief in God or the transcendent". Scholars have shown, for ex-

1. This article is an elaboration of a paper read to the theory and methodology section of theInternational Associationfor the History of Religion's Congressheld in Mexico City, August1995.I am grateful to the participants for their useful comments and criticisms,especiallyBri-an Bockingand Russ McCutcheon whose interest and encouragementhas continued up to itspublication.A short paper on this theme was publishedin Diskus 3 (1996), 35-47.

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ample, how writers such as Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade have turnedwhat is basically a theological/metaphysical assumption into a theory of reli-

gion (Segal1983:

98;Smart 1978:

176;Smith 1987:

52).And

thoughnot all

phenomenologists are completely at one with these writers, their influencehas pervaded and even created the religious studies genre. I discuss the lib-eral ecumenical model of religion below.2

On the other hand, many scholars working within religion departments donot have a theological agenda but continue to use the word "religion" in a

way which keeps it anchored in the transcendent. Sometimes it is used to re-fer to soteriology, in the sense of a personal quest for salvation located in atranscendent realm. This sometimes carries with it the modernist notion of

religion as a private assent to doctrine, an individual commitment to achurch, a choice which can be defined as belonging to a mode of being whichis hived from the realm of "secular" values. When this modern western no-tion is transferred to India, for example, "caste" becomes a bit of societywhich is somehow tacked on to religion. Others use it to mean something like"transactions with superhuman beings", which can have a soteriological nu-ance but can also refer to a supernatural technology for solving this-worldlyproblems.

Then there are those scholars working in religion departments who real-ize, with different degrees of theoretical clarity, that such ideas as "faith inGod" or "belief in gods" cannot define a field of enquiry since transactionswith the supernatural (itself a dubious cross-cultural category, since it is am-

biguous whether the supernatural is thought of as ontologically transcen-dent or a part of nature) cannot be understood in isolation from a whole

range of other ritual institutions in the context of which they form a sym-bolic system. The study of religion at this point becomes a hermeneutical

problem of interpreting cultures. Religion is used by such scholars to meanvalues or symbolic systems, regardless of whether or not ideas about "super-natural" beings are involved.

What has happened in the latter case is that the centre of analytical grav-ity has in fact shifted from the transcendent to human institutions, from

gods to values. But at this point all definitional focus is lost because thescholar is often not willing to re-conceptualize his or her analytical frame-work. Thus, one finds in the published work of scholars working within reli-

gion departments the term "religion" being used to refer to such diverse in-stitutions as totems, the principle of hierarchy, Christmas cakes, witchcraft,Unconditioned Reality, the Rights of Man, the National Essence, Marxism

2. Russell McCutcheon's useful survey (1997:chapter 4) of religion texts effectivelyillustratesthe dominant ecumenicaltheologicalpremises behind the study of religionas it is institution-alizedin America and Britain.

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and Freudianism, the Tea Ceremony, Nature, Ethics, and so on. But it seemsobvious that these have very little in common in the abstract, and that eachcan only be understood as institutions which require interpretation in highlyspecific cultural contexts. In this case I argue that "religion" dissolves or

ought to dissolve without remainder into ideology or culture understood asinstitutionalized values and symbolic systems. Another way of talking aboutit would be in the Durkheimian language of collective representations.

In other words, when we talk about "religion" in a non-theological way,we are fundamentally talking about culture in the sense of institutions im-bued with symbolic meaning through collective recognition. Further, I sug-gest that the proposal made by some writers that religion, while part of cul-

ture, is a distinct sub-category of culture, fails. In that case, I argue that theword "religion", with its theological and supernaturalist resonances, is ana-

lytically redundant. It picks out nothing distinctive and it clarifies nothing. It

merely distorts the field.

1.1. Soteriology

This, however, does not mean that the concept of "soteriology" must also beabandoned. Soteriology can be given a more precise analytical usage than

religion. It can be defined as the answer to the question "what must I do tobe saved?" (Gombrich 1988). Soteriology refers to culturally-produced be-liefs and practices concerning the individual's salvation or liberation from aworld of suffering, evil and death, and the existence of an invisible worldwhere these imperfections are negated and the meaning of life is finally re-vealed. This concept does seem to have some cross-cultural validity sincethere are institutions defined by doctrines of salvation or liberation in somenon-western and non-Christian societies.

However, for it to be analytically useful, such a concept must be used in a

fundamentally sociological way, for we cannot assume without considerableresearch and analysis within the totality of a culture's institutions what the

meaning of the beliefs is. Even where soteriologies clearly exist, as in monas-tic Buddhism in Sri Lanka, they exist in a context of institutionalized mean-

ings. For example, though the Sangha is nominally defined by a sophisticatedsoteriology, it is also structured on caste lines, and has a significant relation tothe polity, and these factors need to be understood together, rather than inisolation from each other (Gombrich 1971, 1988). However, Buddhism inMaharashtra provides a different example: what at first sight appears to be adoctrine about salvation of the individual turns out to have an additional nu-ance, for example revolutionary liberation for an underclass oppressed by rit-ual hierarchy (Fitzgerald 1994). And if, in the case of Japanese Buddhism, we

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started with the analytical assumption that it is also a soteriological doctrineconcerning the liberation of the individual, then we would probably create anartificial entity and understand little about Japan (Scharf 1993). In otherwords we cannot use "soteriology" as the a priori defining characteristic withwhich to begin an analysis, even though we may sometimes find it a useful

analytical tool within the process. Even less can we found academic depart-ments and organize coherent publishing lists around it.

1.2. The transcendent, transcendental values

Another term frequently used for the purposes of defining religion is "thetranscendent". Now it may be possible to argue that all cultures in somesense create transcendental values which are perceived to be unchangingand eternal (Bloch 1985,1989). But the word is necessarily of such a generaland unspecific nature that it presupposes considerable analysis of the cul-ture in question before any significant content can be given to the idea. Forexample, the Judaeo-Christian God is considered to be transcendent, and so

perhaps, at a pinch, is the National Essence of Japanese nihonjinron ideol-

ogy. But these ideas have different meanings and ontological implications,and the only way we can approach them is through the cultural contexts or

symbolic systems within which they operate.Again, this word has, like the other terms mentioned, been so thoroughly

penetrated by western theological and ontological associations that it is

likely to import disjunctive meanings into an analysis, either unwittingly or

deliberately for ecumenical purposes. Therefore it cannot form part of adefinition of a putatively distinct subject of investigation. It is merely one of

those words which, within the context of a particular cultural analysis, mayturn out to have some use.

1.3. The sacred

In parallel there is the need to distinguish between the theological and the

non-theological uses of the word "sacred". For phenomenologists with a fun-

damentally theological agenda, things, people, places, and times are sacredbecause they are symbols for, manifestations of, or somehow related to, Godor the Transcendent. For the non-theological usage, things are considered sa-cred by specific communities because those people value them in a funda-mental way, or because they symbolize the values of the community, and it isthe task of the researcher to try to understand those collective values in thecontext of their actual institution in society. For such scholars whether or not

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such a concept as an ontologically distinct transcendental entity or super-natural realm is symbolically represented in the culture is itself one of the

thingsto be

investigated,not an a

prioridefinitional

assumption.

2. The control of meanings

I assume that ecumenical theology in the form of phenomenology has de

facto institutional control over the meaning of the category "religion", andto a lesser extent over terms such as "sacred", "soteriology", and "transcen-dence". The main problem, however, is the concept of religion, for we donot call our departments The Department of Transcendent Studies, or The

Department of the Study of the Sacred, or The Soteriological Studies Cen-tre. "Religion" stands in for these and attempts to embrace them beneaththe folds of its cloak (to adapt an expression from Louis Dumont). How-ever, the word is so thoroughly imbued with Judaeo-Christian monotheisticassociations and World Religions Ecumenicism that it tends to also colourthe meaning of the other three.

Even attempts by scholars with a non-theological agenda to refine the

concept of religion and make it work as a non-theological analytical toolfail, for meanings are not merely a question of definition but also of power.I suggest that this category is now far too deeply embedded in a legitima-tion process within western societies, in the dominant relation of those so-cieties with non-western societies, or with various ethnic minorities livingwithin western societies, to be successfully liberated from the semantic holdof liberal ecumenical theology.

Consequently the way forward for those scholars working within religiondepartments who do not have a theological agenda, but who recognize thephenomena usually described as religion as being fundamentally locatedwithin the arena of culture and its symbolic systems, is to redescribe and re-

represent their subject matter as the study of institutionalized values in dif-ferent societies and the relation of those values to power and its legitimation.

Personally, I would be happy to call this Humanities or Cultural Studies,although whether or not this is the best formulation can be argued about bythe community of scholars. It is true that the concept of "other cultures" it-

self has many problems, as does anthropology understood as the science ofstudying other cultures. Critics of anthropology such as Bernard McGrane

might argue that moving from religion to culture does not answer the fun-damental issue, which is one of cognitive imperialism which claims to talkabout alien cultures without having a dialogue with actual people (McGrane1989: 127). Anthropology and the study of other cultures is a statementabout our own identity in relation to the Other, rather than a veridicial ac-

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count of the Other. The Other is therefore merely our own construction.

Accordingly, culture, and the relativity of cultures, is merely one of a list of

historically changing waysin which Europe has interpreted the alienness of

the non-European Other.There are many problems with this argument but there are also un-

doubtedly some fundamental issues at stake which cannot be ignored in aself-critical discipline. On the other hand "religion" is an institutionalizedvalue as well as an analytical concept in our own culture, and it is preciselyby developing a critical account of culture that we can put ourselves in a

position from where this becomes apparent. My argument is that the studyof cultures as institutionalized values and their relation to power, includingthe institutionalized values of our own academic praxis, is more likely to besensitive to our mystifying objectification of our own and of other culturesthan the present uncritical tradition of comparative religion. Indeed, "religi-on" itself is part of our cognitive imperialism. It is precisely by shifting ourfocus to look at the relation between values and power that "religion" canbe put into critical perspective.

In general then, my proposal is that when we talk of "religion" in a non-

theological sense, we really mean "culture", understood as the study of in-stitutionalized values, and the interpretation of symbolic systems, includingthe ritualization of everyday life. If we are to use the word "sacred" (thoughI am not convinced that we need it) it can be used to refer to those thingswhich are fundamentally valued by a community; that these values can beidentified as symbolically ordered and reproduced in a whole range of insti-tutions. Whether or not "supernatural" entities or a transcendental locationfor the sacred are involved, or in what sense values themselves may be saidto be represented as transcendental is merely one of the things to be inves-

tigated, and by no means an a priori part of the definition of our subjectmatter.

3. The theological legacy of "religion"

For various fortuitous reasons, which must include the open-minded, liberal,and critical example set by some outstanding individual scholars, the study

of religion has opened up creative possibilities for the humanities in gen-eral. Religion departments often bring together outstanding scholars work-

ing in a range of fields such as languages, history, anthropology, philosophy,and so forth. But the problem as I perceive it is that one dominant part ofthe intellectual legacy is theological, and this theological legacy has, throughthe agency of ecumenicism and phenomenology, institutionalized "religion"in a way which does not reflect the actual research which many of us are

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doing, especially in cultures with different values from western societies. Inthis sense the idea of "studying religion and religions" imports a theological

agendainto what

representsitself

(withsome

justice)as a

non-theologicalacademic humanistic enquiry.I must stress that this is not an anti-metaphysical argument. All para-

digms rest on metaphysical assumptions including my own. For example thevalue of cultural criticism understood as self-criticism is not an empiricalproposition. It is a stated metaphysical assumption. Another metaphysicalassumption which is central to Marx and Durkheim and which I basicallyaccept is that society cannot be reduced to the sum total of interactions be-tween individual human

beingsin the

waythat liberal laissez

faire politicaleconomy would have it. This is not an empirical proposition and it cannotbe falsified, even in principle. But one can argue, I think persuasively, thatthe holistic, sociological view makes more sense of our overall experience.These issues of how we should look at the world and how we should inter-

pret institutions take place within a framework of metaphysical assumptionswhich always need to be made explicit. In this sense we are not differentfrom theologians.

My argumentis

against theology masqueradingas

somethingelse, that is,

the so-called science of religion or comparative religions, and entails an en-

quiry of a limited kind into what reasons can be offered for this masquer-ade. What I am arguing is that theology and what is at present called relig-ious studies ought to be two logically separate levels of intellectual activity,but that in actual fact the latter is conceptually and institutionally domi-nated by the former. This domination is disguised because it is embedded inour a priori central analytical category, and abandoning that category alto-

gether appears, even to scholars who are themselves critically aware of the

legacy of phenomenology, to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.When I use the word "disguise", I am not referring to a conspiracy or to

bad faith, though I do not see how we can abandon the idea of mystifica-tion in the analysis of institutions and the reproduction of values, both ourown and other people's. But though criticism is in general a weak point in

religious studies, clearly there is also a vigorous critical debate among somescholars who happen to work in religion departments, albeit a minoritygroup, and my own argument is situated there. This journal has opened up aforum precisely for critical expression within the community of scholars,and for analysis of the "archaeology" of the "religion" category. However,generally-speaking I think that what Katherine Young concluded after heruseful survey of the idea of a "world religion" applies more generally to

"religion" and "religions": "there has been little critical reflection on theterm; its reputation rests on usage and unexamined presuppositions"(Young 1992:125).

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It does seem reasonable to hold that the way categories come to be insti-tutionalized can sometimes generate significant confusion in the way we usethem.

Whether,in theoretical

terms,we can

saythat this confusion is

gener-ated by what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, following Karl

Mannheim, described as the gap between manifest and latent meanings andfunctions is open to debate (Berger - Luckmann 1967: 11). It might, for in-

stance, lead us into a version of the mistake which some scholars have

pointed to in Eliade, that we assume we understand the real meaning of

people's institutions better than they do. In Eliade's case this takes the formof assuming that institutions which have no obvious reference to a transcen-dental

ontologydo in fact make such a reference. But I argue that the pres-

entation of a basically theological idea as a "science of religion" is a confu-sion bordering on mystification. Sometimes the confusion can be sorted out

through the kind of intellectual work which we can find, for example, in the

pages of this journal. But in some cases, and I believe "religion" is one of

them, where there exists competition for control over the use of a categorybetween parties with fundamentally different agendas, then intellectualclarification may not be sufficient.

There are various points from which this tacit theological agenda and itshistorical and cultural construction can be viewed, a few of which I identifyin the final section of this paper. One obvious way it can be traced is byway of the semantic origins of the word "religion", and its derivation from

faith, belief in God, and Christian soteriology. There has, it is true, been a

long and complex history of refashioning the concept to mediate a western

identity with a changing "non-European Other". I suggest, however, thatthe very idea of religion smuggles these ancient semantic associations intoour thinking and writing at the very moment when even those of us who donot have theological intentions are struggling to represent it to ourselves ina non-theological form. And this disguise has been strengthened and giventheoretical respectability by phenomenology of religion, which, as I have

suggested, is essentially a branch of liberal ecumenical theology but which

presents "religion" and its various manifestations (i.e., "the religions") as an

authentic, distinct, and sui generis cross-cultural object of knowledge.

4. "Religion" as ideological construct

As suggested just above, the concept of religion and religions as genuineobjects of knowledge in the world, and religious studies as a distinct set of

methodologies, is an ideological assertion which strives to recreate theOther in its own image. It sometimes succeeds in doing this, at least superfi-cially. Various examples can be given of this. For example, the scholar Helen

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Hardacre has said that, at the time of the Meiji Restoration in Japan, "[t]henotion of Buddhism and Shinto as separate religions, the idea of religion it-

self, and the term 'Shinto' were all assuming a place in Japan's intellectualhistory for the first time" (1988: 294). Other examples would be the inven-tion of modern neo-Vedanta, the invention of the World Religion Hinduism

(Fitzgerald 1990), and the invention of Buddhist modernism. Modernizationas the superficial imitation of western institutions appears to have broughtreligions into existence in various non-western cultures. Not all non-westernsocieties have words equivalent to our "religion" but some have acquiredone and the concept has also entered in at the juridical level. Thus "religi-

on" and religions, or some local equivalent (in Japan it is shukyo), are termswhich have acquired a degree of autonomous usage in non-western cultures.For example, in Japan "religions" are sometimes described as shukyo hojinor "religious juridical persons", a status which confers on a whole range of

organizations special privileges such as tax concessions. This was partly a re-sult of the American-written constitution which, since the end of the secondWorld War, made a provision for "freedom of religious worship". Some ofthese are newly invented traditional religions such as "Shinto" which re-

package genuinelytraditional institutions in a new form of the kind

sug-gested from the quotation above by Hardacre. Others, while sometimes

claiming ancient lineage in the way that Sokka Gakkai claims to be de-scended from Nichiren, are still acknowledged to be new, and are describedas the New and New New Religions.

But we cannot take this as evidence that there is some universally valid

type of human experience being indicated by the word "religion". On the

contrary, the way in which "religion" or its local equivalents is used in theactual institutional context must itself be one of the

objectsof our

study.For

the confusions which abound at the conceptual level in the analysis of "reli-

gion" suggest that, fundamentally, the idea cannot be clearly articulated inits relation to other prevalent analytical categories, and this mistake (I sug-gest) has been generated in general by cognitive imperialism and specifi-cally by the de facto institutional dominance of western theology throughthe auspices of phenomenology. The attempt to remake the world accordingto one's own dominant ideological categories is a process to which thedominant elites of non-western countries may themselves contribute.

It is true, as Jeppe Sinding Jensen said in a well-argued article (1993: 123)that all our analytical concepts are constructs, and they can be discussed, de-

veloped, and refined. He suggests that, through the intellectual work ofcriticism, we can free ourselves of the unwanted implications of a conceptand reconstruct it to serve the purposes of the scholarly community. This isa sensible argument and generally I would agree with it but in the case of

"religion" it does not work for there are too many interests at stake, includ-

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ing questions of power, an issue which rarely finds its way into texts on reli-

gion. When there is competition for hegemony over the meaning of a con-

cept, as there is between those with a fundamentally theological agenda,such as the Eliadians, and those who wish to place religion "squarely withinthe realm of culture" (Jensen 1993: 121), then the latter can relinquish the

concept as too heavily loaded with specific theological/metaphysical reso-

nances, and leave it to the interest group with whom it originated.

5. The mystification of "religion" and the legitimating functionof

"religiousstudies"

We need to look at the legitimating function that "religious studies" plays inour social order, what myths and values it seeks to propagate. Only then canwe get any understanding why it is, for example, that "reductionism" shouldcause such anxiety among the phenomenologists (Idinopulos - Yonan 1994).For I would suggest that a great deal of the debate is about the defence of aform of transcendence which guarantees "objectivity" and "universality" todominant western interests, and the

perceived ontologicalthreat that differ-

ent ways of looking at the world pose. Though I cannot establish this here, Ibelieve that this western concept of transcendence is historically connectedwith the distinction between fact and value, itself still a dominant concept inscientific rationality. Though I would want to defend scientific method

against some forms of radical relativism, I think it can still also be true thatthis distinction between fact and value too easily allows ideologically moti-vated assertions about the world to appear as objective and unassailablefacts. It is anyway not enough to call the phenomenologists "cry babies" asIvan Strenski does (Strenski 1994: 103); for this does not explain to us whatthe root source of the resistance to reductionism is; nor does it help us tounderstand why, as Strenski correctly observes, philosophically sophisticatedreductionists such as Robert Segal "fall into the theological trap of the anti-

reductionists, and perpetuate their wrong-headed agendas" (Strenski 1994:

95). I suggest that until we can develop more analytical consciousness of the

ideological basis of "religion", then we cannot understand its power to mys-tify even the most competent and critical scholars.

For example, although ecumenical theology is designed to build bridgesof "interfaith dialogue" between the "world religions", it equally builds

bridges between imperialist western polities and their colonized native

elites, and between the dominant ideology and its ethnic minorities. In the

post-colonial world these relations of dominance and subordination havebeen seen to contribute to the on-going material inequality that exists be-tween the west and the third world. However, we have failed to identify

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the way in which the analysis of this material inequality, when it is shiftedto the realm of an apparent equality in the context of transcendent God, is

mystified. Phenomenology clothes and thereby obscures this endeavour byrepresenting itself as a scientific theory responding to putative empiricalfacts concerning human "religiosity", conceived as an aspect of human re-

ality quite distinctive from the "secular" aspect. The implication is that all

adequate cultures must make this distinction between the religious and the

secular, and accord to the religious realm certain distinctive kinds of be-liefs and emotions about God. If they do not, then religion departments inwestern universities and their non-western surrogates will strive to supply

them.This may also explain why in the debate about religion and reductionism

surprisingly little attention is actually paid to the wide range of differentcultural contexts within which scholars who are employed in religion de-

partments are actually researching. If this were done, religion as a presumedgeneral concept that picks out something real and distinctive in the worldwould seem to dissolve, exposing fully to view the Judaeo-Christian theo-

logical core of the debate. Furthermore, the issue of reductionism would no

longerseem to be about

something vaguelycalled

"religion". Instead,it

would be seen to be about the perceived threat of ontological reduction ofa culturally-specific concept of God.

6. Religion as a sub-category of culture: Case studies

Jensen argues, in the context of his discussion of Clifford Geertz, that "to

arguethat

religionis an

analyticallydistinct realm of culture is not to

sepa-rate it from culture but to position it within culture as a fundamentally se-miotic phenomenon." (Jensen 1993: 121)

I agree that what many scholars in religion departments are studying is

culture, but I do not agree that religion can be usefully separated from cul-ture analytically, at least not in the way Jensen advocates, and perhaps notat all. The analytical distinction within culture which he advocates is defined

by interaction with superhuman agents, for Jensen agrees with the workingdefinition of Hans Penner that "[r]eligion is a verbal and non-verbal struc-ture of interaction with superhuman beings" (cited in Jensen 1993: 110). Butthis notion that our subject is fundamentally defined by "interaction with

superhuman beings" is wrong.3 Admittedly, there is a subtle shift of nuance

3. A few pages later Jensen broadens the parameters of "religion" to worlds of sociallycon-structed and controlled human meaning that involve forms of communication with whateveris considered sacred by the participants in a given social context, or, as mentioned earlier,

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semblances to the traditional Sangha. But if the entire analysis was con-trolled by such a priori categories, it would tear one aspect of a complexcultural situation out of context. For it would be forced to

ignore,under the

dictates of its own self-imposed a priori approach, a whole spectrum of so-

cio-political and ritual factors without which one cannot claim to under-stand Buddhism in Maharashtra.

However the researcher might then begin to understand (as I myself did)that the meditation and the puja cannot be separated out as a genuinelydistinct areas of research separated from the economic, political, and more

broadly ritual aspects. This realization might come in various ways. For ex-

ample,the researcher will notice that on all Buddhists shrines there is a pic-

ture of Gotama Buddha and a picture of Dr. Ambedkar. Gotama is dressedin the traditional rags of the renouncer or sitting crossed legged under thebodhi tree. In contrast, Dr. Ambedkar is depicted as wearing a blue suit and

heavily-framed spectacles. Frequently in Buddhist iconography Ambedkar isalso carrying a large book, which represents either the Republican Constitu-tion of India (which, as the first Law Minister of Independent India, he vir-

tually wrote) or else the power of literacy and education in a more generalsense. What is being "worshipped" here, and what does liberation mean tothese people?

The implications seem both obvious and profound. Just as an analysis ofthe tradition of meditation and soteriology stemming from Gotama needsto be placed in the context of renunciation more generally, and its relationto the Brahmin and the King; so an analysis of Ambedkar Buddhism will

try to understand the shift of meanings in such ideas as enlightenment andliberation and their relation to modern political and educational aspirationsof people whose identity is still defined by traditional notions of untoucha-

bility. Faced with this, the researcher may then try to extend the meaning of

"religion" to take these other aspects into account. This would have to in-clude a commitment to liberation from untouchability through various

agencies including: (1) political (the Republican Party); (2) social (self-im-provement through education); (3) ritual and economic combined (with-drawal of traditional balutedari duties in the villages); (4) geographical (byleaving the villages and seeking factory work and more anonymity in the

big cities); and (5) traditional soteriological means (meditation retreats and

studying Buddhist texts). Liberation and enlightenment have all these nu-ances and more.

At the same time, contradictions which arise out of the complex identityof Buddhists have to be considered: (1) a commitment to egalitarianism,and yet the continued practice of untouchability by Buddhists towardsother lower untouchable castes; (2) an ideological denial of the efficacy orexistence of gods and goddesses and yet a continued widespread association

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with the Mariai cult (amongst others); (3) and an ideological commitmentto love marriages and yet the almost total practice of caste (and often even

sub-caste) endogamy. But now religion as a concept has not only become

totally unwieldy and imprecise, but it picks out nothing distinctive. The re-searcher is confronted with a web of institutions and values and needs more

precise analytical categories. It was as a consequence of this kind of processthat I developed an analysis in terms of the previously mentioned catego-ries of ritual, politics, and soteriology.

7. The use context: Family resemblances and the over-extended family4

In my view we have to look at the actual usage of the word "religion" in abroad range of religious studies texts to see how writers actually use it. Ihave been suggesting that the word is used by scholars who work in religiondepartments, and who publish their books and articles in religion lists, in in-

compatible ways, often within the same text, though the various uses are

rarely brought into focus and are as often implicit as explicit. As previouslysuggested, the dominant, controlling use refers to beliefs and practices de-fined by their relation to the sacred understood as God or the transcendent.This I have characterized as the theological usage which is inherent to the

phenomenology of religion.This is then often extended to "gods", "the supernatural", or "the super-

human" in an attempt to make the definition appear more generally appli-cable, as though this will give us the genus of which there are particular spe-cies, the religions and the world religions. But at this point various boundaryproblems arise between religion and magic, religion and witchcraft, religionand belief in ghosts, religion and totemism, and a host of others. But this isnot the end of the problem, because from this monotheistic theologicalpoint of view the word travels by way of an ever-extending mass of super-human and supernatural entities and relationships and extends to a host of

equally vague items (e.g., marriage, diet, kingship, gift exchange, etc.). Itshould be apparent, then, that the attempt to universalize and naturalizewhat is in reality a specific, historical, culturally-generated theological dis-course on "religion", when transformed into the ecumenical model of the"world religions", leads into a situation where any kind of analytical studyof the word must be effectively abandoned.

4. I have criticized the argument from family resemblances,and the notion that the actual useof the word religionshowsus its meaning,in greater detail in my article in Religion(1996).

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But as I already suggested, one problem is that it is not only ecumenical

theologians and phenomenologists who make this move. There are also

many scholars working within religion departments who have no theologi-cal intention at all, who are fundamentally studying values and culture in

something like the sense specified by Jensen, but who nevertheless acceptthe definitional or demarcating boundaries basically set by the theologians.Such scholars are burdened by their institutional context with a conceptwhich is simultaneously (i) too narrow (the theological usage) to be true tothe actualities of cultures with fundamentally different values and social re-

lations, and (ii) too general (the all-inclusive usage) to pick out anythingdistinctive. The all-inclusive usage renders "religion" meaningless as an ana-

lytical concept. It picks out nothing distinctive - Christmas cakes, Nature,the value of hierarchy, vegetarianism, witchcraft, veneration of the Emperor,the Rights of Man, supernatural technology, possession, amulets, charms, thetea ceremony, ethics, ritual in general, the Imperial Rescript of Education,the motor show, salvation, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism, marriage, gift ex-

change, and so on. There is not much within culture which cannot be in-cluded as "religion".5

One attempt to deal with this boundless range of religious manifesta-tions is the family resemblance theory of religion, employed by various writ-ers such as Ninian Smart (1973), Peter Byrne (1988), and Benson Saler

(1993).6 By claiming that the meaning of the word "religion" is to be foundin its use, scholars (including editors) may be in danger of believing theyhave found a philosophical justification for evading any kind of definitionalcontrol over the word at all. After all, if actual usage defines the meaning,then we merely have to look and see how it is in fact used. But I suggestthat when we do look and see we find nothing distinctive in the use, excepta tendency when in trouble to fall back on "belief in God or gods" as a fail-safe mechanism. Lack of definitional control means lack of control overwhat is included and what is excluded, for there are no stated criteria for

justifying a decision.There is not enough space to give a detailed refutation of this family re-

semblance theory; I do suggest, however, that it leads willy-nilly to this con-

vergence between religion and ideology or symbolic systems. The only thingwhich stops religion simply from dissolving into ideology, symbolic systems,or values is an insistence that religious ideologies are distinct from non-re-ligious ideologies because they include references to the supernatural or the

5. This convergence of religion with ideology in general has been noticed by Anders Jeffner(1988).However,Jeffner does not develop or indicate a very interesting notion of ideology.

6. I have not yet seen Professor Saler's book and so cannot do justice to his version of this ar-gument.

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superhuman. In Smart's version of family resemblances, for example, thereis still claimed to be a significant analytical difference between "religionsproper" and "religion-like" ideologies such as Marxism. Thus, when bound-

ary disputes become consciously problematic, then all paths seem to leadback to belief in the supernatural.

8. "Religions", "world religions", and the substantialist fallacy

In a preceding paragraph, while discussing the use of the concept soteriology,I used the general term "Buddhism" to refer to Theravada Buddhism inSouth Asia, Buddhism in Maharashtra, and Japanese Buddhism. It is easy to

slip into the habit of thinking that these are three different manifestations ofone essence, the soteriology Buddhism. This, it seems to me, is the fallacy ofthe world religion approach which dominates so much of school and collegereligious studies. It is, of course true that there are historical and philosophi-cal links between these different culturally-situated institutions, and of coursehistorical studies are important in this context. But the connections in termsof people's own understanding may be remote. The "Buddhists" of Ma-harashtra live in a significantly different semantic universe from the "Bud-dhists" of Japan. Our first task is to study one or other or all of these institu-tions in their actual context. We might then venture some opinions aboutcross-cultural linkages, assuming we were not overwhelmed by the pro-foundly different semantic universes in which these institutions exist. This no-tion that Buddhism is an entity with an essence which can be described andlisted with other such entities as the religions or the world religions, can bedescribed as a substantialist fallacy, a case of misplaced concreteness.

9. Religious studies as an ideological construction

One problem for analysis is to understand the historical origins of this sub-stantialist notion of religion, religions, and world religions. Another is to un-derstand its connections with ecumenical theology under its theoretical dis-

guise of phenomenology. This is the problem of "religion" as an aspect of

modern western ideology in general. This brings us to a third problem, whichis the ideological role of religious studies as an agency for mediating the rela-tions between rich western nations and the post-colonial third world.

This is a vastly complex issue and would require a book in itself. I can

only sketch here some suggestions. I would stress that, though a historicalcontext can help to show up the ideological role of religious studies in themodern world, the argument contained in this paper up to this point does

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not depend on all the details of the sketch which follows being correct. Thisis merely an exploratory framework, though one which I suggest we need to

develop if we are adequately to understand our own institution and theconceptual confusion at its core.

The following is more like a list of factors in the making of the modernworld which we might need to consider. For example, at the economic and

political level one has the emergence of bourgeoise capitalism and the over-seas expansion into empires, where the needs of colonial administration re-sulted in the development of various disciplines such as oriental studies and

anthropology. The colonialist or neo-colonialist character of these disci-

plines, and their relation to cultural and cognitive imperialism is now widelyrecognized, though this is not say that they have not produced research of

outstanding quality. The idea of the "religions", plus the programme of ecu-menical theology, can be understood to some extent in this context.

Deism, the concept of natural religion, and the search for the universalcore of religion, for example in morality or in a sui generis religious experi-ence, seem to have provided a transitional stage from the earlier Christo-centric worldview which represented the non-European world in terms of

demonization and the Fall. Another factor was the colonization of much ofthe world by western Christian powers, which placed a burden on localelites (for example, the western influenced Brahmins of India, the Meijileaders in Japan [Hardacre, 1988], the new middle classes in Ceylon [Gom-brich, 1988]) to invent something in their own tradition which correspondedwith the ideology of the dominant western culture. Christian missionaries intheir turn were confronted with entirely different values and institutionswhich they could either continue to denounce as pagan and worthless or, al-

ternatively, accommodate into some more flexible scheme.The notion of ecumenical dialogue, which was already being conductedfrom the nineteenth century between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in thecontext of a world increasingly dominated by scientific rationality, becamewidened and more complex, giving rise to such phenomena as neo-Vedantaand Theosophy, esoteric Buddhism, Protestant Buddhism or Buddhist mod-

ernism, and the invention of Japanese religions. From this mythic nexus

emerged liberal ecumenicism. This mythic construct is made from the same

plasticmaterial as can be found in different forms in a whole

rangeof writers

including the Theosophists, the Brahminical neo-vedantins such asVivekananda and Radhakrishnan, in a different way in Gandhi, Rudolf Otto,Mircea Eliade, Aldous Huxley, D. T. Suzuki, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, John

Hick, and Don Cuppitt. Some of these writers have tried quite explicitly toconstruct a world theology from the myth. Others have argued for a peren-nial philosophy. And writers such as Otto and Eliade have used the same ba-sic mythic structure of ideas to create the phenomenology of religion.

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Put simply, the myth is that there is one ultimate reality, God or the Tran-

scendent, and a multiplicity of ways or paths and manifestations of this One.

These ways and manifestations are the different religions and their saviours,incarnations, and subordinate deities, all of which provide partial revelationsof the one universal Truth. They all lead the individual, living within the lim-

iting confines of his or her own traditions, to the same One Transcendental

Reality, an invisible world lying behind the phenomenal world and giving itan ultimate meaning. These approaches to God, or responses to the divine,have been culturally mediated and therefore have taken different institu-tional shapes.

This basic model appears again and again in a variety of forms in thework

of philosophers, phenomenologists, and ecumenicists. One important modernversion of the myth can be found in the work of Eliade (on this aspect of hiswork see Smith 1987: 52; Smart 1978: 176; Segal 1983: 98; Strenski 1994). For

Eliade, even those who are not necessarily conscious of the transcendent

(such as people who live in cultures which do not have this idea, and evenatheists who consciously reject belief in God), are still unconsciously relig-ious in that they show a recognition of the sacred transcendent in their be-haviour and

symbolism (Segal 1983: 99;Sharma

1994;Strenski

1994).In other

words, all humankind is truly religious, "religious" being defined fundamen-

tally in terms of belief in the transcendent. It seems reasonable to say thatEliade has a specific theological viewpoint, but that he is claiming for it a cul-tural universality under the cloak of "the phenomenology of religion". Hereis one of the major sources of the confusion between a specific theologicaltradition (liberal ecumenicism) and the notion that "religion" denotes a classof real objects in the world which can be identified and studied.

The construction and dissemination of thismyth

of"religion",

which has

begotten both liberal ecumenical theology and the so-called science of religi-on, is now being achieved through the agency of special university depart-ments and publishing lists. This institutional fact, which is unwittingly dis-

guised by the presence in quite large numbers of sociologists, anthropologists,historians and so on in the same departments, itself requires anthropologicalor cultural analysis. It is itself a myth, an ideology of a particular kind, onethat clothes itself in particular ways. It is a gentle, kind, and rather optimistic

philosophy,but it hides from itself the relation between the institutions which

it describes as "religious" and the exercise of power. It also tends to disguiseits own relation to power, for example as an agency for mystifying the rela-

tionship between rich western countries and the post-colonial third world.And it represents itself as an objective science, the factual study of a putativehuman religiosity.

Aichigakuin University, Japan

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