In "Religion & Theater" today I did something I've never done before - offered the students a list of important definitions of religion. (In my other class, "Theorizing Religion," I just gave a sermon against the false clarity of definitions.) In fact, I made it a quiz to see if the students have any general knowledge about the theory of religion. Want to try? After ten definitiony things you'll find a list of the ten sources. I'll post the key tomorrow.
____ Religion is the creation and reenactment of myth for the purpose of realizing—in both senses of that word as "perceiving" and "making actual"—and celebrating the relationship of human beings with supra-human, spiritual forces.
____ Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
____ Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.
____ Religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity; like the obsessional neurosis of children, it arose out of the Oedipal complex, out of the relation to the father. … [A] turning-away from religion is bound to occur with the fatal inevitability of a process of growth.
____ The "sacred" is an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness.
____ The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use.
____ [The reality underlying religious experience,] which mythologies have represented under so many different forms, but which is the universal and eternal objective cause of these sensations sui generis out of which religious experience is made, is society.
____ Religion is the smile on a dog
____ Religion is not nice; it has been responsible for more death and suffering than any other human activity.
____ If one proceeds from pure experience, one arrives at polytheism.
A Norman A. Bert, "Theatre is Religion"
B Edie Brickell, "What I Am"
C Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
D Mircea Eliade, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion
E Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
F William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
G Karl Marx, “Introduction to ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’"
H Jonathan Z. Smith, "The Devil in Mr. Jones"
I Paul Tillich, "Faith as Ultimate Concern"
J Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation"
____ Religion is the creation and reenactment of myth for the purpose of realizing—in both senses of that word as "perceiving" and "making actual"—and celebrating the relationship of human beings with supra-human, spiritual forces.
____ Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
____ Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.
____ Religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity; like the obsessional neurosis of children, it arose out of the Oedipal complex, out of the relation to the father. … [A] turning-away from religion is bound to occur with the fatal inevitability of a process of growth.
____ The "sacred" is an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness.
____ The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use.
____ [The reality underlying religious experience,] which mythologies have represented under so many different forms, but which is the universal and eternal objective cause of these sensations sui generis out of which religious experience is made, is society.
____ Religion is the smile on a dog
____ Religion is not nice; it has been responsible for more death and suffering than any other human activity.
____ If one proceeds from pure experience, one arrives at polytheism.
The sources:
A Norman A. Bert, "Theatre is Religion"
B Edie Brickell, "What I Am"
C Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
D Mircea Eliade, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion
E Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
F William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
G Karl Marx, “Introduction to ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’"
H Jonathan Z. Smith, "The Devil in Mr. Jones"
I Paul Tillich, "Faith as Ultimate Concern"
J Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation"
