{"id":9,"date":"2014-03-11T11:20:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T11:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=9"},"modified":"2014-03-11T12:33:30","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T12:33:30","slug":"defining-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=9","title":{"rendered":"Defining religion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Front cover of Graham Harvey's Food, Sex and Strangers<\/p><\/div>\n

Now and again, academics need to ponder the use of the words that appear to define their disciplines. Anthropologists have worried about \u201cculture\u201d, while \u201cliterature\u201d has been debated in English. It isn\u2019t that we claim ownership of particular topics, or that we think we have privileged access to phenomena that interest us. Usually the opposite is true. It\u2019s possible to discuss everything as \u201cculture\u201d or \u201cliterature\u201d. Scholars often revel in fertile debates when different disciplines say something provocative or fresh. Scholars of religion have been vigorously debating the meaning of the term \u201creligion\u201d recently. We\u2019ve been considering where the boundaries lie between religion and whatever is \u201cnot religion\u201d. Perhaps there are no boundaries. Those who are \u201cnot religious\u201d (whether because they define themselves as \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d or as atheists or secular humanists) often say or do things that clarify what it is that the study of religions focuses on.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Colleagues in the OU\u2019s department of religious studies have gained understanding of the activities and ideas of people who are identified (by themselves or others) as members of many religions. We don\u2019t think of these as monolithic and boxed entities but as diverse and fluid movements. While we pay attention to what people say particular religious texts (\u201cscriptures\u201d or \u201ccreeds\u201d) teach, we are far more interested in what people do. Religion as lived realities is what fascinates us. Religion doesn\u2019t live in boxes or books even when religious people try to make or enforce boundaries.\u00a0 For these and other reasons, we are interested in the dynamic ways in which activities that might<\/em> be \u201creligious\u201d are braided in with other social phenomena. These include (but are not limited to) gender, politics, security, consumption, ethnicity, age, citizenship, sexuality, belonging (to places or communities), movement (e.g. pilgrimage and tourism), material and performance cultures (e.g. rituals, music, drama, statuary, book writing and book burning, costuming) and much more.<\/p>\n

My most recent contribution to debates about the meaning and nature of religion is a book called Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life<\/em> (Acumen 2013). This is based on fieldwork research among indigenous people (especially Maori, Native Americans and Yoruba) as well as among Jews and Pagans and others. I question whether these dynamic and diverse communities have anything in common that we should call \u201creligion\u201d. I explain why I think it\u2019s time to utterly reject the idea that religion is fundamentally about \u201cbelief in god(s) or spirit(s)\u201d. I discuss other ideas, like that of the late Maori scholar T.P. Tawhai who wrote that \u201cthe purpose of religious activity among my people is doing violence with impunity\u201d. This is a rich phrase and, in part, resonates with Charles Darwin\u2019s recognition that humans are related to all other species in this evolving planet. I experiment with Tawhai\u2019s argument that religious rites can acknowledge and honour human kinship with those beings who we kill and eat. This might not be the whole of religion but contemplating it touches many other debates about the evolution, nature, performance and relevance of religions in the contemporary world.<\/p>\n

Dr Graham Harvey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now and again, academics need to ponder the use of the words that appear to define their disciplines. Anthropologists have worried about \u201cculture\u201d, while \u201cliterature\u201d has been debated in English. It isn\u2019t that we claim ownership of particular topics, or that we think we have privileged access to phenomena that interest us. Usually the opposite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-defining-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}