PART V

A SOCIO-POLITICAL ANALYSIS OF RELIGIOUS ENCULTURATION

The ineffable and the social. Natural community/faith community. Charisma and institution. Prophetic dissent, revival, and routinization. Monotheistic faith realized as (ethnic) minorities: (a) within religiously-other or pluralist societies/polities; (b) as majority religion; (c) as established (state or imperial) religion; and (d) in post-establishment societies (modernizing, secular, pluralist, post-modern).1

Editorial Introduction

(I)t should be apparent that sociology cannot, in the usual sense of word, yield any knowledge of religion. . . . Insofar as religion expresses itself in social processes, sociology can handle it. But this means there can be no sociology of religion but only of irreligion.                                                                                                              -Albert Salomon2

            Above, in Part III, we assayed the anthropological findings on the religious life of archaic peoples. Here, in Part V we look at religion (specifically Abrahamic faiths) in the rise and subsequent modernization of "society." In this context the term "society" is reserved for peoples among whom differentiation, specialization, and reorganization of human activity increasingly limit and supplant familial solidarities. As John Kromkowski recalls below, given the religious ethos of archaic community, the rise and especially the modernization (since the eighteenth century) of society led to the expectation that religion would disappear along with other primitive communal forms.

            That, as we now know, has not been the case, though the obsolescence of "religion" is still widely held. Religion has not only survived, but has also become more specialized. If in some re-spects or settings religion inhibited societal development, in other respects and settings it also enhanced societal growth and mo-dernization. Some analysts distinguish "founded" from "natural" re-ligions. In the former instance, particular theophanies are seen as having given rise to religious movements that spread eventually to many peoples. As to theophany, since theophanous claims are beyond direct empirical verification, a social scientist might at the outside allow it to be smuggled by as unexplained variance.

            In the rise of the Western civilization, the Abrahamic faiths, while variously resisting certain changes, nonetheless generated energies without which the transformation of the West could not have occurred. In the academic jargon of the day, Abrahamic faith has been a necessary but by no means sufficient energy in the development and modernization of the West. Max Weber’s famous theme about the "Protestant ethic" is an example: the notion that the individual is accountable to God directly without priestly or sacramental mediation, he argued, had a profound individualizing effect on the society and culture.

            Kromkowski here sees religion as one of four "relationships of order" to be distinguished in macro analysis, each, of course, a multidimensional phenomenon. In modernity, at least in the Ame-rican system, religion at the polity level has been formally "dis-established." Now a differentiated subsystem, thus adapted to modernity, religion remains a cohesive force within the sub-com-munities that operate within polities. At that sub-community level, religion persists, as in the past, as a cohesive -- and divisive -- energy.

            Taken in its primary sense, however, particularly in the Abra-hamic vocation, religion expresses "an inner relation to a being beyond and higher than ourselves. It takes itself to be a primary phenomenon which in the last analysis is irreducible to anything else, be it science or poetry. Religious men consider the whole of reality as a unity impregnated with divine meaning. But within the religious framework two distinct perspectives emerge: the per-spective of the `visionary’ and that of the `ecclesiastic,’ that of prophet and that of priest. The visionary . . . is a man of mystical vision who intuitively experiences the infinite -- his is the spiritual capital which all religions draw upon and expend."3

            Occasionally an analytical distinction is drawn between the human search for God and God’s search for the human, a distinction somewhat paralleling Salomon’s contrast between the visionary and the ecclesiastic. Taken generically, religion refers to the means by which we respond to "the infinite." But religious activity readily becomes its own end, and insofar descends into idolatry. Here the Shema draws the line daily.

            As emphasized elsewhere in this collection, the people or community is the subject of the covenant. Yet individual or personal agency grows in importance as the Abrahamic saga unfolds. Elijah is assured that a remnant survives the general apostasy. A critical milestone appears late in the prophetic era, when breaking with tribal solidarity Ezekiel declares unambiguously, "The soul that sins shall die" (18:4). That theme becomes even more pronounced in the Christian dispensation, and somewhat differently, in the Qur’an.

            A full accounting of the import of this theme lies well beyond the scope of this introductory sketch. The cumulative impact of the language or remnant, of exile and dispersion, and finally of "the lonely man of faith" (Soloveitchik) suggests that something far more profound than leaving home or emigration is entailed in the summons to Abram to leave country, kindred, and father’s house.

As Vigen Guroian’s reflections on the Armenian predicament dra-matizes, where Abrahamic faith and national community congeal in collective identity, spiritual dereliction ensues. Collective moods shift or change course, yet ultimately it is individuals who repent, believe and become new.

            In a country where one per cent of the population profess an Abrahamic faith the practical situation differs vastly from that a country where such a faith has been dominant for centuries. The point is well illustrated in the contrast between two respondents in this section, Cooperman wrestling with the minority problem, Guroian with its opposite.

            The human inclination is to treat religion, including the Abrahamic faiths, as a pattern to be laid on all situations in a one-size-fits all manner. If it doesn’t, how can it claim to be true or universal? On the other hand, our God is One, as is the word God speaks to us. Humans are destined in some measure to complete their own creation, to construct their own reality. From the tropics to Arctic and Antarctica the conditions of human existence vary endlessly. The inevitable aporias drive us toward the deeper realities of both the Divine and the human.

Paul Peachey

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community

NOTES

            1. Original assignment to Kromkowski, Cooperman, Guroian and Banuazizi.

            2. Commentary VII (June, 1949), p. 600.