Fruits of the Dearth

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Religions developed out of universal concerns. While I can’t hope to compete with the masterful insight of Pascal Boyer, I do have a gut feeling that as soon as humans evolved the ability of foresight we began to worry. Where is that next meal coming from? Will we survive another day? Is there any way to hedge our bets? In ancient times mortality’s unblinking stare would have been much closer to our faces. Even as recently as the Middle Ages death was much more on the mind, much more frequently seen.

One way to ensure survival is to propitiate those gods who control the productivity of the soil. Long before Demeter lost Persephone ancient people mourned the death of gods who ensured fertile soil, hoping against hope that they might come back each spring. I recall the seriousness with which Rogation Days were taken in the Midwest. At Nashotah House the earth itself was blessed. I recall a priest from Central Illinois who gleefully recounted that the University of Illinois crop experiments were always a little skewed because each year he blessed them on Rogation Days, giving Ceres a boost. CPR for mother earth; give us our daily bread.

The picture of a South Korean boy spinning a can filled with glowing embers over a field on the first full moon of the Korean New Year reaffirms that concerns are the same everywhere. In our sterilized, indoor, urbanized lives where food is grown, harvested, processed and packaged by others for simple consumption of the vast majority, we have lost one of the most poignant aspects of religion. People pray for survival against the devious plans of terrorists, or the insidious diseases that threaten those who make a living simply moving electrons from place to place. Meanwhile somewhere in a country teetering on the brink of nuclear winter, a young boy swings a bucket full of hope.

Explaining Religion

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Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer, is one of those books that I wish had been written earlier and I had read earlier. Like several of my recent reading projects, this book was suggested to me by my cyber-friend Sabio Lantz’s blog. In the course of a very busy semester, it took several months to read, but Religion Explained is an astounding book that raises the ultimate issue: whence religion? Among the many revelations in this monograph – based on solid anthropological and sociological data, as well as neuroscience – is that religion has multiple origins. As Boyer demonstrates repeatedly throughout his book, religion arises from several mental processes symbiotically supporting assumptions that, taken alone, would often fail to survive in the meme pool.

Summarizing Boyer’s work would require a book in itself, but a few of his points struck me as particularly apt to today’s struggle between religion and society. At one point (140) Boyer demonstrates that doctrine is not nearly as important to religions as most specialists assert. In fact, most regular adherents to a religion misunderstand the doctrine to which they give lip service. After having spent too many years in a doctrinally ossified seminary, reading Boyer’s analysis was like liberation at this juncture. As Boyer points out later (282) Christian doctrine emerged in the conflicted environment of revolutionary movements with differing ideas as to what a messiah was. Only after the situation became too complex did one group decide that councils were necessary to decide what they in fact believed. Not really an inspiring story for those who wish to claim absolute certitude about their belief structure! Boyer also draws from other religions around the world to support his case.

Having stated that, Boyer does not attempt to destroy religion, but to explain it. The very premise itself will obviously strike many as blasphemous, but religion, like all human practices, can be studied with a scientific outlook. Accessing anthropological studies and neurological analyses, and the battery of tools provided by decades of psychological and sociological research, Boyer’s portrait is lifelike and believable. Religion developed as an amalgamation of human survival strategies that synchronized into a relatively consistent system that helped to explain a confusing world. If I had read Religion Explained when I was in college, my lifelong religionist enterprise might have turned out rather differently.