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1200 words and three scholarly references

1. In appropriate depth and detail, and utilizing scholarly references, describe the basic characteristics of religion, patterns among religions, and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of religion. In your response, be sure to answer the question, “Why do we study religion?”

2. In appropriate depth and detail, and utilizing scholarly references, describe the basic characteristics of Hinduism, including but not limited to: its history, its primary beliefs, its criticisms, its practices, and its organization.

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What Do YOU Think?Your Visit to the Hsi Lai
Temple in Southern

California

I
magine that you’re walking up the broad fl ight
of stone steps to the Hsi Lai (shee lai) Buddhist
temple in Hacienda Heights, California, just east
of Los Angeles. Hsi Lai claims the distinction
of being the largest Buddhist temple in North

America, and it certainly looks like it from where you stand!
When you get inside, you look around and realize that this
is a religious building complex like none other you have
ever seen. There seem to be no large-group ceremonies
going on, at least right now. Instead, small groups of wor-
shipers and tourists come and go, doing their own thing.
Some off er incense, a few are carrying fl owers to leave in
the temple, others are praying and meditating in front of
statues, and out in the courtyard there are people doing
meditative exercise routines.

Most of the neatly dressed families coming to this tem-
ple do not seem to refl ect deeply here on their faith. You
see nobody reading Buddhist religious texts, nor does any
monk teach or preach to a group. Rather, most worshipers
come here just to sense something of the sacred and be
in its presence. Their minds
are calmed by the familiar
architecture, by the many
statues of the Buddha, by
the soft smell of incense.
They engage in quiet, low-
key activities.

You notice people
who aren’t doing tradi-
tional Buddhist worship.
You wonder if this means
that they might come

from other religious traditions. Some people you see
are just tourists, a few of them mostly interested in the
tasty vegetarian buffet lunch served every day. But per-
haps they too have come to absorb the beauty of this
place, and at least some of its religious meaning. This
temple was founded not only to bridge the differences
between different groups of Buddhists, but also to be
a bridge between Eastern and Western religions and
ways of life.

As you are introduced to the
academic study of religion, you
may fi nd yourself bewildered—
by the varieties of religion, by

distinguishing religions from other move-
ments, by the different academic

methods used to study religions,
and by hot topics such

as religion and gen-
der, ecology, and vio-
lence. You may have
questions about matters
of fact and value: is one
religion true, are dif-
ferent religions true, or
are none of them true?
What might it all mean
for you?

“Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong.” —Karen Armstrong

Religion is mostly about fi nding one’s way to
eternal life, however that is understood.

Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

h hh kWhat Do YOU Think?

< As sunlight moves over the Eastern Hemisphere, one can see the regions where most world religions were born. The new perspec- tive of Earth from space has helped to stimulate global thinking in religions.

A
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California

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4 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

These issues may occur to you as well:

● Formal “separation of church and state” is strong in
the United States and Canada, but religion and poli-
tics are mixed in powerful
ways here and around the
world. The government
of China’s continuous
pressure on Buddhism in
Tibet and on the Falun
Gong movement is just one example.

● Most people in North America
affi rm the importance of religion for
their lives, but fewer actually practice
it. For example, almost 90 percent
of all North Americans believe in the
existence of God or gods, but only
about half regularly participate in
religious services or in other religious
practices such as prayer, meditation,
or giving to those in need.

● Despite a high level of
religious belief in the United
States, most Americans have
surprisingly little knowl-
edge of their faith. Stephen
Prothero (PROTH-er-oh),
a professor of religion at
Boston University who has
appeared on The Colbert
Report and The Daily
Show, has shown that many
Americans—even many who attend services often—
are “religious illiterates.” As Laurie Goodstein of
the New York Times wrote in summarizing a 2010
study of religious knowledge in the United States,
“Americans are by all

measures a deeply religious

people, but they are also

deeply ignorant about

religion.”1 In Western Europe, most people don’t
hold formally to a religion, but they know a good
deal about religion, because it is a required academic
subject in the schools.

● Is religion in the world shrinking, or is it
growing? Actually, both. Although some parts
of Christianity and Judaism are shrinking, other
parts of these religions are growing, and Islam
and Buddhism are also growing. The number of
people in North America who formally adhere to

1 Laurie Goodstein, “Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans,”
New York Times (city edition), September 28, 2010, page A17.

no religion at all is growing, but certain religious
practices such as prayer are stronger than ever.

● Most of the major religions of the world come from
ancient times. However, every decade of the last two
hundred years has seen new religious movements
born around the world, some of them now powerful,
some controversial. You might wonder why we still
get new religions—don’t we have enough already?

● Religion has evoked some of both
the best and the worst in human
life. Great acts of love, service, and
even self-sacrifi ce have arisen from
religious conviction. Religion has
inspired some of the world’s great-
est music, art, and architecture, and
has lifted the human spirit in count-
less ways. Ironically, it has also been
the source
of much
destruction.

LO1 What Is Religion?
Religion is found across all cultures and throughout the
entire span of human history. Evidence of early human
remains shows signs of religion, including veneration
of animal spirits in art and human burials that suggest
belief in a life beyond death. Most anthropologists today
have concluded that Neanderthal humans who lived
around 200,000 years ago may have had religious beliefs
and practices, but that Cro-Magnon humans (around
35,000 years ago) defi nitely had religion. From the dawn
of human civilizations until modern times, religion has
shaped the beliefs and values of all human cultures.

Defining RELIGION
But this talk of the prevalence of religion leads us to ask:
What exactly is religion? Defi ning academic subjects can
be a boring business, but on the subject of religion, most
people have something interesting to say. Grappling
with this question involves both careful, objective
academic thinking and personal engagement. The
University of Cambridge scholar John Bowker remarks,
“We all know what [religion] is until someone asks us
to tell them.”2 If pressed for an answer, most people in
the Western world would say fi rst that religion is based
on belief in God and obedience to God. However, do

2 John Bowker, ed., Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997), xv.

“Americans are by all

measures a deeply religious

people, but they are also

deeply ignorant about

religion.” —Laurie Goodstein

W H AT I S R E L I G I O N ? 5

they mean the God followed in a particular religion or
something more general, such as “gods”? Some major
religions—certain branches of Hinduism and Buddhism,
for example—have relatively little teaching about gods.
A few religions such as Jainism have no gods at all.

Some people around the world would give a sec-
ond answer to “What is religion?”—that it is a system
of morality. On fi rst refl ection, this might seem to be
a more all-encompassing defi nition than the previous
one. Karen Armstrong, a former Roman Catholic nun
and now a popular writer on world religions, recently
wrote that “Religion starts with the perception that
something is wrong,” and that the value systems in reli-
gions set out to deal with that wrong.3 The three main
Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—
have strong moral teachings. Confucianism is so cen-
tered on morality that the issue of whether it is a social
philosophy or a religion is often debated. However, a
few religions, such as Shinto, have little or no devel-
oped teaching about a way of life. All this shows how
our prior perceptions color our answer to the ques-
tion “What is religion?” Despite the diffi culties of this
question, many scholars from various academic fi elds
have attempted to answer it in as objective a manner
as possible.

Notable Definitions
of RELIGION
Another way of studying the issue of what religion means
is by looking at defi nitions that have been offered in the
past and have had some infl uence on the discussion.
Here is a sampling of how religion has been defi ned in
the Western world, by scholars and others. Religion is …

“The feeling of absolute dependence”
—Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian theologian (1799)

3 Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994), 1.

“The opiate of the people”
—Karl Marx, nineteenth-century founder of
communism (1843)

“A set of things which the average man thinks he
believes and wishes he was certain of”

—Mark Twain, American writer (1879)

“The daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to
Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable”

—Ambrose Bierce, American social critic and humorist
(1911)

“A unifi ed system of beliefs and practices … which
unite into one single moral community”

—Émile Durkheim, French sociologist of religion (1915)

“What grows out of, and gives expression to,
experience of the holy in its various aspects”

—Rudolf Otto, German scholar of religion (1917)

“All bunk”
—Thomas Edison, American inventor (ca. 1925)

“Something left over from the infancy of our
intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and
science as our guidelines”

—Bertrand Russell, British philosopher (1928)

“An illusion deriving its strength from the fact that it
falls in with our instinctual desires”

—Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist (1932)

“The state of being grasped by an ultimate concern,
a concern … which itself contains the answer to the
question of the meaning of our life”

—Paul Tillich, Christian theologian (1957)

“What the individual does with his own solitariness”
—A. N. Whitehead, British philosopher (1960)

“A set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to
the ultimate conditions of his existence”

—Robert Bellah, contemporary American sociologist

“Feeling warmer in our hearts, more connected to
others, more connected to something greater, and
having a sense of peace”

—Goldie Hawn, contemporary American fi lm actress

The Definition Used in
This Book
Each student will have to wrestle personally with defi n-
ing religion, because scholarship isn’t settled on any
one defi nition and because
defi ning it involves some
subjectivity. Here’s the defi –
nition used in this book:
Religion is a pattern of
beliefs and practices that
expresses and enacts what
a community regards as

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religion Pattern of
beliefs and practices that
expresses and enacts
what a community
regards as sacred and/or
ultimate about life

6 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

sacred and/or ultimate
about life.

Let’s “unpack” this
defi nition. First, religion is a
pattern of beliefs and prac-
tices. All religions believe
certain things about ultimate
reality in or beyond the world.
They answer existential ques-
tions most humans have:

● Why am I here?

● What does it mean to be human?

● How can what is wrong in the world—and in
me—be corrected?

● Where am I—and the world—going?

They answer these questions in different ways. The dif-
ferent religions believe in one God (monotheism) or
many gods (polytheism). They believe, with or without
belief in a god, in a world soul in Hinduism, in Nirvana
in Buddhism, and in the Dao (also spelled Tao, with
both pronounced “dow”) in both Daoism (Taoism) and
Confucianism. They practice these beliefs in certain
ways: in worship, rituals of passage at various points
of the individual life cycle, meditation, and ordinary
actions in daily life. Each religion has its own way of
arranging these beliefs and practices into a distinctive
pattern. Second, this pattern expresses and enacts what
is sacred. Sacred refers to what is considered most holy
and important, whether in this world, in a supernatural
world that transcends this one, or both. Religions draw
on their experience of the sacred, both ancient and
contempo rary; express the sacred in all of its aspects;
and enact it by continuing to make it real for believers.

Because common West ern notions of the “sacred”
or “holy” often entail belief in a holy God, we add this
further phrase to our defi nition: ultimate about life.
This “ultimate” may be a principle, an impersonal force,
or a spiritual power, hidden in the world or beyond it.
Sacredness or “the ultimate” in world religions is wider
than a divine being. Third, note that it is a community
of like-minded people that forms a religion. Religions
sometimes begin with an individual (Buddha, Confucius,
Jesus), but they become social communities of shared
belief and practice even during the lifetime or in the sec-
ond generation following the life of these founders. They
persist through history as communities of religion. Not
all religions try to grow throughout the world, but all of
them are concerned with passing themselves from gen-
eration to generation, thus becoming “traditions.”

The meaning of religion is typically traced to the
ancient Latin world religio (ree-LIG-ee-oh), derived

from the verb religere, “to bind/tie fast.” This verb is
itself derived from the word ligere, “to bind” (compare
our words ligament and ligature). Of course, the mean-
ing of a word today can’t be limited to what it meant
thousands of years ago, but this ancient meaning shows
how religion began and still illustrates nicely the different
parts of our defi nition. Ancient Romans used religio in
several senses. First, it means a supernatural constraint
on behavior, doing what is good, and especially avoiding
evil. It “binds” people to what is right. Second, it entails a
holy awe for the gods and sacred power in general. Third,
religio means a system of life that binds people together
in a group and orients them to the gods. Finally, it entails
the practices of rites and ceremonies by which the Roman
people expressed and enacted their religion.

Although the Romans and some other peoples used
the term religion for their system of belief and prac-
tice, different religions of the world call themselves by
different names, most of them not using the word reli-
gion at all. For example, Daoism is “the Way” to most
Daoists; they don’t refer to it as “the Daoist religion.”
Many Hindus call their religion “the Eternal Teaching”;
Buddhists sometimes call theirs a “school”; and many
Jews, Christians, and Muslims prefer the term faith
instead of religion. But no matter what they call them-
selves, they are in fact religions as that term is used in
scholarship and teaching. However, the defi nition given
above doesn’t rule out the necessity for world religions
students to wrestle with this question on their own.

A good defi nition will carefully identify the subject
being defi ned, but it can also be used to exclude other
things from the defi nition. How does the defi nition given
above exclude things that aren’t religion? Here are two
examples. First, the defi nition speaks of religion as a
system based on the sacred or on ultimate value; other
systems that do not view themselves as religions do not
usually speak about the “sacred” or “ultimate.” This is true
of most political ideologies and parties such as Democrats
and Republicans, academic philosophies, systems of
popular psychology like that of “Dr. Phil” McGraw, and
so on. (This isn’t meant to demean these other groups;
many people fi nd a great deal of meaning and inspiration
in them.) Therefore, people who belong to nonreligious
groups can also practice a variety of religion or no religion
at all. Second, a pattern of belief held by only one person
can’t be a religion as we defi ne it here. Such do-it-yourself
religion may be popular in Europe and North America,
and it is usually sincere and important to the person who
holds it, but it doesn’t bring with it a social bond. Some
scholars sometimes refer to this as private religion, but

4 P. G. W. Glare, Oxford Latin Dictionary (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983), 1605–06.

monotheism Belief in
one God

polytheism Belief in
many gods

private religion
Pattern of belief held by
only one person

W H Y S T U DY R E L I G I O N ? 7

others question
whether “private
religion” is really
religion at all.

LO2 Why Study
Religion?
At fi rst, the question “Why Study Religion?”
may seem pointless to you. You might say,
“I’m taking the course, aren’t I?” You may
go on to give your reasons for taking this
course: to get course credit, to fulfi ll a cul-
tural studies requirement at your school and
maybe pick up some knowledge and skills along the way,
and ultimately to get an academic degree. But let’s explore
a bit further why students today should study religion.

Studying the Persistence
of Religion in the Modern
World
Religion should be studied—among other reasons—to
understand its persistence in the modern world, which
in many ways is not hospitable to religious belief and
practice. The rise of secularism, or life without religion,
has challenged most religions for the

past two hundred

years. Today, the secular approach to life rejects religion

for the perceived evils of fundamentalism (“Look what
happened on 9/11!” is commonly heard); the inappro-
priateness of religious training for children (“Children
should be allowed to decide for themselves when they
are older”); and the better view on life offered by science
(“Religion is false, because we know about evolution”).
Secularism has led to a lessening of religious belief and
practice, and in North America to widespread illiteracy
about religion. Many people, including about half of all
Europeans and a growing number of North Americans,
are neither especially religious nor completely irreligious;
they are “in the middle”
between them. They com-
bine aspects of secular life
with aspects of religious life.

H
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12
/A

In Avatar, indigenous peoples prepare to defend their
world—especially the “Tree of Souls” connection with the
spirit world—from colonizers.

secularism Life without
religion

Is Religion a Dirty Word?

To some religious people, religion is, if not a dirty word, at
least a derogatory one. Some Christians, Jews, and Muslims
think that “religion” is a bad thing. Many religious people
want to have a strong connection with God/ ultimate
reality/cosmic power, but not a “religion.” They call their
own beliefs a “faith,” “teaching,” “school,” or something
similar, but they often call other people’s belief systems,
somewhat pejoratively, “religion.” In his best-selling book
written for Christians, The Shack, William Young even has
Jesus say, “I’m not too big on religion.”

People who don’t like any religion at all also use
religion in a negative way. An increasing number of people
in North America and Europe say, “I’m spiritual, but I’m
not religious.” A 2008 documentary fi lm featuring comic
and social critic Bill Maher was titled not Religious, but
Religulous, Maher’s unfl attering combination of religion
and ridiculous.

“I’m not too big on religion.” —Jesus, in

The Shack

To study world religions well, you have to put aside
prejudice, whether pro or con, if you have it. All scholars of
religion use religion as an academic, neutral, descriptive
term, and you should, too, regardless of your own personal
stance on religious belief and practice. To use an analogy,
many people today, including students, often use the word
politics prejudicially. But to study well in the academic fi eld
called “political science,” one must put aside prejudice about
the term politics. The same is true for the study of religion.

A Closer Look:

8 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

This means that reports of the death of reli-
gion are mistaken. Religion persists today and
is often on the rise, even as

secularism has

become more widespread. More than
three-quarters of the world’s people
identify with one or more religions.
We still fi nd religion everywhere: in
high culture, in popular culture (for
example, the 2009 fi lm Avatar and the
rock band U2), and in everyday life in North America
and around the world. The religions of the world are now
present in North America, and almost every religion is as
close as one’s keyboard, on the Internet. In the Soviet
Union and China—which tried with Communist
fervor in the twentieth century to suppress and
even extinguish all religion—it has come back with
vigor. The government of China is now bringing
back Confucian texts and teachings to counteract
the “money-fi rst” mentality among so many young
people there. At the beginning of the twenty-fi rst
century, religion is at or near the center of global
issues and cultural confl ict. Religion has an increas-
ingly visible role in national and even interna-
tional politics. One simply can’t understand
many of the confl icts in our world with-
out a basic knowledge of religion. What’s
more, new religious movements are aris-
ing every decade, so that the number of
religions in the world is increasing, not
decreasing. Religion is emerging as one of

the main markers
of human identity
in the twenty-fi rst
century, along with gen-
der, class, and ethnicity.5

Why does religion keep on thriving? First, despite
the challenges to religion, it continues to be a powerful
resource for everyday life all around the world. Religion
still provides meaning, strength, and joy to many. Another
reason is that most religious traditions have proven them-
selves adaptable to the ever-changing situations of human

5 Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy (San Francisco: Harper
San Francisco, 2007), 5.

life. They’ve changed over the thousands of
years that many of them have existed, and

the study of these changes forms a large
part of the study of religion. (If religions
can’t or don’t change, they usually die

out.) Many religions even have some
room for skepticism and for the
secular, which gives them strength in
our rapidly changing world. In many
places, especially in central and south-

ern Africa, indigenous religions tied to
local cultures

are fading, but
universal religions

such as Christianity and
Islam have taken their place.

Overall, religion is powerful
and persistent, and it shows no signs of disappearing. For
everyone who wants to be informed about the world,
religion is an important part of understanding it.

The study of religion is also a persis-
tent part of the academic scene. Around

750,000 undergraduates take a reli-
gion course each year in the United

States. Enrollment in world religion
courses in the United States has
grown rapidly after the religiously
connected attacks on this country
on September 11, 2001. Some of
the students decide to make the

study of religion their major or
minor. Religions are taught in most

liberal arts colleges, as well as in private
and state universities. Leading universities

that didn’t have a religious studies program
in the past because of a more secular orientation estab-
lished one in the twentieth century, among them Harvard,
Princeton, Cornell, and Stanford. In 2009 the American
Historical Association reported that more historians in the
U.S. now specialize in religious issues than in any others.
Even the government of China, which is offi cially atheistic,
is setting up undergraduate and graduate degree programs
in religious studies in several of its most selective universi-
ties. What’s more, the study of religion in U.S. K–12 public
schools is growing, with new guidelines from the American
Academy of Religion, an association of religion professors.6

In sum, the academic study of religion is alive and well.

6 “American Academy of Religion Guidelines for Teaching about
Religion in K–12 Public Schools in the United States,” http://
www.aarweb.org/Publications/Online_Publications/Curriculum_
Guidelines/AARK-12CurriculumGuidelines .

The rise of

secularism has

challenged most

religions for the

past two hundred

years.

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Religion is powerful and persistent,

and it shows no signs

of disappearing.

D I M E N S I O N S O F R E L I G I O N 9

What the Academic Study
of Religion Can Offer You
Intellectual exploration to shape one’s knowledge
and values is one of the joys of being a student, but
most students today also have valid concerns about
how studying religion will help them to earn a living
in today’s economy. A small proportion of students in
religion courses choose to make religion the center of
a professional career, either as the leader of a religious
community (such as a rabbi, priest, or minister) or as an
academic specialist in higher education. Some students
take a world religion course to clarify or strengthen
their own religious knowledge and values. They real-
ize the truth in the proverb fi rst said by Max Müller,
“Those who know only one religion know none.”

Most students take a world religion course to learn
more about an important aspect of the world today.
This study offers students training in a unique combina-
tion of academic and everyday skills such as these:

● The ability to understand how religious thought
and practice are related to particular social and
cultural contexts

● The ability to understand the religious dimensions
of confl icts within and between nations

● An appreciation of the complexities of religious
language and values

● An ability to understand and explain important
texts both critically and empathetically

● Cross-cultural understanding, or what is now
becoming known academically as “cultural intel-
ligence” or “cross-cultural competence”

Few academic fi elds bring together so many different
forms of analysis as religion does. With this broad lib-
eral arts background, many religion majors or minors
go on to study law, business, education, and medicine in
graduate school. In short, the study of religion offers a
foundation for a successful and fulfi lling career, in addi-
tion to growth in personal knowledge and satisfaction.

LO3

Dimensions of Religion

As we examine the varieties of religious experience,
all sorts of human beliefs and practices come into
view. Religion seems to be as wide as human life itself.

This was illustrated in one American publishing com-
pany’s poster, which read: “Books about religion are
also about love, sex, politics, AIDS, war, peace, jus-
tice, ecology, philosophy, addiction, recovery, ethics,
race, gender, dissent, technology, old age, New Age,
faith, heavy metal, morality, beauty, God, psychology,
money, dogma, freedom, history, death, and life.” To
get a grip on this complexity, various scholars have
organized the dimensions of religion in various ways.
These patterns are somewhat artifi cial, but they’re
helpful in grasping the mass of information avail-
able about religions, for both beginning students and
experienced scholars alike. The prominent scholar of
comparative religion Ninian Smart fi rst laid out fi ve
dimensions in the 1960s, but by the 1990s he had
come to think there were nine. Following Smart,
Rodney Stark and Charles Glock have systematized
the various interlocking aspects of religion in six
dimensions.7

The Cognitive Dimension
Religions have cognitive (thinking) dimensions that
teach their followers what it is necessary to know. Most
religions teach deep knowledge about their gods and
founders, often in stories. They teach about the creation
of the world, the meaning of life, and ways to overcome
death. They teach about human identity, both individ-
ual and social: gender, class, ethnicity, and others. They
provide ways of understanding what the world is and
what it should be. Often the history of religion itself is
explained so that followers can know that they stand
in a great tradition. The cognitive dimension of religion
entails analyzing and systematizing knowledge, as well
as learning it and passing it on. Its teachings are framed
in stories, short statements that summarize beliefs (for
example, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism), songs,
proverbs, laws, and many other forms. The cognitive
dimensions of religion typically grow so comprehen-
sive and important that religions can contain an entire
worldview. However, we must keep in mind that there
is often a signifi cant gap between the offi cial levels of
religious teachings and what is believed and practiced
by most people.

The Ethical Dimension
Ethics are important in almost all religions, because,
as we saw above, religions seek to correct what they
perceive to be wrong in the world. Personal ethics are

7 Rodney Stark and Charles Glock, Patterns of Religious Commitment
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).

“Those who know only one religion

know none.” —Max Müller

10 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

found in most religions, but the emphasis is strongly
on social ethics. All religions have moral expectations
for marriage, families, religious societies or congrega-
tions, social classes, and even whole nations. We may
think of religious ethics as “rules” more negative than
positive, but most religions have a balance of both
“do this” and “don’t do that.” These systems of social
ethics sometimes become the law of the nation where
religion is not separated from the state, as in
Shari’a, religion-based law in some offi cially
Muslim countries. Values, norms, and patterns
of behavior in religions are internalized with
the help of moral rules. Different people and
activities serve to shape religious behavior:
living models such as professional religious
specialists (clergy, monks, gurus, and the like);
legendary models such as saviors, saints, and
immortals; and behavior in the overall group.
When social morality based on religion is

constantly, care-
fully practiced,
religion becomes a
way of life.

The Ritual Dimension
Ritual is symbolic action in worship, meditation, or
other religious ceremonies. It’s symbolic and sometimes
abstract, but meant to achieve very practical goals.
When most people in North America today think of
religion, they think of the ritual ceremonies of worship.
But ritual also includes formal and informal prayer, sac-
rifi ce, chanting of scriptures, public processions, and
even pilgrimage. Pilgrimage—travel to a special des-
tination to increase one’s devotion or improve one’s
religious status—doesn’t often come to the minds of
modern North Americans as a religious ritual, but in
2009 millions of people worldwide went on a pilgrim-
age and spent the equivalent of 18 billion U.S. dollars on
it. Ritual can be long, elaborate ceremonies performed
by religious specialists or simple daily acts like such as
a short prayer before eating a meal or going to sleep.
Rituals are directed to one God, many gods, or to spir-
its or deceased ancestors. Ritual is not only symbolic,
but also effective; it helps to reenact and reapply the
deep truths of a religion to people in the present. Mircea
Eliade (MUHR-chuh eh-lee-AH-deh), who died in 1986,
advanced his infl uential theory of “eternal return” about
myths. This theory holds that myths and rituals do not
simply commemorate past acts of the gods, but actually
participate in them and bring worshipers to the gods. In
some religions, sacrifi ce of food or drink is thought to
“feed” the gods or deceased ancestors and make them
happy with those who offer sacrifi ce to them.

Within religions there is often a mixed attachment
to ritual. For example, in Christianity some Protestants
minimize formal rituals, whereas most Roman Catholics
and the Eastern Orthodox have many elaborate ritu-
als. Sufi Muslims emphasize pilgrimage to God “in the
heart,” in part to contrast with other Muslims who view

ritual Symbolic action
in worship, meditation, or
other religious ceremonies

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Ethical and ritual dimensions come together
in a Hindu wedding in Ahmedabad, India.

/K
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Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

D I M E N S I O N S O F R E L I G I O N 11

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the pilgrimage to Mecca as the highlight of their life.
Some Hindus have given up the rituals of the home and
temple to seek salvation in purely solitary meditation.
Although ritual may be downplayed in favor of other
dimensions of religion, it never completely disappears.

The Institutional Dimension
Because religions are social more than personal, they
give an organizational structure to their religious com-
munity and (usually) the wider society. Moreover, many
religions are internally diverse, with different institu-
tional structures for each internal group. Most religions
come from ancient, traditional societies, so they aren’t
“democratic” organizations; power in religious institu-
tions tends to fl ow from the top down. This is also true
of new religious movements (NRMs), religious groups
that have arisen since the nineteenth century and now
have suffi cient size and longevity to merit academic
study. They are typically founded by a charismatic leader,
such as L. Ron Hubbard of the Scientology movement,
who wields great power. Religions typically make

a valid distinc-
tion between
specialists (reli-
gious healers,
priests, monks)
and others,
typically called
“laity.” This
ins t i tu t iona l
dimension is so important that people often
speak of “organized religion.”

The Aesthetic Dimension
The aesthetic (beauty) dimension is the sensory
element of religion. Beauty appeals to the ratio-
nal mind, but has a special appeal to human

emotions. This dimension encompasses religion’s sounds
and smells, spaces, holy places, and landscapes. It also
includes its main symbols (Judaism’s six-pointed Star of
David, Buddhism’s wheel), devotional images and statu-
ary, and all the religious items of material culture. Islamic
religious art tends to be abstract, because of strong pro-
hibitions of anything that could enable the worship of
other gods. Most Hindu art, on the other hand, is fully
representational, some of it even explicitly sexual. The
aesthetic dimension encompasses
the architecture and decoration
of religious buildings, as well
as works of music, poetry, and
hymns. It also includes ritual
gestures: hand gestures in yoga,
kneeling bodies in prayer, hands
pressed together in Hindu greet-
ing and Christian prayer, and
many others.

Beauty adorns a wall and the dome of a mosque in
Isfahan, Iraq, to the glory of Allah and inspiration of
those who worship.

new religious
movements (NRMs)
Religious groups that have
arisen since the nineteenth
century and now have
sufficient size and longevity
to merit academic study

Dimensions of Religion

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Participating in initiation rituals, as these ten-year-old
males of the Yao tribe in Malawi, binds the initiates

closer to their gods and their tribe.

12 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

The Emotional Dimension
This dimension includes the particular emotions and
wider “moods” experienced in religion. They include
senses of awe, fear, and love. They also include some
religions’ hope for life after death or
other religions’ hope for no more life
after death. The emotional dimension
includes confi dence received to cope with
death, suffering, and evil. The emotional
self-confi dence and sense of purpose that
religion brings are so notable that “losing
my religion” or “getting religion” about
something are common expressions. The
emotional dimension includes the emo-
tions that come with belonging and per-
sonal identity, as well as with concern for
others. It also includes extraordinary feel-
ings and experiences such as isolation, feelings of union

with an ultimate reality or
God, and hallucinations.
The emotional dimension of
religion looms large today
in the Western world, where
belief for many is primarily
a matter of emotion. In the
words of the 1981 hit song

by the rock group Journey, put
to more recent use by such tele-
vision shows as Family Guy
and Glee, “Don’t stop believ-
ing, hold on to that feeling.”

To conclude this sec-
tion, sometimes people reduce religion to one or two
of these dimensions. For example, they may suppose
that religion is primarily an ethical system, a system of
teaching about the divine, an institution, or even a feel-
good emotion. This reduction is to be expected, but it’s
wrong. Almost all religions are multidimensional. That
the many dimensions of religion are closely related to
one another was suggested by the British philosopher
Alfred North Whitehead, who once wrote that the
power of religion lies in its grasp of this truth: “The
order of the world, the depth of reality of the world, the
value of the world in its whole
and in its parts, the beauty
of the world, the zest for
life, the peace of life, and the
mastery of evil, are all bound
together.”8

LO4 Ways of Studying
Religion
The study of religion is pursued today with a wide vari-
ety of methods. These center largely on six different

academic disciplines, some of which
you may be studying. We’ll consider
the methods and the work of promi-
nent scholars who have contributed
to them, and along the way we’ll
encounter different theories of the ori-
gin and purpose of religion. Before we
discuss these methods, however, we
should deal with the important mat-
ter of the difference between theology
and religious studies.

Theology and Religious
Studies
The study of religion in America today is pursued in
two main ways. Theology is the study of a religion,
based on a religious commitment to that religion,

8 Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York:
World, 1960), 115.

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The sense of purpose that

religion brings is so notable

that we speak informally of

“losing my religion” or “gett ing

religion” about something.

Sensual Hindu art put to spiritual use: a goddess in
a temple sculpture

theology Study of
a religion, based on a
religious commitment to
that religion, in order to
promote it

WAY S O F S T U DY I N G R E L I G I O N 13

in order to promote it. It is study from the “inside.”
Christian theology has been an important part of the
Western university since the oldest universities were
founded in thirteenth-century Europe. Theology is
pursued today at many American schools, especially
those with religious affi liations. To use the words of
the eleventh-century Christian theologian Anselm
(AHN-sehlm) of Canterbury, England, theology is
“faith seeking understanding.” This statement is
true of theological study in
other religions as well, in
both Eastern and Western
religions. The university
thought to be oldest in the
world still existing today––
at the Al-Azhar (al-ah-
ZAHR) mosque in Cairo,
Egypt––was founded for
theological study. Theology
is older in Buddhism
and Hinduism than it is
in Christianity or Islam.
Theology in these religions
has typically relied closely
on philosophy and tex-
tual studies to carry out its
intellectual work.

The second branch is called
religious studies, a relatively new
fi eld of academic study of religion
that aims to understand all religious
traditions, not just Christianity and
Judaism, and to do so objectively, in
a religiously neutral way, from the
“outside.” It doesn’t ask students to
make religious commitments or even
require students to refl ect on those
they have. In the Enlightenment (ca.
1650–1800), the independence and
separation of human reason from
religion had developed to the extent that a schol-
arly treatment of religion independent from theol-
ogy could begin. Reason, not faith, was now seeking
understanding of religion. By about 1875, religious
studies was emerging as an academic fi eld. Now uti-
lizing the tools from many other academic fi elds in
the humanities and sciences, religious studies arises
out of a broad intellectual interest in the nature of
religion and the different world religions. It offers
a unique, nonthreatening opportunity for students
to ask important questions about religion, different
world religions, and life itself.

History
History is the scholarly
study of the past, whether
that past is remote (the
beginnings of human civi-
lization, for example) or
recent (the events of last
year). It seeks to fi nd out
what really happened and
why. This task is important
because, as the historian
Philip Jenkins has written
about religion, “Virtually
everybody uses the past in
everyday discourse, but the
historical record on which
they draw is littered with
myths, half-truths, and

folk-history.”9 When history is applied
to religion, rich and important knowl-
edge emerges, because religions come
from the past, both remote and recent.
History studies the process of a religion’s
beginnings, growth, diversity, decline,
and so on. An example is a recent vol-
ume of essays entitled Sacred Schisms:
How Religions Divide, which carefully
studies internal splits in a dozen reli-
gions and draws conclusions about the
different factors and events involved
in religious splits.10 History has almost

always been a main method in the study of religion.
The Oxford historian of Indian culture F. Max

Müller (1823–1900), whom we already met above, is
one of the founders of religious studies—some would
say the founder. He edited a fi fty-volume collection of
ancient sacred scriptures from the main Asian religions,

9 Philip Jenkins, “Ancient and Modern: What the History of Religion
Teaches Us about Contemporary Global Trends,” ARDA Guiding
Paper, http://www.thearda.com/rrh/papers/guidingpapers/jenkins.asp,
accessed 7/17/10.

10 James R. Lewis and Sarah M. Lewis, Sacred Schisms: How Religions
Divide (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

After World War I, historians

would become less naïve

about their ability to be

“scientifi cally” objective about

their work.

Al-Azhar University in Cairo, founded
in 972 C.E.

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religious studies
Academic study of religion
that aims to understand
all religious traditions
objectively, in a religiously
neutral way

14 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

translated for the fi rst time into reliable English edi-
tions (the Sacred Books of the East series, 1879–1910),
a foundational contribution to research and teach-
ing in religious history. He promoted a scholarly dis-
cussion on developmental patterns in religious history
and on the relation of myth, ritual, and magic to reli-
gion in the past. In his Introduction to the Science of
Religion (1873), Müller argued that religious scholar-
ship can be fully scientifi c in its methods and results.
It can collect, classify, and compare religious texts just
as scientifi cally as a botanist collects and studies plants.
Müller’s investigations led him and others to a supposed
“oldest stage” of European and Asian culture and reli-
gion that extended from the Indians to the Germanic
tribes—what he called the “Indo-Germanic” or “Aryan”
stage beginning around 2000 B.C.E. By the end of the
1800s, the notion of near-steady, almost evolutionary
progress often assumed in these studies (and in much of
European and North American higher learning and cul-
ture at that time) started to fade, and the surprising hor-
rors of the First World War (1914–1918) ended almost
all assumptions of automatic progress in religion and
culture. Müller’s work was largely text-based, and based
in scriptures as well. This was a necessary fi rst step, and
a part of other text-based studies in other specializa-
tions in history, but the fi eld of history would widen in
the twentieth century to social history, popular history,
and even the history of material culture. It would also
become less naïve about the ability of historians to be
“scientifi cally” objective about their work.

One particular approach taken by some historians
of religions is the “History of Religions School.” This
school of thought began in Germany in the nineteenth
century, lasting with some strength into the middle of the
twentieth century, and is still occasionally found today in
Europe and North America. It was the fi rst to study reli-
gion systematically as a social and cultural phenomenon.
It depicted religion as evolving with human culture, from
“primitive” polytheism to ethical monotheism. Religions
were divided into stages of progression from simple to
complex societies, especially from polytheistic to mono-
theistic and from informal to
organized. Despite the obvi-
ous faults of such an approach,
the nineteenth century saw a
dramatic increase in knowl-
edge about other religions, an
increase caused by imperial
expansion by European pow-
ers and the growth of a genuine
interest to know about other
cultures. For the fi rst time, an

accurate “map” of the different religions of the world
emerged (see Map 1.1).

Psychology
Psychology deals with the structure and activity of
the human mind. It is the scientifi c study of individ-
ual behavior, including emotions and other thoughts.
Psychology has an interest in religion because of reli-
gion’s role in shaping human behavior—for example
in coping with the challenges of life-cycle changes and
death. Psychology also focuses on how religions under-
stand the human self, including gender. It has been
particularly concerned with research in conversion,
mysticism, and meditation.

Psychology sought at fi rst to explain the origins of
religion in terms of the subconscious mind. Sigmund
Freud (froyd) and Carl Gustav Jung (yoong), the found-
ers of psychoanalysis, sought in opposing ways to trace
the origins from the strongest, most basic human needs
and drives. Freud (1856–1939) and his school regarded
religion as a neurotic condition that needed therapy
when it persisted into adulthood. (See his defi nition of
religion on page 5.) He held that religion, particularly a
belief in God, derives from adults’ need for a father fi g-
ure when they achieve independence from their actual
fathers. These ideas can be found in his books The
Future of an Illusion, in which the “illusion” is religion,
and Moses and Monotheism. Freud later admitted that
a person could experience an “oceanic feeling” of reli-
gion in a positive way, but later Freudians would con-
tinue to be mostly negative toward religion until about
the 1980s, when some change began.

Freud’s pupil Jung (1875–1961), on the other hand,
was appreciative of religion. In his books Modern Man
in Search of a Soul and Memories, Dreams, Refl ections,
he held that conceptions of the divine, whether of god(s)
or some other form of ultimate reality, were related to
an ancient archetypal pattern that resides in the sub-
conscious of all human minds. Religion enables each
developing person to bring out and employ this arche-
type as the individual personality grows and achieves
what Jung called “individuation,” or personal maturity
and wholeness. The notion of “individuation” would
become important in the human potential/humanistic
branch of American psychology. This positive arche-
type is found in all societies, Jung argued, and his
theory became important for many researchers in the
academic discipline of cultural anthropology.

William James (1842–1910), a professor at Harvard,
was an American founder of the fi eld of psychology.
In his still-important book The Varieties of Religious

WAY S O F S T U DY I N G R E L I G I O N 15

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16 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

Experience (1902), James
advanced a more prag-
matic and positive view
of religion than did either
Freud or Jung. He main-
tained that the religious
experience of individuals,
not religious institutions,

should be the primary focus of the psy-
chology of religion and of religion itself.
Intense types of religious experience in
particular should be studied by psycholo-
gists, because they are the closest thing to
a “microscope” into the mind. Individuals
must develop certain “over-beliefs” that,
while they cannot be proven, help humans
live purposefully and in “harmony with
the universe.” After James, the psychologi-
cal study of religion went into something
of a decline, and scientifi c research into
religious behavior faded.

Since the 1980s, the psychologi-
cal study of religion has been advanced
by neuroscience, particularly with regard
to research on the human brain. (Here
the psychology of religion comes very
close to biology, which we will dis-
cuss on page 19.) Perhaps the most
prominent researcher in this fi eld
is Andrew Newberg, a professor
of psychiatry at the University of
Pennsylvania. He has used scan-
ning techniques to observe what
happens in the brains of sub-
jects while they meditate or
pray—in a way, providing the
“microscope into the mind”
that James sought. Newberg’s
research used brain imaging
to study Tibetan Buddhists in
meditation and Roman Catholic
nuns in prayer. He found that
during intense sessions of
these activities, areas of the
brain associated with con-
centration and emotion are
activated and areas associated
with the sense of self are deac-
tivated. Newberg hypothesizes
that this may explain the sense
of “otherness” and “oneness with
God or ultimate reality” often reported

by people who have had intense
religious experiences. Much of
this research is summarized in
his fascinating book Why God
Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief
(2001). More recently, Newberg argued that the physical
and emotional benefi ts of meditational practices grow
over years of practice, but even new practitioners get

“healthier brains.” In one study, he
tested people who had never medi-
tated before, then taught them simple
meditative methods. After eight weeks
of meditating twelve minutes a day,
brain scans and other tests show that
most subjects gain signifi cant improve-
ment in memory, and their anxiety and
anger decrease.

Sociology
Sociology, the scientifi c study of
groups and group behavior, explains
religion’s role in society. Sociologists

studying reli gion are concerned with the mutual rela-
tionship between religion and society, how each shapes

the other. They examine, by both qualitative and
quantitative research, the practices of religions.
Sociologists are interested in beliefs mainly as the
backgrounds of social practices and behaviors.
They also study the various groups within differ-
ent religions.

Current debates in the sociology of religion
have centered on issues such as the pace of secular-
ization, civil religion (the popular, dominant reli-
gion of a nation or culture that typically involves

some religious conviction
about that nation

or culture), and
the cohesiveness
of religions and

religious practice
in the challenges

of globalization,
multiculturalism, and

pluralism. Sociology of
religion based on empirical

research is an infl u-
ential tradition in the
United States, in which

the fl agship outlet for research is the
Journal for the Scientifi c Study of Religion.

Quantitative sociological studies have contributed

Yoga is one popular form of meditation.

IO
TR

M
A

RC
IN

SK
I/

SH
U

TT
ER
ST
O
C
K
.C
O
M

civil religion Popular,
dominant religion of a
nation or culture that
typically involves some
religious conviction about
that nation or culture

Andrew Newberg has

discovered that the benefi ts

of meditational practices

grow over years of practice,

but even new practitioners

get healthier brains.

WAY S O F S T U DY I N G R E L I G I O N 17

greatly to our knowledge of
religion, for example on cur-
rent issues such as new religious
movements and “fundamental-
isms” in world religions.

Émile Durkheim (1858–
1917), a founder of sociology, came from a long line of
Jewish rabbis but studied religion from the “religious
studies” approach. Many scholars today have concluded
that the sociology of religion, and perhaps
sociology itself, began with Durkheim’s
1897 book Suicide, which studied among
other things the rates of suicide occur-
rence among Catholic, Protestant, and
Jewish populations in Western Europe.
Durkheim theorized, especially in his
essay “The Origin of Beliefs,” that reli-
gion was a necessary factor in creating and sus-
taining a harmonious society. He saw religion
as the cement that binds societies and cultures
together. Through shared beliefs and practices,
religion creates a sense of social identity and rein-
forces the moral values of society. This is true
even when society is secularizing, and Durkheim
argued that secularization would continue. Rites
of passage are important as a means of initiat-
ing individuals into the wider society and embed-
ding a sense of responsibility. Like Karl Marx,
Durkheim recognized that religion played
a role in social control of the individual,
but unlike Marx, he saw this in a positive
light. Religion is inevitable, just as society
is inevitable when individuals live together
as a group. Durkheim argued that the
relationship between people and the
supernatural in religion was based on
the relationship between individuals and

the community.
His most mem-
orable proverb
in this regard is
“God is society,
writ large.”

Cultural
Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is the scien-
tifi c study of human life focused on various concrete
human settings. It arose in the nineteenth century, and
soon after its birth it was applied to religions of the
world, especially the beliefs and practices of tribal

cultures. Cultural anthropol-
ogy uncovers the underly-
ing values of cultures, their
answer to the question “Why
are we here?” It studies
such broad cultural dynam-
ics as honor and shame, the
role of kinship, and so on.

It explores the role of
symbols, culture,

and the natural environment; the making
of social boundaries; how sex is under-
stood and gender roles are constructed;
and rituals. A special focus of anthro-
pology has been the shaman, a religious

specialist traditionally belonging to an
indigenous society who acts as a medium
between this visible world and the spirit
world, usually for healing and telling the
future. Since the 1960s, the formal use

of cultural anthropology has become
more prominent in religious studies.

Cultural anthropology can study
the past, especially texts, art, and
other artifacts. Almost all world reli-
gions with sacred writings have had

those writings subjected to some form
of anthropological study. For example,
in a study of early Christianity, Bruce

Malina of Creighton University in Omaha,
an anthropologist and New Testament
scholar, has applied this method to several
books of the New Testament, especially in

his The New Testament World: Insights
from Cultural Anthropology.11 This is
often called “historical anthropology.”
However, cultural anthropology pre-
dominantly deals with living religion.
It studies current practices including
pilgrimages; life-cycle rituals such as
weddings and funerals; belief in mir-
acles; festivals; and the functions of
guilt, confession, punishment, and for-
giveness. History, sociology, and even
psychology tend to make broad analy-
ses and conclusions, but anthropology
tends to study smaller-scale aspects of
human life. As Clifford Geertz wrote in
his book about Islam in Morocco and

11 Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural
Anthropology, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001).

shaman [SHAH-muhn]
Religious specialist
traditionally belonging
to an indigenous society
who acts as a medium
between this visible
world and the spirit
world

“The anthropologist … fi nds

in the litt le what eludes us

in the large, stumbles upon

general truths while sorting

through special cases.”

—Cliff ord Geertz

Modern shaman, Peru

PHOTOGRAPH BY BARTHOLOMEW DEAN, 1988

18 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

Indonesia, “The anthropologist is always inclined to turn
toward the concrete, the particular, the microscopic . . . .
We hope to fi nd in the little what eludes us in the large,
to stumble upon general truths while sorting through
special cases.”12 For example, while historians made large
studies about ancient Hindu sacred texts in the “dead
language” of Sanskrit, anthropologists spent long peri-
ods of time in fi eldwork in India to study the living use of
contemporary oral traditions in other Indian languages.

Victor Turner (1920–1983), an infl uential cul-
tural anthropologist of the last four decades, developed
a powerful theory of ritual that drew the attention of
scholars to religious behaviors. His conception of ritu-
als was shaped during his fi eldwork in the 1950s with
the Ndembu tribe, in what today is Zambia; his personal
background in Roman Catholic Christianity also forms
a background for his work on ritual. He was interested
in the “social drama” of ritual presentations, especially

rites of passage. Ritual creates
the social breaks called “mar-
ginality” and thresholds of new
kinds of life called “liminality.”

Women’s Studies
When the women’s liberation movement came to full
bloom in the United States in the 1970s, the academic
fi eld of women’s or gender studies quickly developed. It

12 Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1968) 4.

studies the social pressures,
expectations, and opportu-
nities of both genders but
focuses on women with the
purpose of promoting their
full equality and liberation.
Feminism thus has both a
descriptive and a prescrip-
tive aspect. Gender studies is
fl ourishing in North America
but is not yet strong in Europe
or other parts of the world.

Feminist scholars of reli-
gion have pointed to religion
as a key factor in the almost
worldwide subordination of
women to men. They state
correctly that practically
all religions stem from—
and most maintain today to
some extent—patriarchal

(male-dominant) societies. In religions that have both
male and female gods, the male gods almost always
predominate; this is true of both tribal and interna-
tional religions. Women’s identifi cation with female
gods—for example the new goddess Santoshi Ma in
Hinduism—does provide some religious strength, but
this is qualifi ed by male dominance among divine
beings themselves. Predominantly masculine language
is used to describe and address most gods, especially the
one God of monotheistic religions.

Women’s roles as professional religious specialists
have been limited, even in those relatively few religious
organizations that profess women’s equality with men;
this limitation is sometimes called in the Western world
the “stained-glass ceiling.” Their ambitions have often
been constrained by the assertion that their primary
religious duty is to obey their husbands and serve their
families in the home. Some feminists have argued that
a “Mother Goddess” religion centered on the earth and
on women is the earliest form of human religion, but
the historical basis of this is contested. Women of many
religions have made other responses to the pressure of
patriarchy. For example, they press for wider roles as
religious specialists, trying to break the stained-glass
ceiling or at least push it higher. They look for wider
opportunities in the world of work, often adapting this
to their religious duties in the
home. In general, they inter-
pret and live their religions
in ways more congenial to
women.

Cultural anthropology studies life through the generations, such
as these young Masai women in east Africa.

EF
F

SC
H

U
LT

ES
/S

H
U
TT
ER
ST
O
C
K
.C
O

WAY S O F S T U DY I N G R E L I G I O N 19

Biology
Until recently, biology (the scientifi c study of all life)
didn’t contribute much to the study of religion, aside
from religious studies scholars’ uncritical application of
evolutionary theory to religion. Now, with the ability
to study the human gene system, new possibilities are
opening for understanding complex human issues in
the realm of religion. Many scientists are now seeking
to explain religion in genetic terms, or at least to fi nd
the genetic connections of religion. Rapidly increasing
knowledge of the human genome has made this pos-
sible. Some writers have suggested that the pervasive-
ness of religious beliefs is due to our genetic makeup.

Supporters of the controversial theory advanced in
Dean Hamer’s The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired
into Our Genes (2005) suggest that human religious
behavior is the result of, or at least made possible by,
a genetic adaptation. Hamer even pointed to one gene,
called VMAT2 by the Human Genome Project, as the
“God gene.” However, most scientists hypothesize that
the genetic background of any complex human behav-
ior such as religion probably fl ows from a combina-
tion of several genes. More generally accepted is the
hypothesis by some biologists and anthropologists that

the development of religious belief in prehistoric peo-
ples may have been a key factor in the development
of higher-order cognitive skills. Some humans became
capable of transcending themselves in thought and
action, and this was passed on by natural selection.

Conclusions
We’ll conclude our treatment of the methods of reli-
gious studies with two observations. First, it’s obvious
that the study of religion, like many other branches
of scholarship, is multidisciplinary. It has no “reli-
gious method” all its own, but draws from many other
methods. Second, religious studies is a human, not a
divine, way of knowing. Religion itself can bring divine
or sacred knowledge, but our academic study of it is
method related and time bound. This means that reli-
gion scholars, just like other academic experts, are part
of the “concrete epistemology” (ways of knowing) of
current scholarly and cultural interests and current
assumptions that different generations have about life.
Religion scholars’ (and beginning students’) personal
development, education, and individual religious expe-
riences, as well as their generation-specifi c attitudes, all
affect how they adopt and use a particular method of
studying religion. Religious studies as a fi eld is always
conditioned in each generation by time, a fact that
is often appreciated only by a later generation, for
whom temporal distance allows a better view. As we
sometimes say with slight exaggeration, “Hindsight is
twenty-twenty.”

This conditioning can be traced through time from
the beginning of religious studies until today. Religious
studies fi rst went along with nineteenth-century opti-
mism about the progressive evolution of human reli-
gion. Then, a Protestant bias crept into religious studies
from the hidden values of scholars in the fi eld, who were
predominantly Protestant Christian: the privileging of
sacred texts over oral traditions; the privileging of doc-
trine over ritual; and the belief in the primacy of pri-
vate religious experience over received traditions—all

Some biologists and anthropologists

hold that the development of religious

belief in prehistoric peoples may have

given humans their higher-order

cognitive skills.

Venus (or Woman) of Willendorf, Austria,
the world’s oldest religious statuette
(24,000–22,000 B.C.E.)

A
LT

ER
G

EI
ER

SP
ER

G
ER

/C
O

RB
IS

20 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

crucial elements of the Protestant branch of
Christianity. Then, the religious studies “phe-
nomenologists” of the 1920s, after the spiritual
and intellectual crisis of the First World War,
searched for the so-called essence of religion,
devaluating differences in the process. Then,
the baby-boomer generation of scholars in the
1960s through 1990s was driven by the expe-
rience and values of an alternative culture to
pose provocative questions that challenged tradi-
tional methods in religious studies. The realization that
each generation of scholars has characteristic limita-
tions, which it cannot see, need not diminish the value
of religious studies. Indeed, knowing the
limits and biases of knowledge makes our
knowledge more certain.

LO5 Special Issues
in the Study of
Religion Today
Tolerance and
Intolerance

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a controversy breaks out in the blogosphere and then in
the print media over Harvard College’s decision
to reserve six hours a week in the college’s central gymnasium
for women only. The Harvard Islamic Society had petitioned for
the special hours, arguing that observant female Muslim stu-
dents needed these special hours in order to observe Muslim
rules about modesty and coverings for women. Although
many Muslim women had exercised in the gymnasium dur-
ing open hours, dressed in sweatsuits and headscarves, the
Harvard Islamic Society says that having hours restricted to
women enables them to exercise better, in athletic shirts and
shorts, without fear of male students “checking them out.”

Some argue that this is a
reasonable toleration of
another’s faith; others say
that this gives Harvard’s
approval to practices that
reinforce intolerance toward
women.

The British atheist Chris-
topher Hitchens is one
of a handful of current
advocates of atheism—
the conviction that there

is no God and that religion is mostly mistaken—who are
making sharp public attacks on religion. (Agnosticism,
a related term, refers to those who “do not know” if a
God or gods exist; this belief is not always antireligious,

and rarely combative against reli-
gion.) Hitchens recently wrote that
religion is “Violent, irrational, intol-
erant, allied to racism and tribalism
and bigotry, invested in ignorance
and hostile to free inquiry, contemp-
tuous of women and coercive toward
children.”13 Although this is put in a
broad, sharp way that lacks any hint
of nuance, Hitchens is articulating
a point of view against religion that
many people share.

Tolerance means putting up with
the views and actions of others that are
opposed to your own, usually for the
common good. We begin our discus-
sion of tolerance and intolerance with

the Western world. The modern Western idea of religious
tolerance developed in Europe after brutal wars between
Protestant and Catholic Christians in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and has gradually been extended
to people of other religions. (The murderous violence
between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland
from about 1960 to 1998 serves to remind the modern
world what was gained at the end of the seventeenth
century.) The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
guarantees tolerance in “freedom of religion.” The state
cannot interfere with basic religious rights and must
actively protect them from restriction in law or policy.
In the twentieth century, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights advocates free-
dom of religion for all people.
Since the Enlightenment, the
fostering and maintenance of
tolerance, religious or otherwise,
has been regarded as a duty of

13 Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons
Everything (Boston: Twelve Publishing Company, 2007), 56.

“Religion is violent, irrational,

intolerant, allied to racism

and tribalism and bigotry,

invested in ignorance…

contemptuous of women and

coercive toward children.”

—Christopher Hitchens

atheism Conviction that
there is no God

agnosticism Refers to
those who “do not know”
if a God or gods exist

tolerance Putting up
with views and actions
of others opposed to
your own, usually for the
common good

PHOTO BY JERRY JASPOR. COEXIST DESIGN USED WITH PERMISSION BY PEACEMONGER AT WWW.PEACEMONGER.ORG.

S P E C I A L I S S U E S I N T H E S T U DY O F R E L I G I O N TO D AY 21

government. Tolerance and
intolerance are public, social
things, but they are personal
and individual as well. People
of one religion can be intoler-
ant toward people of other reli-

gions, and people outside religion
can be intolerant of all or some religious people and
groups.

The history of world religions reveals different
ideas of tolerance. In ancient China, native religions
were generally tolerated, but non-Chinese religions
were admitted only by government consent; this is
still true of China today. Ancient Judaism was at times
welcoming to other religions in its territory, at other
times not. In the ancient Roman Empire, non-Roman
religious groups were tolerated, with some exceptions,
as long as they did not undermine the reli-
gious underpinnings of Roman imperial
rule. Christianity, from the thousand years
since it became the state religion until at
least the Protestant Reformation, tended
toward religious intolerance. (Compare
the maxim from Roman Catholic his-
tory that has parallels in other reli-
gions: “Error has no rights.” The
Roman Catholic Church did not for-
mally accept religious tolerance until
the Second Vatican Council in the
1960s.) Islam usually granted tolera-
tion of conquered peoples of certain
other religions—as a rule, but not always in prac-
tice. This toleration did not extend to Arab
polytheism, which was extinguished; and
over time, even tolerated religions were
dramatically reduced in Muslim lands.

Hinduism has been generally
tolerant to other religions but has
preferred to integrate them into its
own system. Hindu relations with
Muslims on the Indian subconti-
nent have been uneasy for centuries,
and mass conversions of Hindus
to religions such as Christianity and
Buddhism can provoke a violent reac-
tion. The regular violence between
Hindus and Muslims that has
occurred since the division of India
and Pakistan in 1947, and occasion-
ally Hindu violence against Sikhs,
means that the tolerance that some see
in Hinduism needs some qualifi cation.

Buddhism, which teaches tolerance, has seen intolerant
periods in its history, as recently as the civil war carried
on by armed Buddhists in Sri Lanka, in the violently
repressive Buddhist government in Myanmar (Burma),
and on a much smaller scale in bitter struggles between
different Tibetan monastic groups. In sum, achieving
and maintaining tolerance is no easy matter.

A diffi cult question involves the limits of tolerance.
Few people in the world today would like to be

called “intolerant,” but few people can be
equally tolerant of all opposing ideas

and actions. If they try, some diffi cult
questions can arise. For example, can

a religious group that is itself intoler-
ant be tolerated in the public sector?

In North America, with its legal tradi-
tion of granting a maximum of freedom

to intolerant groups, this isn’t so much
of an issue. But can a religion be toler-

ated by another if it grows big enough
to take over a society and impose its own

intolerance? In general, different religious
views are tolerated in Western society, pro-

vided that they do not lead to actions that could
challenge a majority consensus on religion. The line
between private belief and public action isn’t always
easy to see, however. An example of this is the con-
troversy in France over the
public wearing of Muslim
headscarves and full-body
veils by women, which the
government wants to for-
bid as an assault on the
secular nature of the French
state and its security. The

Church of Scientology is under gov-
ernment pressure in Germany, in
part because the post–World War II
German constitution forbids “totali-
tarian movements,” which the gov-
ernment suspects that Scientology

is. And in China, the Falun Gong (FAH-luhn GONG)

A
LA

N
S

TR
EV

N
S

People today don’t like to be called

intolerant, but few people can be equally

tolerant of all opposing ideas and

actions.

Protesters against the Church of
Scientology wear masks to shield
their identity.

22 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

FABIEN DANY, WWW.FABIENDANY.COM

meditational movement is strongly repressed by the
Chinese government as a “dangerous cult” that suppos-
edly threatens public order and the health of its follow-
ers. These examples show that struggles over tolerance
continue today all around the world.

Violence

Faced in April 2010 with a spreading church sexual abuse scandal in Europe,
similar to one that took place
in the 1990s in the United
States, Pope Benedict
XVI apologized in
an offi cial letter
to almost 15,000
victims and their
families in Ireland, express-
ing “shame and remorse” for what
he called “sinful and criminal” acts committed
by some priests over the past fi fty years. Most of these acts
were sexual assaults against children. “You have suff ered
grievously and I am truly sorry,” the pope said. “Your trust
has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated.” But
the pope didn’t indicate in his letter that church leaders who
looked the other way or actively covered up these crimes
would be disciplined by the church, or that the whole matter
would be turned over to the police, as some victims and their
families were hoping. The problem of sexual predators among
religious leaders isn’t unique to Roman Catholics, or even to
Christianity.

Violence is a diffi cult topic to grapple with, both emo-
tionally and intellectually. However, this grappling is
necessary. Violence is the intentional use of physical
force to injure or kill people, to damage or destroy their
property, or both. Violence is motivated by a variety
of factors—political, economic, national, and tribal.
Religiously motivated violence includes all events in
which a follower of a religion is either the perpetrator or
the recipient of violent behavior or both. Like most sorts
of violence, religious violence can be carried out by indi-
viduals or groups. It can be by direct attack, or by indi-
rect means such as inducing famine. It includes violence
of any kind by members of one religion against people
of another religion (the Crusades by medieval Christians
against Islam, Muslim holy war, and occasional violence
between Sikhs and Hindus), between different groups in
a religion (Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, occasional violence
between different Hindu castes in India), and crimes by
powerful people in a religion against those with less or no
power. It includes persecution of one religion by another

or by the state against its people, as in the Holocaust
directed at Jews or in current Chinese prosecution of the
new Falun Gong religious movement. It also includes

violence against explicitly religious objects, as
in attacks on religious buildings or sites or

burning of holy books. Because religions
have cultural, political, and other

aspects, different motivations
often lie behind what may

appear to be purely
religious violence.

Sometimes vio-
lence can be
infl icted on
a public tar-
get in order to

induce terror in a
populace.

Religious violence commit-
ted by groups must be under-
stood in its cultural context—not
to excuse it, but to understand it.
In particular, beginning students
of religions should realize that
not all religious violence is the same. Some religions tend
to be nonviolent, but others approve of violence in certain
situations. Some religions began as explicitly nonviolent
movements—Christianity and Sikhism, for example—
but changed over time. Religious violence often tends to
place differing emphases on the symbolic aspects of vio-
lence. For example, sometimes violence is understood as a
religiously signifi cant act with ritual aspects. In the 1990s
Taliban Muslims dynamited ancient statues of the Buddha
to remove “idolatry” from Afghanistan, and today they
at times attack government schools for girls. Ritual vio-
lence may be directed against victims, as in human sacri-
fi ce, or it may be more or less voluntarily self-infl icted, as

In 2009, girls attend school in Afghanistan despite
religiously motivated threats against them.

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Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

S P E C I A L I S S U E S I N T H E S T U DY O F R E L I G I O N TO D AY 23

in self-fl agellation with a whip.
It may be a part of monastic
practice, as for example when
head monks in certain sects of
Zen Buddhists beat their subor-
dinates with sticks and rods to
discipline them or try to induce sudden enlighten-
ment. So-called “honor killings,” in which fam-
ily members kill another member of their family
(usually female) in order to “preserve the fam-
ily’s honor,” often have some religious motiva-
tion today, although other factors are at work
there too.

Pluralism

P hil Jackson, the retired head coach of the Los
Angeles Lakers, isn’t a typi-
cal professional basketball
coach. He rarely stands on
the sideline and shouts
at his players. Instead, he
sits so serenely that he
has been called “Buddha
on the bench” and “Zen
master,” terms that apply
as well to his religious
approach to coaching. His
teams don’t play seasons;
they go on “sacred quests,”
as in Native American
religion. Jackson teaches his
players short Buddhist medi-
tations to use before they shoot
free throws. He has called their
main strategy on off ense “fi ve-man tai
chi,” and their locker room is fi lled with
Native American religious objects. His 1995
autobiography is called Sacred Hoops.
Raised by devout Christian parents who
taught him to value both religious earnest-
ness and compassion, he calls himself a
“Zen Christian.”

Nonviolent relations between reli-
gions, and between cultures and
nations with different religions, are
based fi rst on toleration. Religious
pluralism, the recognition of religious
differences and the effort to deal with
them constructively, goes beyond toleration. Religious

pluralism owes a great
deal to the American
and European expe-
rience of religious

diversity. Chris
Beneke, in

his Beyond
Toleration: The Religious Origins of American
Pluralism, distinguishes carefully between tol-
erance and pluralism. By the 1730s, religious
toleration toward minority religions was

practiced in most British colonies in North
America.

The policy of toleration relieved religious
minorities of physical punish-

ments and fi nancial burdens,
but it did not end preju-
dice and exclusion. Those
“tolerated” could still
be barred from holding
government and mili-

tary positions and from
attending universities.
Religious persecution
had ended, but reli-
gious discrimination
had not. However,
colonial governments
gradually expanded
the policy of reli-
gious toleration, and
between the 1760s and

the 1780s, they replaced it
with “religious liberty.”14

This was not primar-
ily a compromise with
rising Enlightenment
secularism in America;

it was an achievement of
early American religious

groups. The different Protestant
Christian groups—Episcopalians,
Methodists, Quakers, Presbyterians,
Baptists, Lutherans, and others—saw
religious liberty for everyone as in their
own best interests, and for the com-
mon good. The consensus for religious
liberty was so strong that when a new
national constitution was adopted at

14 Chris Beneke, Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of
American Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

pluralism Recognition
of religious differences and
the effort to deal with them
constructively

Diff erent religions exist

because religions are

diff erent. This makes dialogue

between them both possible

and necessary.

Phil Jackson

AP PHOTO/MANU FERNANDEZ, FILE

24 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

the end of the eighteenth century, the Bill of Rights was
added almost immediately, with freedom of religion in
the fi rst amendment. The strength of religious freedom
in the United States has strongly infl uenced the course
of religious freedoms in the world.

Religious pluralism demands interfaith dialogue
and some signifi cant cooperation. Interfaith dialogue
is conversation between members of different religions
to reduce confl icts between them and to achieve mutu-
ally desirable goals. Dialogue calls for care to be taken
with the ideas of others, without necessarily agree-
ing with them or assuming (as many people think)
that all religions are essentially the same or could be
made the same. In the words of the subtitle of Stephen
Prothero’s thought-provoking book, the Eight Rival
Religions That Run the World have Differences that
Matter.16 To put it another way: Different religions
exist because religions are different. These differences
make dialogue between religions possible, and they
make dialogue important if confl ict between religions
and between the cultures they shape is to be avoided.
Interfaith dialogue is easier if a religion’s adherents
have some form of inclusivism, a belief that people in
other religions may have a way to salvation or at least
some signifi cant but partial knowledge of the truth. At
the far extreme, believers with a completely exclusivist

mindset—that only their reli-
gion leads to the truth— prefer
to proselytize followers of
other religions rather than seek
an open-ended dialogue with
them. In between full inclusiv-
ism and full exclusivism is a
wide range of attitudes, where
most believers today live.

Religion and Ecological
Crisis

At Windsor Castle, just outside London, representa-tives of nine of the world’s largest religions gathered
in November 2009 to discuss the ecological crisis. They’d
been summoned by Prince Philip of the United Kingdom
and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Called
“Many Heavens, One Earth,” the meeting was intended to
generate commitments from religious organizations and
the countries in which they predominate, agreements that
could reduce greenhouse gas emissions or otherwise limit
human impact on the environment. In words addressed to
the Christians in the delegation, but applicable to many (but
not all) of the other delegates,
Prince Philip remarked, “If you
believe in God … then you should
feel a responsibility to care for
God’s creation.”

Statement on Pluralism by Harvard University’s Pluralism Project

First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic
engagement with diversity. . . . Today, religious diversity is
a given, but pluralism is not a given; it is an achievement.
Mere diversity without real encounter and relationship will
yield increasing tensions in our societies.

Second, pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seek-
ing of understanding across lines of diff erence. Tolerance
is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require
Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secular-
ists to know anything about one another. . . .

Third, pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of
commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not
require us to leave our identities and our commitments

behind, for pluralism is the encounter of commitments. It
means holding our deepest diff erences, even our religious
diff erences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one
another.

Fourth, pluralism is based on dialogue. Dialogue means
both speaking and listening, and that process reveals both
common understandings and
real diff erences. Dialogue does
not mean everyone … will agree
with one another.15

A Closer Look:

15 From http://www.pluralism.org/pages/pluralism/what_is_plural-
ism, accessed 7/17/10.

16 Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That
Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter (New York:
HarperOne, 2010).

S P E C I A L I S S U E S I N T H E S T U DY O F R E L I G I O N TO D AY 25

Religion and environmentalism has
emerged in the past generation as
an important topic in religious stud-
ies. This isn’t only because people
everywhere realize that worsening
pollution, especially of the air, is
changing our Earth’s climate rapidly
and for the worse. It’s also because,
as the Muslim scholar Seyyed Nasr
explains, “The environmental cri-
sis is fundamentally a crisis of val-
ues.”17 Since they shape the values
of cultures, religions are deeply
involved in how humans treat their
environment.

Historian Lynn White, Jr. argued
in 1967 that Western Christianity,
with its view of nature as under
human control and direction, bears
a substantial responsibility for the
contemporary environmental crisis.18 White’s essay pro-
voked a strong reaction, with responses ranging from
complete denial of his argument to complete agree-
ment with it. Some proposed that Eastern religions,
as well as those of indigenous peoples such as Native
Americans, offered more environmentally responsible
worldviews than did Christianity. By the 1990s, many
scholars of religion had entered the debate and begun
to analyze how nature is viewed in the world’s various
religious systems. A series of ten conferences on reli-
gion and ecology was held at the Harvard University
Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996 to
1998; the conference papers were published in a World
Religions and Ecology series, one book for each of ten
religions. An increasing number of courses on religion
and the environment are offered in colleges and uni-
versities around the world. This topic needs careful
study, because the world’s reli-
gions sometimes have different
views about the origin, nature,
and value of the physical
world. But it’s probably safe to
say that all religions view the
world around us as signifi cant
and would view the loss of a
viable home for humanity as a
tragedy.

New Religious Movements

Outside a movie premiere in Utah, crowds gather, waiting for the director, producers, and actors to arrive. Although
the scene is similar to that of most premieres, the fi lm is not.
It is a feature-fi lm adaptation of the main Mormon scripture,
the Book of Mormon, and has been offi cially sanctioned by
the Mormon church, formally known as the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Along with its general release to
theaters and then to video rental outlets, the movie would
be used in the missionary activities of the church. From the
birth of the Latter-day Saint Church in the 1800s, its use of the
Book of Mormon in missionary eff orts has been a key factor
in making this church probably the fastest-growing religious
organization in the world.

New religious movements (NRMs), as we saw above,
are a widely accepted area in the fi eld of religious stud-
ies. NRMs are religious groups that arose since the start
of the nineteenth century and now have suffi cient size,
longevity, and cultural impact to merit academic study.
We will deal with NRMs more fully in Chapter 13, but
we should consider them initially here.

New religious movements is preferable in some
ways to other recent terms such as alternative religious
movements and marginal religious movements. It is
also clearly preferable to the older terms sects and cults.
Although these terms still have some validity—especially
in sociology, where scholars use them objectively—they
have become so loaded with value judgments that most
religion scholars no longer use them for new religious
movements. To judge by the dimensions of religion

17 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in
Modern Man, rev. ed. (Chicago: Kazi Publishers, 1997).

18 Lynn White, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science
155, no. 3767 (March 10, 1967).

Religion united to nature: the Eternal Spring Temple in Taroko
National Park, Taiwan

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Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

26 C H A P T E R 1 B E G I N N I N G YO U R S T U DY O F W O R L D R E L I G I O N S

discussed above, there is usually little or no difference
between a religion and a sect or a cult. All of them have
doctrines and ethics, rituals, social structures, and an aes-
thetic dimension, and their members typically describe
powerful emotional religious experiences. The term cult
has been used to describe many smaller, nontraditional
religious groups. These groups often have new or inno-
vative beliefs that set them apart from the prevailing reli-
gious worldviews, especially those of the religions from
which they emerge. In recent times “cult” has become
rather derogatory, applied to groups that are deemed
to be beyond commonly accepted bounds of social
behavior. In many cases, if they do not disappear, sects
go on to become recognized groups within the broader
context of the “parent” religion. The various Protestant
churches are examples of Christian sects that eventually
gained mainstream acceptance, and in Hinduism one
can cite the example of the Hare Krishna (HAHR-ee
KRISH-nah) movement (The International Society for

Krishna Consciousness, or
ISKCON). Despite the intensity
of its beliefs and actions that
can make it look like a “cult” to
some in the Western world, it is
an authentically Hindu group.

Thousands of groups
around the world today are
NRMs, and each year sees the

birth of more. Some examples are Falun Gong, the
Baha’i tradition, the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, the Christian Science
Church, the Unifi cation
Church, and the Church of
Scientology. These and other
movements called NRMs
often don’t see themselves as
new religious movements, but
instead as the true continu-
ing body from an older reli-
gion now gone bad. Although
scholars use the term “new
religious movements” we must
note that they usually branch
off from older religions. Falun
Gong is an adaptation mostly
of Mahayana Buddhism and
a lesser amount of Daoism.
Baha’i arose in the nineteenth
century from Shi’a Islam
and sees itself as the succes-
sor of Islam. The Church of

Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Christian Science
Church, and the Unifi cation Church see themselves as
Christian, and most experts in comparative religions
view this labeling as basically correct. That all three
accept the Christian Bible is a good indication of their
Christian roots. Moreover, outsiders to Christianity,
such as Buddhists, would almost certainly recognize
them as belonging to the stream of Christian tradition.
However, one shouldn’t assume that all organizations
that call themselves a church self-identify as Christian.
For example, the Church of Scientology does not see
itself as Christian and uses church to mean “religious
organization”; so does the Buddhist Church in America.

Some of these new religious movements are highly
controversial. Many were persecuted or prosecuted
in their early years by religious and civil authorities,
and some still are today. However, many of the other
faiths examined in this book were controversial when
they were new. New religious movements can and do
change, sometimes dramatically, and often much more
quickly than older religions do. This often occurs
when their founder dies, but later change is possible
as well. Careful students of religion will want to form
judgments about new religious movements that take
some account of what believ-
ers say about themselves in
their writings and in life. As

Celebrity Scientology reaches South Park: “I’m a failure in the eyes of
the prophet,” Tom Cruise said as he ran into Stan’s closet. Cruise believed
Stan was the reincarnation of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, so
it was shocking to hear him say, “You’re not, like, as good as Leonardo
DiCaprio … but you’re OK.”

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C O M I N G TO G R I P S W I T H YO U R P R E U N D E R S TA N D I N G O F R E L I G I O N 27

always, our learning about a religion should precede
any judgment concerning it.

LO6 Coming to Grips with
Your Preunderstanding
of Religion
What Is Preunderstanding?
Imagine that a good friend tells you, “I’ve met and
talked with an alien visitor from another planet.” You
might say to yourself, amid all the thoughts and emo-
tions that you usually feel when you hear something
strange or upsetting, “I don’t believe in space aliens!”
But then you might think, “Are there alien visitors to
Earth after all? Maybe they’re real, and maybe he has
been talking with them.”

You might think this, but probably not. Instead,
your mind automatically begins to sift through your
knowledge for an explanation consistent with what
you already “know” to be true. Only people who are
already convinced, or seriously entertaining the idea,
that a set of things are true—there is life somewhat
similar to ours on other planets, beings from these
places travel to Earth, and they make contact with
humans and talk with them—will easily accept your
friend’s comment. Given your prior understanding
that such things probably aren’t factual, you won’t
likely entertain these theories as a serious possibility.

We interpret all of our experience in just this way,
because, as psychologists tell us, this is the way the
human mind operates. Every understanding of our
new experiences is made in light of an understanding
that we already had going into the new experiences.
Preunderstanding is the state of one’s understanding
of reality, in terms of which one makes sense of one’s
new experiences. It describes what we already know,
whether that knowledge is correct or not. We assume
that new experiences will be compatible with our prior
understanding. Even if a new experience corrects our
old knowledge—let’s say that in this case you actually
do meet a space alien with your friend—it is always
understood on the basis of old knowledge. This new
knowledge is then integrated into old understandings,
and the preunderstanding grows. The term preunder-
standing, therefore, describes the existing state of our
understanding prior to the occurrence of some specifi c

experience in need of interpretation. Our preunder-
standing is not static, but dynamic. It changes and
constantly gets modifi ed as we alter our beliefs and
convictions. Over the course of time, we as individuals
reject some of our former beliefs and embrace new ones.
With each change, our preunderstanding is altered.

Your Preunderstanding
of Religion
All this raises the question: What elements of your
preunderstanding of religion might infl uence your study
of world religions? Each person must examine and
answer individually. In all individual encounters with
new people and new ideas, our knowledge of ourselves
and our knowledge of others are connected and infl u-
ence each other. You should fi rst think through your
own past encounters with religion and your experiences
with it, pro and con. Here are some short but thought-
provoking questions to consider as you think of your
own preunderstanding of religion and religions:

1. Do I have an unprejudiced view of what “religion”
in general is? Or am I biased for or against it?

2. Can I “suspend my disbelief” or “suspend my
belief” in order to encounter religion as a whole,
or specifi c religions, sympathetically?

3. If I have a religious belief, can I study other reli-
gions without feeling threatened in my own?

4. Can I encounter strange, even disturbing practices
without getting too upset?

5. Can I be humble and
provisional in my
conclusions?

6. Can I postpone any pos-
sible personal judgment
on a religion until I’ve
learned more about it?

You are now poised to begin your study of the
world’s leading religions. Like the two travelers on
the front cover of this book, you are going on a jour-
ney. Your journey will
encounter the lives
and religions of other
people. In this process,
you will learn more
about yourself as well.
Enjoy the trip!

preunderstanding State of
one’s understanding of reality,
in terms of which one makes
sense of one’s new experiences

Your Visit to the Polynesian

Cultural Center, Hawaii

s you planned your trip to Hawaii, one
of the things you found recommended
in all the online tour sites was the
Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) on the
island of Oahu. This is the world’s larg-

est and best-known cultural theme park, and the second
most visited site in Hawaii. The PCC has entertained more
than 37 million visitors, while presenting the culture of
Polynesia to the rest of the world. So you conclude that
you should check it out

Your tour begins with eight diff erent “villages” re –
created from eight diff erent cultures spread through the
southern Pacifi c. In general, people from those islands
appear in the villages as presenters of cultural life in them.
You see diff erent aspects of Polynesian life at each of the
villages, and you’re given the opportunity to interact
with the village presenters. As you go along, you begin
to wonder: Where is indigenous religion in these portray-
als? When you ask this of your guide, or of any of the on-
site interpreters, you get this answer: “Most Polynesian
religions are deeply enculturated. Religion isn’t evident
to you as a tourist from the Western world, even if you’re
a beginning student of religion, unless you know what
you’re looking for. The few obviously religious aspects
such as special ceremonies and sacred huts are often
kept secret in these societies, so we keep them secret too.
If you ask them, our guides will do their best to answer
your questions about religion.” This satisfi es your curios-
ity for the moment, but later you begin to wonder about
it again.

In the evening, after a traditional Hawaiian din-
ner, you attend the “Ha: Breath of Life” show at the PCC
outdoor theater. With around one hundred performers
and musicians, it tells the story of Polynesian culture
through the life of a character named Mana. The story

beings at Mana’s birth and
follows his journey through
the universal stages of boy-
hood, young love, respect and
responsibility of adulthood,
and even the experience of mourning the death of
friends. You notice that these events are usually marked
by rites of passage with strong religious overtones. You
also note that mana is a key concept for understanding
Polynesian religions.

As you begin formal study of indigenous religions, some
questions about them will occur to you. Here are some
things that students often wonder about:

● Why are there so many different names for this
type of religion?

● Why are they so much alike that they can be
studied together, but at the same time so different
from one another?

● Why are so many of their practices becoming
popular among people of other religions?

● Why do they have relatively little emphasis on
teaching when compared to other world religions,
and focus so much on rituals?

● How much have they changed, and how much
have they stayed the same, especially in the last
two centuries or so?

Traditional religions are striking in their plurality and their similarities.

< Cofan, a shaman, or tribal religious leader, from the Amazon forest, 2006.

Native American religions still have something
signifi cant to off er people of other religions or
people of no religion.

Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

What Do YOU Think?

30 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

Because of the large numbers of reli gions that are
discussed here, this chap ter has a special organization
that differs from that of all other chapters (except the
last, which has an organization like this chapter). First,
we will discuss the variety of names scholars have given
to this overall type of religion and then explain why
this book calls them indigenous religions. Second, we’ll
deal with the typical challenges to the academic study
of these religions, especially the kinds of challenges
that students face when they begin this study. Third,
we’ll draw out the more common characteristics in
these religions. In this section, we’ll deal with history,
teaching, ritual, and so on. Fourth, we’ll take a closer
look at just three indigenous religions: those of the
Lakota (lah-KOH-tuh) tribes of North America, the
Yoruba (YOHR-uh-buh) tribe of Africa, and the Vodou
(VOH-doo, more widely known as Voodoo) of African-
Caribbean peoples.

LO1 Names for This Type
of Religion
Naming the overall type of religions with which we are
dealing can be a challenge. But why is it necessary to
name the type of religion at all, if such a comprehensive
name may well distort or obscure the individual beliefs?
The answer is that religious studies itself has seen this
as important despite its downside, so we must grapple
with the issue here. This section will deal with generic
names, suggesting what is strong and weak about each
one, and then we’ll discuss the term settled on in this
book: indigenous religions.

Traditional Religion
Traditional religion correctly implies that religions
were present in various societies around the world
before European and American expansion. They are

traditional in com-
parison to newer,
imported religions.
However, as we
saw in Chapter 1,
all religions are
traditions, because
they are compre-
hensive ways of
life that come from
the past and are
passed on into the

future. It has become common in scholarship to refer
to Hinduism, Islam, and the rest as traditions as well
as religions. Labeling only one type as traditional is
misleading and potentially confusing.

Primitive Religion
Primitive religion and the related term primal religion
were more popular in the past, especially among cul-
tural anthropologists who used them in a neutral, non-
judgmental way. These terms mostly describe religions
that are not derived from other religions, and this is
a helpful distinction. However, it’s more diffi cult to
use these terms in a neutral way in religious studies.
They can imply that these religions are undeveloped,
unchanging, outmoded, or simple. Research into these
religions has confi rmed just the
opposite: They are often just as
complex and comprehensive
as other world religions. Most
religion scholarship avoids
primitive today, but primal is
occasionally seen.

Animism and Totemism
Animism and totemism are popular as names for
religions in some circles today. Animism (from the
Latin anima, “soul, spirit”) is the belief that indi-
vidual spirits exist not only in people but also in all
individual things in nature, whether they appear to
be alive or not: individual animals, plants, rocks,
thunder and lightning, and mountains, lakes and riv-
ers. In many religions the souls of deceased humans
keep a close relationship with the living, so that they
are part of myth and ritual. The appearance of the
sacred in dreams and visions is a key element of
animism. Edward B. Tylor, a founder of the fi eld of
anthropology, argued as early as 1891 that all reli-
gion began in animism. Totemism is a religion based
on the idea that the spirit of one primary source in
nature—the land itself, a particular species of animal,
or the ancestors— provides the basis of human life.
Totemism is found in the Native American tribes of

animism Belief that individual
spirits exist not only in people
but also in all individual things
in nature

totemism [TOHT-em-iz-uhm]
Religion based on the idea that
the spirit of one primary source
in nature provides the basis of
human life

Indigenous religions are often just as

complex and comprehensive as other

world religions.

31N A M E S F O R T H I S T Y P E O F R E L I G I O

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Totemism in the Twilight Series

The leader of the Quileute (KWILL-yoot) Nation of Native
Americans in northwest Washington first heard about the
Twilight Saga novels from their readers, who wanted to
know more about the place where the blockbuster vam-
pires-and-werewolves tale of teenage love is set. When
the novels were made into films, interest in Quileutes
exploded. “Their interest in our tribe was a good sur-
prise,” tribal president Anna Rose Counsell-Geyer said to

the press. “People are going to actually get to know the
Quileute and we are going to be recognized as a people.”

The Quileute’s reservation on the Olympic Peninsula
serves as the scenic backdrop to author Stephenie Meyer’s
fantasy novels, with thick woods and with rocks and cliff s
rising along the Pacifi c Ocean. The reservation spans only
one square mile. The wolf theme of Twilight draws on the
Quileutes’ own creation story, which features the transfor-
mation of an ancient wolf pack into people who became
the Quileute tribe. Since that transformation, the wolf has
been the tribe’s totem.

In Twilight, the Quileute creation story is used to
explain the Wolf Pack, a group of young Quileute men
joined by Jacob Black (played in the fi lm by Taylor Lautner),
who shape-shift into large, powerful wolves to guard the
reservation from marauding vampires. The present-day
Twilight Saga marks a departure from Hollywood’s long
tradition of portraying the past, not the present, of Native
Americans. It also departs from Quileute religion, which
does not feature tribal members who can shape-shift into
wolves; this isn’t a part of totemism, but instead draws on
European werewolf legends.

A Closer Look:

Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, and Robert
Pattinson star in The Twilight Saga.A

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E
EN

Totem poles

Close-up of a totem pole with an eagle face

the northwest coast (with their famous totem poles)
and in the beliefs of the Aborigines of Australia. It fi ts
these totemic religions well as a comprehensive name,
but it doesn’t fi t other religions of this type.

32 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

Manaism
Some cultural anthro-
pologists held that the
fi rst stage of all human
religion was manaism,
a belief in impersonal
spiritual power and
energy that permeates
the world as a whole.
Many religions, they
argued, are still based
on mana. Manaism is
pre- animistic, because

power is not connected to spirits in individual natu-
ral things (animism) or species/groups of things
( totemism). It is drawn from the Polynesian term
mana, “spiritual power.” Some see the Yoruban idea
of general spiritual power that infuses the universe as
an example of mana. For almost a generation at the
beginning of the twentieth century, there was quite a
disagreement between those who advocated manaism
and those who advocated animism as the basis of all
later religion. Today this argument is largely a thing of
the past.

Shamanism
A shaman is a tribal member with special abilities
and the authority to act as an intermediary between
the people and the world of gods and spirits (both
good and evil). He, or rarely she, is known by different
names in different tribes; the most common are holy
man, medicine man, and healer. Shamans are so com-
mon in this type of religion that some scholars have

called their beliefs shamanic/ shamanis tic religions.
But this is controversial today, especially among
cultural anthropologists. Many indigenous peo-
ples around the world, particularly in the Native
American tribes, also reject this term as misleading
when applied to them.

Small-Scale Religions
This name, from cultural anthropology, is accurate
in its implication that some of the religions to which
it refers are held by a smaller number of people, but
other so-called small-scale religions are actually prac-
ticed by more people than some world religions such
as Judaism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Shinto. Other than
the relative size of some of them—and there were
indigenous empires in the Americas and in Africa with
empire-wide religions, we must remember—there is
nothing small about these religions.

Nature Religion
Some people informally use the term nature
religions. This correctly suggests the stronger
connection to the natural environment in
indigenous religions than in other world reli-
gions. But there is much more to the religion
in this chapter than a connection to the natu-
ral environment. Moreover, here, “nature”
itself is a Western concept that many other
societies, especially the societies dealt with in
this chapter, do not share. They usually have
no strong distinction between the natural
and supernatural that nature religions may
imply to Westerners. Nor do they see human
beings as so superior to the rest of the world
that they almost stand above and apart from
nature. A 1991 book by the noted religion

Doña Juanita, a Seri Indian healer in Mexico,
with her supplies

TO
M

Á
S

C
A

ST
E

A
ZO

manaism [MAH-nah-iz-uhm]
Belief in impersonal spiritual
power and energy that
permeates the world as a
whole

shaman [SHAH-muhn] Tribal
member with special abilities
and the authority to act as
an intermediary between the
people and the world of gods
and spirits (both good and evil)

Catherine Albanese argues that

“nature religion” applies to

many different sorts of American

beliefs, from early colonial

times to the contemporary

“New Age” movement.

33N A M E S F O R T H I S T Y P E O F R E L I G I O N

scholar Catherine Albanese,
Nature Religion in America,
argues that nature religion
applies to many differ ent sorts
of American beliefs, from the
times of pre-colonial Native

American religions to the contemporary “New Age”
movement.1

Indigenous Religions
In this book we’ll use the term indigenous religions.
Indigenous means “native, intrinsic to an area,” espe-
cially in the sense of peoples who originate and belong
to a specifi c area. (Students should avoid a common
confusion with indigent, which means “poor.”) As we’ll
see shortly, indigenous entails a strong sense of belong-
ing religiously to a certain place, in a way that native
alone might not. In current usage, indigenous implies
religions and cultures that were present in a given place
for centuries, and usually millennia, before the coming
of other cultures with different religions. When used in
this way, it says more than the ambiguous term native.
Strictly speaking, everyone born in North America is
a “native American,” but most people born in North
America don’t belong to continuing indigenous groups
of “Native Americans.” Indigenous today often implies
a lack of political power in the wider society, when
other groups of people have taken over the lands of
indigenous peoples.

When considering the names for individual indig-
enous groups, we should ask: What names do the indi-
vidual groups use, and what names are given to them
by others? The European colonizers of Africa and the
Americas played a large role in giving them names that
Westerners know them by, so we should begin here. In
general, European names for indigenous peoples and
their religions have been inaccurate. Europeans did not
often listen carefully to what other cultures called them-
selves, but instead imposed their own names or adapted
the sound and spelling of indigenous names for tribes
to their own languages. This refl ects a colonialist men-
tality. In later chapters, we will see that Westerners also
had a key role in the rise of names such as “Hinduism”
and “Confucianism.” In recent times there has been a
movement to restore the original sound and spelling of
these names: “Odawa” for “Ottawa” and “Algonkian”
for “Algonquin,” for example.

1 Catherine L. Albanese, Nature Religion in America: From the
Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991).

The most famous European name for indigenous
peoples is the historic Western term for peoples
who inhabited the Western Hemisphere: Indians. In
1492 Christopher Columbus supposed that he had
reached the islands off China called at the time the
“Indies.” However, he unknowingly had discovered
a new continent between Europe and Asia, a conti-
nent that would become known as the New World.
The name “Indians” persisted even when it became
obvious that it was wrong, and it was soon used by
the English and French as well. To call the indige-
nous peoples of the Americas “Indians” was one of
the biggest geography bloopers of all time, but it has
endured for centuries.

However, ideas about names do change, and
sometimes in unpredictable ways. Today many native
peoples in the United States happily call themselves
“Indians,” not “Native Americans.” The latest Census
Bureau Survey of terminology, done in 1995, showed
that 49 percent of native peoples preferred being called
“American Indian,” 37 percent preferred “Native
American,” about 4 percent preferred “some other
term,” and 5 percent had no preference. “Indians” grew
in approval by Native Americans at the same time as
it became disapproved in wider North American cul-
ture. For example, in his highly praised memoir, The
Names, the Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday speaks
about how his mother embraced this name: “[S]he
began to see herself as an ‘Indian’. That dim native
heritage became a fascination and a cause for her.”2
American Indian is still the main term used in the U.S.
Census, although it is still controversial there; many
scholars use it alongside Native American, and we will
use it occasionally here as
well. The safest policy for
students and scholars is to
use the names indigenous
peoples themselves prefer.

In general, many of
the indigenous peoples of
North America prefer their

2 N. Scott Momaday, The Names (Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 1976), p. 25

indigenous
religions Term for
religions of peoples,
usually tribes, original to
an area

Calling the earliest American peoples

“Indians” was one of the biggest

geography bloopers of all time.

34 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

local group name as rendered in their language, not an
English-language name or a traditional name recog-
nized by whites. Many Sioux Nation Indians prefer to
be known by the main name of “Lakota,” “Dakota,”
or “Nakota” (each designating groupings within the
same culture), and further subgroups are known as
well. They use “Sioux” as a name for themselves when
speaking to outsiders, but inside their group they use
“Lakota” or its variants. In the 2000 U.S. census,
fully 75 percent of people who identifi ed their eth-
nic group as “Indian” also identifi ed their main tribal
or national group. Sometimes political differences
within a tribe or nation lead to competing preferences
for different names in the same group—for example
“Navajos” or Diné (“Earth People”). In Canada the
broad designation First Nations (note the plural) is
widely accepted as a general term by native groups and
wider Canadian society, but the individual tribes still
use their own names. In Australia and New Zealand,
Aboriginals (people there “from the origin”) is com-
monly accepted as a name, although its use is lessening,
with new preference being given to the specifi c names
of the more than two hundred cultural groups that
“Aboriginals” encompasses.

LO2 Challenges to Study
In Chapter 1, we dealt with some challenges to the
study of religion in general. When we encounter indig-
enous religions, some special challenges emerge that
don’t apply to most other religions we will deal with in
this book. We can list and explain them briefl y.

Lack of Written Sources
Because the cultures in which these religions are based
are almost exclusively oral cultures, not writing cul-

tures, their religions have
with only a few exceptions
not written down their
stories, beliefs, or ritu-
als. Where these features
of religious life do exist
in writing today, most of
them have been written
down by anthropologists.
Nor do we have as much
archaeological evidence
for indigenous peoples as
we do for other world reli-
gions. Some tribes, along

with their particular religions, disappeared long before
the coming of Europeans, the victims of disease, famine,
and especially intertribal warfare, and we know little
about them. In the fi rst chapter of this book, we noted
the importance of history as a method of studying reli-
gion, but the use of history to study the fi rst Americans
is severely limited. This restricts the scope and depth
of study.

Difficulty Discerning
Continuity and Discontinuity
By the time Western scholars began to study native
groups in the Americas, Africa, and Australia, it was
hundreds of years after the natives’ fi rst contact with
European Americans. Sometimes this contact led to sig-
nifi cant changes in indigenous belief and practices, and
at other times it didn’t. As a result, scholars of indig-
enous religions aren’t certain about how far back many
beliefs and practices go: Are they pre-contact or post-
contact? For example, some have argued that in Yoruba
religion in west Africa, the remote high god developed
as an adaptive reaction to Christian and Muslim mis-
sionaries who proclaimed a religion of one God. Other
scholars dispute this, arguing that indigenous religions
often have belief in one high, remote deity without any
question of Western religious infl uence.

Mainstream Guilt
Many indigenous peoples have been treated brutally
during the whole sweep of human history and even pre-
history, whenever one group came into the territory of
another group and tried to take over. Treatment that
was intended to reduce their numbers and their cultures
is nothing short of genocide, the killing of an entire
racial/ethnic/religious group of people. Today we think
that this should have caused second thoughts among
people of European origins who took over the lands of
indigenous peoples—for example in North America and
Africa—but in the ethos of the times it usually didn’t.
Many of their present-day descendants are ashamed of
the actions of their ancestors and the continued bitter
legacy of prejudice and discrimination. This is prob-
ably as it should be, but sometimes guilt, powerful
emotion that it is, gets in the way of understanding. It
can distort the careful study of indigenous cultures and
their religions. This is not to say that people shouldn’t
regret what happened in the past; it is to say that care-
ful understanding of the past is a key part of knowing
what to do in the present if we are to move beyond the
ills of the past.

First Nations Generic
term for indigenous
peoples in Canada

Aboriginals [ab-oh-
RIHJ-ih-nahls] Indigenous
peoples there “from the
origin” of Australia and
New Zealand

genocide Killing of
an entire racial/ethnic/
religious group

35 C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S

Misrepresentations in
Popular Culture
Popular culture, and especially Hollywood fi lm that is
so infl uential in shaping attitudes today, has distorted
indigenous religions. On the one hand, fi lms such
as Dances with Wolves and Avatar have portrayed
indigenous tribes as habitually moral, master ecologists,
or even “noble savages.” This last phrase was a theme in
the infl uential work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–
1778), who held that people are naturally good but
that so-called civilization corrupts them. Such an ideal-
ized view of indigenous peoples is based on superfi cial
knowledge; if they were in fact so noble, they would not
need practices to deal with misdeeds, social disorder,
and outright crimes, which they indeed have and use

On the other hand, Hollywood has depicted some
religions as dangerously exotic in order to amuse or
frighten audiences, as in Apocalypto or the hundreds of
fi lms made about the white settlement of the American
West. Negative portrayals have seeped down to the life of
North American children, where playing games of “cow-
boys and Indians” has been popular for generations—if
historically incorrect, because cowboys rarely fought
Indians. Africa has frequently been depicted in fi lm as a
place of more savagery than nobility, with religions that are
little more than superstitions. Popular culture’s portrayal
of Afro-Caribbean religions, Vodou in particular, is prob-
ably the worst misrepresentation of all. The 1973 James
Bond fi lm, Live and Let Die, and the more frightening
Angel Heart portrayed Vodou as violent and dangerous.
The popular Night of the Living Dead, originally from
1968 and remade in 1990, removed zombie lore from its
Vodou context, and zombies have become increasingly
popular ever since. All these misrepresentations of indig-
enous religions have affected how we understand them,
and this makes it harder to study them today.

Misuse of Indigenous Rituals
In today’s religious climate in North America and
Europe, some people freely combine elements of indig-
enous religions with their own religions or other beliefs.
It has become popular in some circles, for example, to
use sacred objects of North American indigenous reli-
gions such as the stone pipe, medicine bundles, peyote,
and sweat lodges in new religious ceremonies in non-
Native American religions. This removes indigenous
rituals from their deeply embedded cultural context and
gives them a meaning that indigenous peoples wouldn’t
recognize. Some indigenous groups are offended by this
and view it as detrimental to their long-term spiritual and

cultural health. For example,
some Lakota leaders opposed
this misuse in a controversial
1993 resolution, “Declaration
of War against Exploiters of
Lakota Spirituality.”

As you conclude this section, you might be wonder-
ing: With all these problems in the study of indigenous
religions, how can they possibly be studied well? The
answer is that they can indeed be studied well, and are.
However, the fi rst step in doing so is to recognize and
deal with the obstacles to study that the past has put in
your way. Now that these are in plain view, we can turn
to a discussion of these religions, beginning with their
most important common features.

LO3 Common Features
of Indigenous Religions

In this section, we will discuss the common key charac-
teristics of indigenous religions. But we must realize up
front that there are many signifi cant differences among
them. They are as diverse as the cultures and times from
which they come. Africa has over three thousand eth-
nic and language groups, with social organizations from

Indigenous empire: Mayan temple, Chichen Itza,
Mexico

IE
RD

EL
U

N
E/

H
U

TT
ER

ST
O

C
K

.C
O

Despite the terms Native American religion,
Afr ican religion, or Aboriginal religion, no

such things as a whole ever existed.

36 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

Algiers
Rabat

Tripoli

Lagos

Tunis

Dakar

Freetown

Abidjan Accra

N’Djamena

Bamako

Monrovia

Brazzaville

Cairo

Baghdad

Alexandria

Khartoum

Mogadishu

Nairobi

Dar es Salaam

Maputo

Kinshasa

Pretoria

Durban

Johannesburg

Antananarivo

Luanda

Lusaka

Harare

Addis
Ababa

Cape Town

Kampala

E U R O P E

20°S

20°N

40°N

Tropic of Capricorn

0° Equator

20°W 20°E 40°E 60°E0°

Tropic of Cance
r

A T L A N T I C
O C E A N

I N D I A N
O C E A N

Zambezi

Senegal R.

N
iger R.

Benue R.

N
ile R

Lake
Chad

Lake
Victoria

Lake
Tanganyika

Lake
Malawi

Congo R.

Uele R.

R
e

d
S

e
a

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

B l a c k S e a

Caspian Sea
Persian Gulf

Canary Is.
(Spain)

Madeira Is.
(Portugal)

Zanzibar (Gr. Br.)

Cape of
Good Hope

MOROCCO

A L G E R

I A

TUNISIA

L I B YA
E G Y P T

T U R K E

I R A N

S A U D I
A R A B I A

WESTERN
SAHARA

(MOROCCO)

MAURITANIA

M A L I

THE GAMBIA SENEGAL

CAPE
VERDE

GUINEA-BISSAU

SIERRA LEONE

GUINEA

LIBERIA

CÔTE
D’IVOIRE

GHANA

N I G E R I A

N I G E R

CAMEROON

GABON

CENTRAL
AFRICAN
REPUBLIC

C H A D

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

RE
P.

C
O

N
G

(ANGOLA)

D E M . R E P.
C O N G O

A N G O L A

NAMIBIA

BOTSWANA

SOUTH
AFRICA LESOTHO

SWAZILAND

MOZAMBIQUE

MALAWI

M
A

D
A

G
A

SC
A

R
Z A M B I A

TA N Z A N I A

KENYA
UGANDA

RWANDA
BURUNDI

SO
M

A
L

I A

DJIBOUTI

YEMEN

SYRIA

JORDAN

OMAN

CYPRUS
LEBANON

QATAR

UNITED
ARA

EMIRATES

OMAN

KUWAIT

BAHRA

ISRAEL IRAQ

E T H I O P I A

S U D A N

ERITREA

SEYCHELLES

COMOROS

MAURITIUS

ZIMBABWE

TO
G

O
B

E
N

SÃO TOMÉ &
PRÍNCIPE

N
0

0 400 800 Mi.

400 800 Km.0 400 800 Km.

Anticolonial revolution

Civil war

small tribes to large empires. Africa today has more than
forty nations (see Map 2.1). In the Americas there have
been more than two thousand tribes, some of them orga-
nized in large nations or even empires such as those of
the Aztecs and Mayans. Each of the world religions that
we’ll consider in later chapters has some shared idea of

sacred history—of the tradition’s founders, sacred texts,
rituals, and the like—that gives it unity. For indigenous
religions around the world, diversity is the rule. Despite
the terms Native American religion, African religion, or
Aboriginal religion, no such singular things ever existed,
and neither did indigenous religion. No single system of

Map 2.1
Contemporary Africa
Africa contains more than forty nations. Six sub-Saharan African nations and Algeria in North

Africa experienced anti-colonial revolutions, and a dozen sub-Saharan nations have been racked by
civil wars since independence. In 2011, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt experienced popular revolts.

EN
G

A
G

E
LE

A
RN

IN
G

2
01

37C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S

Movements toward Indigenous Unity

A recent development brings a surprising
“twist” to diversity within indigenous
religions. Indigenous peoples around the
world are realizing that they are in a com-
mon situation with regard to their dominant
cultures and are beginning to act on this
in ways that draw the people and the culture
together.

For example, a Pan-Indian movement
began in the early 1900s and is now prominent in North
America. This movement is based on indigenous American
peoples’ realization that they share many social and reli-
gious concerns today. One example of this is the American
Indian Movement (AIM) organization. Cross-tribal member-
ships, powwow (intertribal gatherings, especially of lead-
ers) networks among tribes, and national lobbying groups,
are found in contemporary Pan-Indianism. Increasingly,
rituals have been shared among the tribes. Their life has

become more Pan-Indian, with
wider use of ritual pipe smoking,
sweat lodges, vision quests, sun
dancing, and the use of peyote.
Pan-Indianism is also found in universities, prisons, military
forces, and urban settings where general Native American
identity is more important than one’s specifi c tribal identity.
The Pan-Indian movement tries to respect local tribal iden-
tities and traditions, but some tribes object to the sharing
of rituals.

A Closer Look:

Native American dancers enter the Verizon Center
in Washington, D.C., as the National Powwow

organized by the Smithsonian National Museum of
the American Indian begins.

RO
LL

C
A

LL
/G

ET
TY

IM
A

G
ES

Smithsonian National Museum of the
American Indian in Washington, D.C.

PH
IL

LI
P

RI
TZ

/G
ET

TY
IM

A
G

belief or ritual unites all African, American, or Aboriginal
religions. We present here the basics of indigenous reli-
gions, but this doesn’t imply that all indigenous religions
are the same. Nor does it imply that indigenous peoples
have ever thought of their religions as the same.

The Importance of Place
Most anthropologists hold that the human race (Homo
sapiens) gradually spread from one area of Africa across
much of the globe beginning about 100,000 years ago
(see Map 2.2). Many groups of humans have been on
the move ever since, carrying their indigenous religions
with them. This common origin helps to explain how
modern humans are similar
genetically but had some
further genetic and cultural
adaptations to their new
environments. Despite all
this movement, indigenous

Pan-Indian Movement
begun in the early 1900s
to bring more unity to
North American tribes

Indigenous religions usually see

themselves as created in their own place,

despite what anthropologists think

about all humans originating in Africa .

39C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S

a harmonious balance. Many
indigenous tribes displaced from
their traditional lands in the
Americas, Africa, and Australia
have sought to reclaim them in
some religiously meaningful way,
even if they cannot live on their
sacred ground. Other religions
we will encounter in this book
all have holy places, but they
are typically not connected to
specifi c places in the ways that
indigenous religions are.

Global
Distribution
Indigenous religions are found
around the globe today, not just

in North America and Africa. In Africa, indigenous reli-
gions are spread through most of the continent south
of the Sahara Desert. In general, more-traditional forms
of indigenous religions are found in central Africa; in
the northern and southern thirds of Africa, indigenous
religions have largely been blended into Islam and
Christianity, respectively. In the Americas, indigenous
religions are also widespread: Native peoples with their
distinctive religions inhabit the hemisphere from the
Arctic to the southern tip of Chile. Many indigenous
peoples in the Americas today combine their indig-
enous religions with Christianity, in Central and South
America particularly with Roman Catholic Christianity.

In Asia, the picture is the most complex. Indigenous
religion persists almost undisturbed in some remote
islands in south Asia, especially in Indonesia and
Borneo. Polynesian and Micronesian cultures and reli-
gions have spread widely, so that today they are found
from Hawaii to Taiwan and south. In Tibet, the ancient
indigenous Bön religion persists inside and occasion-
ally outside of Tibetan Buddhism, despite persecu-
tion in the past by the Buddhist government of Tibet.
Folk religions emphasizing local spirits and gods have
been common for millennia in China; sometimes these

peoples are deeply rooted in a place. Moreover, they
usually see themselves as created in or from that place,
despite what modern anthropologists think about all
humans originating in Africa. For them place is much
more than simply a location or even a type of geogra-
phy such as forest, desert, plains, and so on. Instead, it is
a matter of tribal and personal identity. Place has great
practical and symbolic signifi cance for indigenous peo-
ples and their religious beliefs and practices. What Vine
Deloria Jr. says about Native American religion is true of
all other indigenous religions, “The sacredness of lands
on which previous generations have lived and died is the
foundation of all other sentiments.”3

Stories about the land deal with myths of tribal
origins, rituals, and patterns of everyday life. Because
indigenous religions are typically rich in traditions that
deal with their particular places, they often speak of
being created not just from Mother Earth, but from
the earth “here in this valley.” They communicate with
spirits not just all around them, but “in a mountain
cave over there” and reverence in particular a sacred
animal “in that rainforest.” Sacred place has a per-
sonal status in indigenous religions. For example, at
their annual intertribal gatherings in the Sweet Grass
Hills of Montana, the Chippewa-Cree people pray that
owners of the mines in their sacred hills will see that

“these hills are just as alive as
anybody, and they want to live
too.” People and their places
are meant to live together in

3 Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (New York:
Putnam, 1973), 278.

TO
M

A
S

C
A
ST
EL
A
ZO

Chapito, a Seri Indian shaman in northwestern
Mexico, points to mountain caves, a place of power.

Indigenous religions are found around

the world today, not just in North

America and Africa.

40 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

divine beings have become Daoist divinities. Japan’s
indigenous religion of Shinto has played such a large
role in modern world history that it is often treated sep-
arately, as this book will do in Chapter 8. Islam mostly
ended pre-Islamic Arab indigenous religion, but other

indigenous religions have
been incorporated to some
degree in some areas where
Islam has spread. In Australia
and New Zeeland, original
forms of Aboriginal religions
exist alongside Christianity,
although the great major-
ity of Aboriginal people self-
identify as Christians today.
In Europe, Christianity gradu-
ally overwhelmed indigenous
religions, but did so in part
by absorbing some indig-
enous practices such as ritu-
als to counteract evil elves
and bringing evergreens into
homes at Christmas.

Many Gods and Spirits
A distinctive feature of indigenous religions, especially
when compared to many other world religions, is that
they aren’t typically focused on one deity. Some African
indigenous religions claim to tend toward monothe-
ism, usually because they have one high god, but most
believe in many gods. High gods seldom fi gure into
everyday religious life. Instead, they are remote gods,
as we’ll see in our treatment of Lakota and Yoruba
religion. Moreover, as we saw above, when high deities
are regularly invoked, some scholars suspect infl uence
from other world religions. For example, many Native
American tribes believe in a high god such as the Great
Spirit but don’t talk about him on a regular basis or
have rituals addressed to him. Where there is more fre-
quent talk of the Great Spirit, and where this Spirit is
seen as a single personal Being, it may well be due to
Native American accommodation to Christianity.

Deities or spirits are not worshiped in a detached
way; they are ritually invoked and engaged as inhabit-
ants and agents of the world itself. Some indigenous
religions remember individuals from their past who
were infl uential leaders, but none is seen as a founder
of the religion. This emphasizes that native religions are
less about human fi gures, or even gods and rituals, than
they are about relationships. Relationships are shaped
by prominent humans and gods and guided by mor-
als, myth, and rituals, but they are ultimately about the
people’s connection to one another and the group’s con-
nection to the world around it.

Influenced by Other
Cultures
Many world religions have had to deal with competition
and confl ict with other religions, but almost all indig-
enous religions have had to deal with being surrounded
and suppressed by alien nation–states with alien reli-
gions. In Africa, for example, centuries of colonial rule
by Europeans, and the Christian missionary efforts that
went with it, changed some elements of many African
indigenous religions. New gods came forth, and new
rituals for worshiping them. Contemporary scholarship
acknowledges that culture-contact changes are central
to understanding indigenous cultures and their religions
today. It studies their continuities and changes, and not
simply their complete destruction. Indigenous religions
as they exist today are worthy of study and apprecia-
tion. We should not use our knowledge of post-contact
indigenous religions merely to strip away perceived
infl uences from other religions in order to arrive at

A
M

D
C

RU
Z/

SH
U
TT
ER
ST
O
C
K
.C
O
M

Aboriginal rock art, Kakadu National Park, Australia

41C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S

hypothetical pre-contact religions. Scholars have
little data about the past of indigenous religions
that are free from non-native infl uence, so try-
ing to get back to pre-contact religion is prob-
lematic. Indigenous religions themselves often
erase any evidence that suggests that some of
their beliefs and practices are products of a
particular place and time.

Based on Orality,
Story, and Myth
Indigenous religious traditions are
oral, not written, because the cul-
tures in which they are based are
oral cultures. Orality can open up
more room for adaptive change in religion because of
not being bound in a book. Most importantly, orality
entails skilled, compelling storytelling. As all skilled
storytellers know, audiences must be “brought into the
story.” In indigenous religions, this is done not just as
entertainment. In the religion’s stories, each person’s life
enters a larger group story, even a cosmic story that
reaches backward and forward in time. Myths and their
accompanying rituals have a critical role in maintain-
ing good relationships between all sacred beings in the
universe—human, divine, animals, and even plants.

Scholars have classifi ed different myths according
to their form and function. Cosmogonic myths about
creation help to explain the origin of existence. They
tell how the whole world was created, and especially
how the particular tribe telling a myth was created. An
etiological myth is one that explains how things have
come to be as they are now, as large as why the sun trav-
els in the sky or as small as why the beaver has no hair
on its tail. The semi-historical myth is the elaboration
of an original happening, usually involving a tribal hero
such as the nineteenth-century Lakota leader Sitting
Bull. Telling these myths and stories is a means of com-
munication between humans and other beings. The
religious specialist of the indigenous society is often
the keeper of these stories and can perform them with
power. Animals, ancestors, spirits, and gods all com-
pose stories, and people understand the beings through
the stories. Narrative is the mode that brings these
indigenous traditions to life, by songs, chants, prayers,
ritual dances, folktales, and genealogies. Oral tradition
has not been erased by modernity and literacy, though

it has taken new forms as sto-
rytellers have found modern
means (including YouTube) for
its expression.

Oriented More to
Practice Than to Belief
Indigenous traditions are not belief based, and
they have no formal “teachings” on which one

can do religious or theological refl ection. Belief
in gods and spirits is traditional and assumed,

a part of the fabric of life, and children are
rigorously socialized to know the moral

codes of their society. These beliefs
are “more caught than taught,”

and they are reinforced in initia-
tion rituals as children become
adults. The emphasis is on
practices. Indigenous religions
around the world are dedicated

to maintaining personal, group, and cosmic balance
through ritual actions. The purpose of this balance is
that the group may thrive. The scope of rituals in indig-
enous religions is vast. Some mark life-cycle changes
at birth, beginning of adulthood, marriage, and death.
Others are designed to bless people at trying times, heal
them of diseases of the mind or body, attract rain, or
produce a good hunt or good crops. Still others are for
purposes of putting curses on people (sometimes called
witching) and counteracting curses (unwitching). The
purpose of most indigenous ritual is to control the
power of the world—to attract
good power when needed and
to turn away dangerous power.

In-Group Based
Indigenous traditions around the world are commonly
in-group based. Few indigenous religions seek converts
or even allow full entry by people not of their group. As
we saw above, they often
don’t appreciate how others
have recently adopted some
of their beliefs and rituals
or have come as “seekers”
to explore their ways of life.
This attitude can come as a
surprise, even a shock, to
well-intentioned outsiders
who are on spiritual jour-
neys that they believe lead
to indigenous religions.
(American popular culture
sometimes portrays indig-
enous societies as able to be
joined by outsiders, as for

Painted tepee of a Plains Indian
medicine man, with his grand-
daughter in the doorway

YALE COLLECTION OF WESTERN AMERICANA, BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND
MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY

cosmogonic myth
Story about creation that
helps to explain the origin
of existence

etiological myth Story
that explains how things
have come to be as they
are now

semi-historical
myth Elaboration of
an original happening,
usually involving a
tribal hero

42 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

example in the fi lm Dances with Wolves.) Unlike reli-
gions that seek converts, indigenous religions are ethnic-
ity based. Either one is culturally a part of the group, or
one is not. If a person is inside the group, then the reli-
gion of the group pertains to that person, for his or her
place in the community and the world depends upon it.

In indigenous societies, extensive life-cycle ritu-
als are employed to bring children to fully initiated
membership in the group. Apart from this initiation,
the group is closed to outsiders, and much of their reli-
gious knowledge is secret, sometimes even to members

of the tribe. For example,
the Dogon (DOH-guhn)
people of Mali, West
Africa, have many rituals
that are done in masks, but
the meaning of the masks
is known only to those
initiated into a society of
specialists. Tribal members
may regard others outside

the tribe as sincere, but they will not typically make
them members of the community and give them access
to religious secrets. The long oppression of indigenous
peoples by others has made them even more wary of
outsiders’ actions and intentions.

The Goodness of the World
Indigenous peoples believe that each and every part of
nature has a spiritual aspect that makes it live and gives
direction to its life. All things in the world are related
to humans in a cosmic natural balance. American and
African indigenous cultures often see this balance as a
circle. The Sioux imitated this natural order by setting
up their camp in circles, by sitting in circles for coun-
cils and ceremonial occasions, and also by constructing
circular tepees. Therefore, these traditions do not deal
with “salvation,” “enlightenment,” or even “eternal
life.” Means of transcending or transforming this world
aren’t important to them, because the world does not
need escaping. Its natural harmony needs only to be
preserved and lived in. Likewise, these traditions aren’t
typically future oriented—for example in believing that

this world is heading toward some large religious goal.
Rather, the past is privileged for them. The past contains
the model for identity, behavior, and blessing in the pres-
ent and the future. This desire to make the idealized past
ever present makes these religions deeply “traditional.”
The point of indigenous reli-
gion is to maintain the balance
of life so that the group as a
whole can thrive in the world.

The Role of Religious
Specialists
Most indigenous societies have religious specialists
of some sort—people selected or trained to do a vari-
ety of religious tasks at a higher level than do others.
They are known by a variety of names: “holy men,”
“medicine men,” “healers,” “priests/priestesses,” and
others. T ricksters are gods, spirits, humans, or wily
animals (often a coyote in North American lore) that
play tricks on people or otherwise behave against con-
ventional norms of behavior, often for the good of oth-
ers. “Prophets” (a name, but not a phenomenon, drawn
from contact with Christianity) arise from time to time
to lead their tribes out of crisis. Perhaps the most nota-
ble religious specialist is the shaman, an intermediary
or messenger between the human world and the spirit
worlds. Many types of shamans exist throughout the
world, often varying by tribe, although the main model
for shamans comes from Siberian tribes. They are the
“spiritual leaders” of their tribes. Mircea Eliade identi-
fi ed their main features as follows:

● The shaman communicates with the spirit world,
where good and evil spirits are found.

● The shaman can treat sickness or deal with other
problems caused by evil spirits.

● The shaman can employ trance-inducing tech-
niques to leave his body and go to the spirit
realm that surrounds this world, or his body can
be possessed by the gods
or spirits.

● The shaman evokes animal
spirits as message bearers
to other spirits.

● The shaman can tell the
future by various forms of
divination. 4

4 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New
York: Random House, 1964).

trickster God, spirit,
human, or wily animal
that plays tricks on people
or otherwise behaves
against conventional
norms of behavior, often
for the good of others

Indigenous religion maintains

the balance of life so that the

group as a whole can thrive.

43C O M M O N F E AT U R E S O F I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S

Continuing Vitality
The imminent death of indigenous religions has been
predicted in the past by politicians, missionaries, and
even scholars. If we consider the dire straits of many
indigenous religions a century ago, we can understand
why some observers have thought that native tradi-
tions were dying out. However, many indigenous reli-
gions can now say, with the American humorist Mark
Twain, when told that his death had been announced
in a newspaper, “The reports of my death are greatly

exaggerated.” Not only have most native cultures sur-
vived against great pressures over the last fi ve centuries,
some are now thriving in ways that would have been
unthinkable until recently. Native peoples’ numbers
and cultural infl uence have risen dramatically in recent
generations, in many but not all parts of the world.
Improved standards of living have helped, but more
important is that being “indigenous” is shifting in many
places from being a social liability in wider society to
being a point of pride.

We can point to ways in which indigenous reli-
gions have fl ourished over the past half-century. In
North America, many native ceremonies that were
banned in earlier times are now protected by law.
Native peoples have fought hard for these protections
and continue to do so, and the wider society has seen
the wisdom in preserving them. These include protec-
tion of peyote consumption, the use of eagle feathers
in rituals, burial protections, and rights to fi sh and
hunt. They also include the return of human remains
and traditional religious and cultural objects now in
museums and in private collections. Various African-
Caribbean religions that combine Christianity and
native African religions are regaining their voice:
Santería in Cuba, Candomblé in Brazil, Rastafarianism
in Jamaica, and Vodou in Haiti. In Africa, a number
of indigenous religions are more prominent today
than in the past two hundred years, but many con-
tinue to be hard pressed by Christianity and Islam.

Debate on Shamanism

Some anthropologists today are critical of the recent
emphasis on “shamanism” and the work of Eliade and others.
Alice Kehoe, in her 2000 book Shamans and Religion, argues
sharply that shamans are unique to each culture where
they are found and cannot be generalized into a global
type of religion called “shamanism.”5 She also opposes

“neo-shamanism” in New Age, Wiccan, and other current
Western religious movements. These not only misrepresent
indigenous practices, but do so in a way that reinforces
ideas such as the “noble savage,” an idea Kehoe argues is
racist. She is critical of the recent claim that modern-day
shamanism survives from the Paleolithic period.

A Closer Look:

5 Alice Kehoe, Shamans and Religion: An Exploration in Critical Thinking (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2000).

ED
W

A
RD

S
. C

U
R

TI
S

1
86

8
19

52


Shaman emerging from forest in a trance
after an initiation ritual, 1914

Reports of the death of indigenous

religions are, to adapt a quip by Mark

Twain, greatly exaggerated.

44 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

Native African churches
that combine Christianity
with key aspects of indig-
enous religions are thriv-
ing, so parts of indigenous
African religions survive
within Christianity. The
increased freedom of reli-
gion in China has led to
the widespread rebirth

and fl ourishing of suppressed folk religions that seem
to have gone underground for more than fi fty years.
Indigenous religious traditions have persisted because
they are, in a word—as the Chippewa poet Gerald
Vizenor has often said about his fellow indigenous
Americans—“survivors.”

LO4 A Native American
Religion:

Lakota

More than a hundred different Native American tribes
are found in North America today. (See Map 2.3
for a historical overview of major Native American
tribes, 600–1500 C.E.) The one offered here for
study, the Lakota group, which fi gures large in his-
tory and today, is meant to provide a more extensive

look into the religious life of
that tribe and also as a more
defi nite description of what
indigenous religion is.

Name and
Location
The word Sioux (soo) applies
today to seven tribal groups
organized into three main
political units. It dates back to
the 1600s C.E. when the peo-
ple were living in the western
Great Lakes area. The Ojibwa
(oh-JIHB-way) tribes called the
Lakota Nadouwesou, meaning
“poisonous snakes.” This term,
shortened by French traders to
its last syllable, became Sioux.
They called themselves the Seven
Fire Places People. The French
Roman Catholic missionary
Jean Nicolet fi rst recorded the

term Sioux in 1640. Wars with the Chippewas and the
Crees resulted in the reduction of the eastern Sioux and
gradual displacement of other Sioux. The western Lakota
Sioux were the fi rst to arrive on the plains. Horses, which
transformed Plains life, were obtained by the Oglala
Sioux about 1750. They were
not native to North America,
but were introduced by the
Spanish and later obtained by
the Plains tribes.

Basic Features of Lakota
Religion
The Black Hills is the Lakota’s sacred place of creation
and life. For the Lakota, they are the “heart of everything
that exists.” A story says that the hills are like a reclining
woman whose breasts gave life-giving power; the hills
are a mother to the Lakota. The Sioux people were cre-
ated in particular from the Bear Butte on the eastern edge
of the Hills, and there the Creator fi rst gave his sacred
instructions to them. Bear Butte is the most sacred of all
their holy places, and both Sioux and Cheyenne come
here each year for ceremonies. It has often been said that
the spirits of the Sioux dead rest in the Black Hills.

The spirit world of the Lakota is called Wakan
Tanka, which means “all that is mysterious, sacred.”
This is a generic, not a personal name. Wakan Tanka
is eternal. It powerfully created the universe, and par-
adoxically it is the universe. The sun, the moon, the
stars, and the earth and everything on it (including

IM
P

A
RK

IN
/S

H
U
TT
ER
ST
O
C
K
.C
O
M

View from Harney Peak Trail, Black Hills, South

Dakota

Wakan Tanka [WAK-
ahn THAN-kuh] “All that
is mysterious, sacred”;
the spirit world of the
Lakota that powerfully
created the universe
and paradoxically is the
universe

45A N AT I V E A M E R I C A N R E L I G I O N : L A K OTA

160°W

180°

20°N

40°
N

60
°N

140°W 60°W

40°W

20°W

120°W 80°W100°W

C a r i b b e a n S e a

H u d s o n
B a y

G u l f o f
M e x i c o

A R C T I C
O C E A N

A
T

L
A

N
T

I C
O

C
E

A
N

A
C

I
F

I
C

O
C

E
A

M
ississippi R.

Rio Grande

Missouri R.

io
R.

R
O

C
K

Y
M

T
S

AP
PA

LA
C

H
IA

N
M

TS
.

Adena
Cahokia

Mesa Verde

Chaco
Canyon

Casa
Grande

INUIT

INUIT
S
U
B

A
R

C
T

I C

P L A I N S

NORTHEAST

SOUTHWEST

SOUTHEAST

PLATEAU

GREAT
BASIN

C
A

L
I F

O
R

N
I A

N
O

R
T

H
W

E
S

A
R
C

T
I C

MINNESOTA

0 500 1,000 Mi.

500 1,000 Km.

CaCCaCaCaCaCaCaCaCaCaaCaaaaaaaaa
GraGraGraGraGraGraGraGraGraraGrararGraGrarrr nnnnnn

SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSSOSOSOSOSOOO

0
0

Approximate extent of
mound-building cultures

Approximate extent of
the Mississippian culture

Approximate extent of
the Anasazi culture

Approximate extent of
the Hohokam culture

Approximate extent of
the Mogollan culture

N
60
°N

Map 2.3
Major North American Societies, 600–1500 C.E.
Farming societies were common in North America. The Pueblo peoples in the southwestern des-

ert and the mound builders in the eastern half of the continent lived in towns. The city of Cahokia was
the center of the widespread Mississippian culture and a vast trade network.

©
C
EN
G
A
G
E
LE
A
RN
IN
G
2
01
3
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

46 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

Sheyenne R.

Jam
es R.

Missouri R.

Crow Creek
(Dakota+
Nakota)

Yankton

Dakota
Winnebago

Omaha

North Platte R.

Smoky Hill R.

Niobrara R.

M
issouri R.

Minnesota R.

Jam
es R.

Chey
enne

Little M
issouri R.

Mississippi

D
esM

oines R.

M
ouse R.

Red R.

So
ut

h
Pla

tte
R

.
North Platte R.

Republican R
.

Loup R
.

Lake
Traverse

(Sisseton)

Mile Lacs

(Anishinabe)

White Earth
(Anishinabe)

Spirit Lake (Yanktonai)

Turtle Mountain
(Anishinabe)

Fort Berthold
(Arikara, Mandan,
Hidatsa)

Standing Rock
(Dakota)

Cheyenne River

(Lakota)

Hunkpapa

Sans Arc

Sihasapa

Minneconjou

Two Kettles

Brule

Oglala

COLORADO

KANSAS

NEBRASKA

CANADA

NORTH DAKOTA

SOUTH DAKOTA

MINNESOTA

IOWA

Lakota

Yanktonai

Yankton
Dakota

Wahpeton

Mdewakanton

Sisseton

Wahpekute

Red Lake (Anishinabe)

Bois Forte
(Anishinabe)

Leech
Lake (Anishinabe)

Fond
du lac

(Anishinabe)

Pine Ridge
(Oglala Sioux) Rosebud

(Lakota)

Mandan

Hidatsa

Absarokee

Anishinabe

Cheyenne

Arapaho

Pawnee

Omaha

Iowa

Assiniboine

Grand R.

Location
around 1770

Current
Reservations

100 Miles500

0 10050 150 Kilometers

humans) are all within Wakan Tanka. This term has
often been translated “the Great Spirit,” but this must
not be understood as the one God of monotheistic reli-
gions. Wakan Tanka is remote and unapproachable,

and rituals are not often performed for it. Included in
Wakan Tanka are gods and spirits called Wakanpi, who
exercise power and control over everything. Because
the Wakanpi are incomprehensible to ordinary humans,

Map 2.4
Traditional Location of Sioux Tribes around 1770 and Reservations Today

W
W

.D
EM

IS
.N

L
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

47A N AT I V E A M E R I C A N R E L I G I O N : L A K OTA

they enable certain human beings to know them and
deal with them. Holy men and (rarely) women have
fulfi lled this role. They obtain their special knowl-
edge through direct contact with the gods and spirits
through dreams and visions. They act as intermediaries
through which the power of Wakan Tanka can fl ow.

The Sioux pass down their knowledge, rituals, and
beliefs and moral code to the new generations in story
form. Tribal history is also passed along orally, but it has
always been guided by myths of origin so that the recent
past doesn’t contradict the deep past. Elders often gathered
the young around the fi re to impart important tales. Some
of these tales, such as the stories of White Buffalo Calf

Woman, can take up to seven
evenings to tell and traditionally
can only be told when the moon
was shining.

The Sioux look on death and the afterlife in the spirit
world as a natural part of life. Death is painful in close-knit
indigenous societies, but funeral rituals help mourners to
cope with the pain of loss. The human soul is immortal; it
comes from Wakan Tanka at birth and returns to Wakan
Tanka at death. Because these spirits are one with Wakan
Tanka, they are everywhere and in everything, even at the
grave for a period after death. Before battle, Sioux warriors
embraced their possible death openly, thus their famous
saying “Today is a good day to die.” Death in warfare was
preferable to that caused by old age. This heritage of brav-
ery in battle has continued today, and Native Americans
have been for almost a century the most highly decorated
ethnic group in the U.S. armed forces.

Lakota Rituals
As with most religions, the Lakota believe that their rituals
are given to them by the gods. Lakota myths tell of spirits
such as White Buffalo Calf Woman, who brought them the
sacred pipe and its ritual use. Holy men received other ritu-
als during trance-like states. We now discuss Lakota rituals
that are still regularly held.

Near the time of puberty, Sioux boys, and on occa-
sion girls, go on
a ritual of pas-
sage to adult-
hood called a
vision quest,
through which

they experience a symbolic
death and rebirth and gain
a vision of their guardian
spirit. Through the vision
quest, each male Lakota
gains a personal religious
vision that supplements
the group-based religious
understandings of the
tribe. On returning from
his vision quest, the vision
seeker typically integrates
his vision into the life of the
community by performing
it ritually in public. This
integration of one’s per-
sonal vision with the socially
regimented roles passed down in tribal societies helps
to make a good balance between individual and group
life among the Lakota.

The modern healing ceremony is shortened from
the traditional form. Prayer is still offered to the spirit
of the stones, and spirit stones protect against danger
or illness. This signifi es a belief in a spiritual force in
all forms of Creation. It isn’t unusual to see a sacred
stone at the bedside of sick or hospitalized Lakota even
today.

The sacred pipe remains a key mediator between
Wakan Tanka and humankind, reinforcing the kinship
ties of the people with all spirits in the world. It has
become so important as a symbol that it now unoffi –
cially stands for the whole of Lakota life; indeed, it has
become a Pan-Indian ritual implement. (Sometimes it is
called a “peace pipe”; although it was used for peace
ceremonies, its ritual use goes far beyond this.) Black
Elk reported a common belief when he said that the
red stone the pipe is made from symbolizes the earth; a
buffalo or other animal carved in the stone represents
all animals; the pipe stem, made of wood, symbolizes
all growing things; and the feathers attached to it repre-
sent the eagle and all winged creatures. All creatures in
the natural world “send their voices” to Wakan Tanka
when the pipe is smoked.

The sweat lodge is a ritual sauna meant to cleanse
participants in
their spirits. (It
wasn’t done, as
our saunas today,
for muscle relax-

ation or cleansing
of the skin.) It can

be a domed oblong hut or

vision quest Ritual of
passage to adulthood,
through which one
experiences a symbolic
death and rebirth and
gains a vision of one’s
guardian spirit

sacred pipe Pipe
ritually used as a key
mediator between Wakan
Tanka and humankind

sweat lodge Ritual
sauna meant to cleanse
participants in their spirits

Indian ceremonial pipe

KPH
OTO

.CO
M/G

ILL
AND

RÉ

Lakotas go on a vision quest to gain a

personal religious vision.

48 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

a hole dug into the ground
and covered with planks
or tree trunks. Stones are
heated in an exterior fi re
and then placed in a cen-
tral pit in the ground inside
the lodge. Ritual activities
inside and around the sweat
lodge often include prayers,
drumming, and offerings to
the spirits.

The use of peyote,
a mildly hallucinogenic
but not physically addic-
tive cactus bud, goes
back for centuries among
Native Americans in the

Southwest. It was used as a
medicine in healing ceremo-
nies before its more-modern
and wider ceremonial use. It
spread beyond the Southwest
at the beginning of the twenti-

eth century, at a time when Native American culture
was under much stress, and some Lakota today partici-
pate in its use. Participants reported a spiritual cleans-
ing and experienced some physical healing as well.
The peyote movement was one factor in the rise of the
Native American Church, a blend of indigenous North
American religions and Christianity that is still strong
today. This group has successfully fought the U.S. legal
system to get an exemption to use the cactus, which is a
controlled substance, in their ceremonies. Use of peyote
began to decline in about 2009, because it has been
poorly grown and over-harvested during
recent years.

Finally, the sun dance cere-
mony is practiced in almost
twenty different North
American tribes. It features
dancing, singing and drum-
ming, blowing on eagle-bone
whistles, visions, and fasting.
Some brave men known as sun
dance pledgers come to the fes-
tival having already taken a vow
to offer their bodies as a painful
sacrifi ce to Wakan Tanka for the ben-
efi t of their tribe. This usually takes the form
of being attached to a pole by hide thongs,
which pierce one’s body above each nipple
on the chest with a metal hook, and then

tearing oneself away from the thongs. The sun dance
is ordinarily held by each tribe once a year at the
height of summer when the sun is the hottest. It lasts
from four to eight days, starting at the sunset of the
fi nal day of preparation and ending at sunset. It shows
and promotes continuity between life and death, and

offers a renewal of the life of the tribe as inter-
twined with the life of the earth. This

ritual is still observed by many
Native Americans and contin-

ues to be the most important
ritual and festival for the
Plains tribes.

Culture and
Religion

The buffalo holds a key place in
Lakota life and history. From its
hide they made clothing, ropes
and snowshoes, and the round,

moveable homes called tipi (also

PH
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peyote [pay-YOHT-ee]
Mildly hallucinogenic
cactus bud used ritually in
Indian ceremonies

Native American
Church Church mainly
composed of Native
Americans, featuring a
blend of indigenous North
American religions and
Christianity

sun dance Main festival
ceremony of many Plains
tribes, often featuring
self-torture

A Native American, probably from
the Lakota Sioux tribe, blows an
eagle-bone whistle while participat-
ing in the sun dance during the Inter-
Tribal Indian Ceremonial in the late
1940s in New Mexico.

49A N AT I V E A M E R I C A N R E L I G I O N : L A K OTA

phonetically spelled tepee, the Lakota word for “dwell-
ing”). The horns provided spoons, weapons, and cer-
emonial articles. The buffalo’s sinew was used for
bowstrings and sewing materials. The buffalo was the
main friend of the Sun, and even controlled all affairs
of love. Its spirit cares for the family, for the young
of all beings, and for growing plants. Given the place
of the buffalo in the life and thought of the Lakota,
its extermination proved deadly for their traditional
culture. Around 1800 there were possibly sixty mil-
lion buffalo on the Plains; by 1884 the slaughter by
hunters, encouraged by the federal government in part
to break the power of the Plains tribes, led to less than
one hundred buffalo being left. The Lakota Sioux,

along with other Plains tribes,
were reduced to dependence
on government rations on var-
ious reservations of small size
and few resources.

The sad story of gradual reduction of Native
American life continued. Confi nement to reservations
was soon followed by a government policy to “civilize”
Indian peoples by assimilation into main-
stream white culture—
by coercion if necessary.
(Voluntary assimilation
happened as well, but on
a smaller scale.) Rapid
white expansion into west-
ern North America meant that Indian
confl icts had to end, and therefore much
of their land granted by treaties was taken
from them. Hiram Price, U.S. Commissioner
of Indian Affairs in 1881, said history shows
that “Savage and civilized life cannot prosper
on the same ground.” This was a wide con-
viction among Euro-Americans, and by the
mid-nineteenth century it was allied to a rac-
ist theory of white superiority and the belief
that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny” to
occupy all the lands from the Atlantic to
the Pacifi c. Because Euro-Americans as a
group assumed that they were superior to

indigenous Americans, they knew what was best for
them. In practice this meant the rapid elimination of
native culture, language, and religion.

Much of the forced assimilation was targeted at
children, because they were more changeable than their
parents. In schools Indian children were prohibited
from speaking their own language, living out their own
culture, or having a tribal identity. Children in both the
United States and Canada were separated from their
families and sent far off to boarding schools if their
family’s infl uence was viewed as “negative.” Some
government offi cials did have second thoughts about
this. For example, in his Indian Commissioner’s report
for 1934, John Collier urged an end to this assault on
native culture. “The cultural history of Indians is in
all respects to be considered equal to that of any non-
Indian group.” But this was not to become a widespread
conviction until the 1960s. As late as the 1950s, it was
U.S. government policy to promote assimilation toward
the ultimate goal that Native American identity would
disappear.

Violent confl ict continued in the 1870s. In the
Sioux Wars of the 1870s, the Sioux and their allies did
battle with the U.S. Army in the Black Hills. This cul-
minated on June 25–26, 1876, with a battle at Little
Big Horn in eastern Montana. Hundreds of Sioux and
Cheyenne warriors under the command of Sitting Bull,
a Sioux chief and holy man, met the Seventh Cavalry
Regiment of the U.S. Army, commanded by General
George Custer. Custer’s forces were quickly destroyed
by Sitting Bull. Although Little Big Horn bolstered

Native American morale, it
was not to last. The federal
military presence contin-
ued, as did increasing white
settlement in the west, even
on Native American reser-
vations. In response to this

assimilation Entry
of Indian peoples into
mainstream white culture,
either voluntary or forced

Little Big Horn Battle
on June 25–26, 1876, in
eastern Montana, in which
Sioux and Cheyenne
warriors defeated a U.S.
Army regiment

Ghost dance shirt

A
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PH
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IL
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KO
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Given the role of the buffalo for the

Lakota, its extermination proved deadly

for their traditional culture.

50 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

worsening situation, the
ghost dance movement
arose in the late 1880s. It
would be the last militant
attempt to preserve the cul-
tural life and independence
of Native Americans. The
ghost dance movement
was inspired by the vision
of the Paiute prophet
Wovoka (also known by
his “white” name, Jack
Wilson). Wovoka’s vision
spread, and reached the

Sioux late in 1889. It spoke of dead native warriors
coming back to life; the restoration of youth to the liv-
ing; the return of the buffalo, elk, and other game; and
the departure of whites.

When reports reached the U.S. Army that the
Sioux were arming themselves, wearing their ghost
shirts, and acting defi antly to government agents,
troops arrived at the Pine Ridge reservation on
November 20, 1890, and were deployed to other
Sioux areas. Sitting Bull was arrested on December
15 and killed in the process, and his followers fl ed.
Alarmed at Sitting Bull’s death and anxious
at the troops’ presence on their
reservation, the Big Foot
band of Lakota, number-
ing about 350, headed for
Pine Ridge to confront the
army. Intercepted by troops,
they surrendered and were
kept at Wounded Knee. On
December 29, as troops
sought to confi scate the
weapons that some Lakota
still possessed, a rifl e dis-
charged and shooting
immediately broke out on
both sides. Most historians

conclude that what began as an accident immedi-
ately turned into a battle and then quickly intensi-
fi ed into what has become known as the Massacre at
Wounded Knee. Of the U.S. Army troops, twenty-fi ve
were killed; of the Lakota, eighty-four men and boys
and sixty-two women and girls were killed—virtually
half the prisoners. The ghost dance movement was
now over. The ghost shirts worn by the Big Foot band
had failed to protect them as
it was believed they would. To
use the words of Black Elk,
“the dream died.”

Native Americans then settled down to a long
period of slow decline on the reservations in the
United States and Canada, but over time most left
the reservations to assimilate with wider American
culture. In the early 1970s, a social and political
protest movement arose among Native Americans.
At Wounded Knee traditional Indians and members
of the American Indian Movement (AIM) protested
the appalling economic and social conditions on Pine
Ridge reservation, which is today the poorest area in
the United States. Wounded Knee was chosen for the
protest because it symbolized continuity with the suf-
fering of those who died there in 1890.

To conclude this section, the Lakotan culture
involves living in a healthy, life-giving relationship with
the tribe and the land. As we have seen, these relation-
ships have been seriously damaged by forced assimi-
lation, relocations, and government policies under a
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs that is widely recognized
as incompetent. Also, high unemployment (up to an
astounding 90 percent), poverty, domestic violence, and
alcohol and drug abuse continue to take a toll on the

ghost dance Movement
inspired by the Paiute
prophet Wovoka in the
1880s, looking for the
restoration of Indian life and
the departure of whites

Massacre at Wounded
Knee Killing of about
150 Lakota prisoners of
war by the U.S. Army on
December 29, 1890

“The people were crying [in the ghost

dance movement] for the old ways of

living and that their religion would be

with them again.” —Black Elk

Ancient pueblo city of Taos, New Mexico

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Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

51A N A F R I C A N R E L I G I O N : YO R U B A

reservations. Some signs of
hope are appearing: Tribal
identities are growing, reli-
gious rituals are practiced and
taught to new generations,
tribal casino gambling rec-
ognized by state and federal
governments is bringing in
fi nancial resources for tribal
use (although some consider

casinos a mixed blessing) , and social ills are being more
seriously attended to. Most Indian tribes are realiz-
ing that if improvement in their condition is to come,
they must bring it themselves. Many Lakota organiza-
tions are dedicated to the continuation of traditional
ways. The Lakota continue the struggle to hold on to
the Black Hills, even refusing in 1980 a $100 million
offer in return for giving up their claim to the Hills. This
refusal is an indication of Sioux commitment to their
traditional culture. The reestablishment of traditional
Lakota ways of life requires no less than the rebuilding
of the community from the family up, and much is being
done to accomplish this.

LO5 An African Religion:
Yoruba
To take a closer look at African indigenous religions,
we will examine the Yoruba (YOHR-uh-buh) religion
of west-central Africa. Not only is the Yoruba religion
important in Africa today, it is also important in the
Western Hemisphere, because many Yoruba were taken in
slavery to the Americas, where they were instrumental in
the founding of new Afro-Caribbean religions. Like most
indigenous religions that cover a wide area, the religions
of the Yoruba peoples vary signifi cantly in different parts
of west-central Africa today, especially in Nigeria. For
example, the name of a god often has variations, or the
same god may be female in one town and male in the next,
and the rituals to worship them may vary as well. These
differences inevitably arose as the myths were passed by
word of mouth and as different tribes among the Yoruba
made changes in their religion over thousands of years.
When we add the infl uence of Christianity and Islam into
the Yoruba religion—with some of these “post-contact”
changes disputed by scholars—the religion becomes even
more diverse and challenging to understand.

Despite this internal variety, all Yoruba religion shares
a similar structure and purpose. A supreme but remote
god rules the world, along with several hundred lower

gods, actively worshiped, each
of whom has a specifi c domain
of rule. These gods guide believ-
ers to fi nd their destiny in life, a
destiny that was determined at
the moment of reincarnation of one’s soul into a new life
but then forgotten. The rituals of the Yoruba identify this
destiny for the individual, and this blesses the life of the
Yoruba people as a whole.

High God and Other Gods
The Yoruba all have a high god usually known
as Olorun (“the ruler of the sky”) or Olodumare
(OH-loh-DOOM-ah-reh, “the all-powerful one”), but
occasionally by many other names. They don’t worship
Olorun or make sacrifi ces to him, and he has no priests and
no places of worship. He is a remote high god. Although
the Yoruba believe that he is the creator and continual
giver of life, almighty and all knowing, the Yoruba ignore
him in their daily lives. He is invoked only at times of
extreme need, and even then with diffi culty. Some schol-
ars argue that Olorun developed as a “post-contact” god
through the infl uence of Islamic and Christian missionar-
ies—as an imitation of the God of those religions, but one
that could not be integrated into other Yoruba beliefs or
rituals. However, belief in Olorun is widespread among
the Yoruba, both in those tribes that have not had much
contact with Abrahamic religions as well as those that
have. Moreover, we can fi nd other African tribes and
nations with remote high gods in their traditions.

The other main Yoruba gods controlling rela-
tions between the earth and the high god are known
as orisha. They are the gods with whom humans have
contact through myth and rituals. The numbers, rela-
tionships, and names of Yoruba gods are exceedingly
complex; they form a vast group of supernatural beings
numbering between 401 and 601. Some Yoruba myths
have a pair of gods, Orishala (also known as Obatala
and Orisanla) and his wife Odudua, as the gods who
created the world. This
association with the creator
and high god Olorun gives
them a higher status than
that of the other orisha. In
one myth, Olorun creates
the main parts of the world
and then has Obatala and
Odudua fi nish the work.
They are so close that some
interpreters have consid-
ered Olorun and Obatala

Olorun “Ruler of the sky,”
Yoruba high god

orisha Yoruban main
gods who control
relations between the
earth and the high god,
and with whom humans
have contact through
myth and rituals

52 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

one and the same. Obatala is often portrayed as a sculp-
tor-god, having the responsibility to shape human bod-
ies. The Yoruba consider physically different humans to
be either his special servants or the victims of his dis-
pleasure, leaving some room for interpretation.

The Yoruba see the god Ogun as among the most
important of the orisha. The god of war, hunting, and
ironworking, Ogun is the patron god of blacksmiths,
warriors, and all who use metals. Yoruba religion has a
high regard for

metal as a combination of earth, wind,

and fi re. Ogun also is the god of business deals and
contracts. In courts in Yoruba areas of Nigeria, Yoruba
swear to tell the truth by kissing a knife sacred to Ogun.
The Yoruba consider Ogun fearsome and terrible in his
revenge; if one breaks a pact made in his name, swift
retribution will follow. One myth that illustrates Ogun’s
importance tells of the orisha trying to carve a road
through dense jungle. Ogun was the only one with the
right tools for the task and so won the right to be king
of the orisha. He did not, however, care for the position,
and it went to Obatala.

Shango the storm god occupies an important place
among these orisha. Shango creates and controls storms
by throwing “thunderstones” onto the earth. When light-
ning strikes, Shango’s priests search for the stone, which
is believed to have special powers because of its origin. As
the stones are collected, they are put in Shango’s shrines. A
myth told about Shango provides a basis for his worship.
When he was human and a king of an ancient Yoruba
kingdom, he had a powerful charm that could cause light-
ning, but he accidentally killed his entire family with it.
He hanged himself in sorrow and became deifi ed when he
entered the spirit world. He then gained more power over
lightning, as well as over thunder, wind, hail, and
other aspects of storms. Most scholars conclude
that his popularity among the Yoruba peoples
may result from a need to ward off the frequent
violent storms that strike western Africa.

Shango came to the New World with newly
enslaved Africans. In Annapolis, Maryland, a clay
bundle about the size and shape of an American football
was unearthed by University of Maryland and University
of London archaeologists at an old crossroads. Dated
to about 1700, it was fi lled with about three hundred
pieces of metal and a stone axe sticking out
through the clay. Archaeologists quickly
identifi ed it as African in origin, and most
likely used as an object of spiritual power by
African slaves recently brought to America.
Although almost all slaves were baptized into
Christianity, they continued to secretly observe some
“spirit practices” in healing and in worship of their

ancestors. The archaeologist who discovered the bundle
concluded that it was connected with rites of Shango.

Trickster gods can blur the line between good and
evil in Yoruban religion. One myth dealing with the god
Eshu (EH-shoo) illustrates his trickiness. Pretending to
be a merchant, Eshu sold increasingly expensive gifts
to each of a man’s two wives, sparking a desire in each
to outdo the other in purchasing. The battle for the
husband’s favor after this buying spree tore the fam-
ily apart. This story is told as a cautionary tale against
the evils of greed and ambition. Eshu is also, but not
in his trickster role, the divine guardian of houses and
villages. The relationship between Eshu and many
Yorubans is so close that they call him Baba (“father”)
in worship. Because tricksters often blur the lines of
good and evil, Islamic and then Christian missionaries
among the Yorubans attacked Eshu as a demonic fi gure,
even as a representation of the Devil. This of course
betrays a misunderstanding of a trickster’s overall role
to promote morality, not undermine it.

The history of Shokpona (shock-POH-nuh), the god
of smallpox, is an interesting story at the intersection of
religion and medicine. Shokpona became important in

the smallpox plagues that arose in inter-
tribal wars in west Africa. The Yoruba also
saw Shokpona’s wrath in other diseases that
have similar symptoms. Shokpona’s wrath is
so terrifying, and worshiping him is so chal-
lenging, that the Yoruba are often afraid to
say his name. Instead, they use expressions
such as “Hot Earth,” referring to high fever,
and “One whose name must not be spoken in
the dry season.” Priests of Shokpona had great
power; they could bring this plague down on
their enemies, especially by making a ritual
potion from the powdered scabs and dry skin

of those who had died from smallpox. They
would pour the potion in an enemy’s area to
spread the disease. Although this indirect con-
tact with smallpox was less deadly than con-
tact with living people infected by it, it worked

well enough. However, because smallpox has
been eradicated worldwide since about 1980, the

Axes on this devotee’s
head are Shango’s
thunderbolts.

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Yoruba religion has a high regard for

metal as a combination of earth, wind,

and fire.

53 A N A F R O  C A R I B B E A N R E L I G I O N : V O D O U

priests of Shokpona have lost power, and his
worship has all but vanished.

In the long history of the success-
ful human battle against smallpox,
African religious practice had a role
at a key moment in American his-
tory. When a growing smallpox
epidemic threatened the American
revolutionary army encamped
at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in
1777, George Washington ordered
experimental inoculations based on
an account by a famous Christian minis-
ter in Massachusetts, Cotton Mather (1663–
1728). Mather detailed how his African slave named
Onesimus had been protected from smallpox by vac-
cination, probably in a religious ritual of body marking
connected with the worship of Shokpona. A small bit
of smallpox scab had been put on his cuts so that, as
Mather later wrote, he “had smallpox and then did not
have it.” Mather himself had successfully inoculated his
sons with this procedure, minus the Yoruban religious
elements, of course. The procedure was a success at
Valley Forge, and the American army was saved.

Religious Specialists
With its many gods that must be attended to with
rituals, Yoruba religion has a large place for religious
specialists. These specialists don’t teach or administer
religious institutions; rather, they preside at the hun-
dreds of rituals. Their skills are passed down from gen-
eration to generation.

Priests divine the future, offering advice for how
to meet it. Male priests are known as a babalawo
(buh-BAH-lah-woo), “father of secrets” or “father of the
priest” and females as an iyalawo (ee-YAH-lah-woo),
“mother of secrets/priests.” They help people to under-
stand the destinies they chose in the spirit world but lost
when they were reincarnated on Earth. The priests also
give people power and guidance to make their destinies
come true. Seeking a priest to help with one’s future
is a common occurrence throughout life, but faithful
Yorubas take their child to a diviner soon after birth so
that the child’s destiny can be made clear.

The process of divination varies by priest and region,
but this is perhaps the most common method. The
believer, usually under some sort of duress, makes her or
his way to a diviner. Contrary to many other systems of
divination and fortune-telling, the believer doesn’t tell the
diviner what the problem is. Instead, the diviner casts six-
teen separate palm nuts or a chain of sixteen shells onto

a divination board. Depending on the results,
the diviner then chants a group of poems

called Ifa (EE-fuh) verses, presided over
by a god of the same name. The col-
lection of Ifa verses is vast, and most
diviners know several hundred of
them by heart. These poems tell
short stories of the gods and usually
tell of some sacrifi ce, gift, or action

the believer must take. It is then up
to the believer to discern which of the

poems and prescribed actions are correct
in her or his situation. The Yoruba believer

is very active in this pr ocess; it’s not just a mat-
ter of telling one’s problems to a priest and then getting

some quick advice. This system of divination has worked
for centuries, probably millennia, and even today many
Yoruba consult an expert in the Ifa before making any
important decisions. Ifa poems are now being collected
and published, but this takes
them out of their living context
in Yoruba divination.

Spirits of the Ancestors
The Yoruba treat their ancestors with great respect, which
is typical of indigenous societies. Anthropologists debate as
to whether the rituals dealing with ancestry—prayers, sac-
rifi ces, and the like—are religious or cultural-traditional;
but given the deeply enculturated nature of indigenous
religion, we can safely conclude that a religious aspect is
present. At least a few Yoruba groups believe that ances-
tors, after death, become semidivine fi gures. This resembles
another aspect of the Yoruba faith: possession of the body
by the gods. In these possessions, priests acting as medi-
ums take on the individual characteristics of the gods. The
behavioral patterns of how each god takes possession of
a medium are so entrenched that
mediums as far off as Haiti roll
their heads and cross their legs
in the same way as mediums of
Shango in west Africa.

LO6 An Afro-Caribbean
Religion: Vodou
Those who follow the Afro-Caribbean religion of
Vodou number an estimated 5 to 7 million people today.
Vodou is widely referred to in North America today, but
with much misunderstanding, especially in American

A Yoruba divination board

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54 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

popular culture. In this section, we’ll put this religion
in its African and New World contexts, and try to shed
some light on its signifi cance for today. An important
part of our study of Vodou will be to rehabilitate the
name of this religion, so that it doesn’t always stir up
negative emotions and misleading opinions. Although
Vodou is not, strictly speaking, indigenous to Haiti, the
centuries of its combination with Roman Catholicism
in the setting of the New World qualifi es it in the minds
of most to be an indigenous religion.

Location and Name
Like the Brazilian religions Candomblé and Umbanda,
Cuban Santería, or Jamaican Rastafarianism, the Vodou
religion is based on an African indigenous religion. An
estimated 9 to 12 million slaves were brought to the New
World between 1500 and 1850, most of them to Brazil and
the Caribbean islands, and they brought their religions
with them. Like other indigenous religions, Vodou is con-
cerned mainly with bringing its followers into harmony
with the gods that control the natural world, so that in
this harmony their lives can be happy and blessed. These
religions were brought to the New World by enslaved
members of west African tribes, and there underwent an
independent development to become Afro-Caribbean.

The word Vodou (or the lesser-used Hoodoo, which
is often used on a popular level for the magical practices
of Vodou) is from the Haitian Creole-French language.
It is also spelled Voudon or Vodun in scholarship today.
You may know it as Voodoo. Until recently, this was the
accepted spelling of the word, but many Haitians and
most modern scholars now acknowledge Vodou as the
preferred spelling, because it is phonetically closer to
the original African word. It originated in the language
of the Ewe Fon west African peoples brought to Haiti
as slaves from present-day Benin and Togo. Ultimately,
it is from vodú, the Ewe Fon word for both “god”
and “worship.” Beginning in the seventeenth century,
Voodoo was used in the missionary literature about
the Ewe people in Africa, who called a newly initiated
member of their religion a vodúnsi or hunsi, a “bride of
the deity.” Also, the use of Voodoo has too many preju-
dicial and exotic overtones in the Western world today.
In general, Vodou in Africa is an
African indigenous religion,
not combined with Roman
Catholic Christianity as it is in
the Americas.

In the Western Hemisphere, Vodou means various
things. It most often refers to an Afro-Catholic religion
that is widespread on the island of Hispaniola, especially
in Haiti. It can also be applied to persons—for example,
spell-workers are often called “hoodoo doctors” in the
southern United States. In Haiti, Vodou is applied as
an umbrella term to a large number of Haitian reli-
gious groups with roots in African religion rather than
Roman Catholic Christianity. In mainstream American
usage, it has become a common pejorative for “decep-
tive nonsense,” usually with no connection to religion.
For example, when George H. W. Bush and Ronald
Reagan were competing in 1980 for the Republican
nomination for president, Bush called Reagan’s eco-
nomic plan “Voodoo economics.” Other uses of Vodou
center on the current popularity of zombies, especially
“zombie walks.” Observers of American popular cul-
ture say that in 2009 zombies replaced vampires as the
leading symbol of supernatural threats. To those who
engage in careful academic
study of Vodou, however, this
interest in zombies distorts and
demeans the religion.

Divinities
Like other Afro-Caribbean religions, Haitian Vodou
has authentic African traits. Vodou is a typical example
of a religion centered on different groups of gods. These

TU
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Another Call from Africa by Haitian artist Turgo
Bastien has African-Caribbean religious themes.

55A N A F R O  C A R I B B E A N R E L I G I O N : V O D O U

gods are called loas, meaning “divinities” or “myster-
ies.” The gods, or groups of gods, are called “myster-
ies” or more commonly “saints” (in the sense of “holy
ones”). In Fon myth, there are three regions of the world,
and various gods reign in each one: the sky, the earth,
and, in between, the clouds. The creator god (Yoruba,
Olorun; Creole, Bon Dieu Bon—literally “good God
good”) lives in the remote sky. Because he isn’t involved
with everyday life, he isn’t honored in everyday rituals.
Through the infl uence of Roman Catholicism, Vodou
believers also worship the Christian God. It is not
uncommon for them to worship in a Catholic church on
Sunday morning and in a Vodou sanctuary on Sunday
evening. They also venerate two other kinds of spiritual
beings who live between the sky and the earth: souls
of dead humans that have become spirits and spirits
that have never been directly tied to matter. Vodou gods
live on the earth: in the sea, in waterfalls, in springs, in
forests, at intersections of roads, in cemeteries, and in
piles of stones. Many earth gods of Vodou correspond
to Catholic saints, on whose feast days the Vodou gods
are also celebrated. The recognition and worship of
these gods helps to bless the lives of people on earth, so
that they can be happy, peaceful, and productive.

Groups
Gods and rites are divided into groups according to
the geographical regions of their origin. The two most
important groups are the Rada and the Petro, who are
found especially in urban areas. Rada derives from the
old kingdom of Arada in Africa. Petro, more oriented to
the indigenous Creoles, comes from the name of a Vodou
priest, Don Pedro, who introduced a variant of the Vodou
trance dance in the eighteenth century. The Petro group

is named after him, but he
did not found this Vodou
group. Petro gods and spir-
its are invoked especially
for magical or counter-
magical actions that we
will consider below. Vodou priests may support both
groups, and a believer is usually either Rada or Petro but
may likewise take part in ceremonies of the other type.

Worship
As with Candomblé in Brazil and Santería in Cuba, Vodou
is a fusion of African religions with Catholicism. Some
traces of Caribbean Indian religion can also be found in
it. The religion of Vodou refers not to a body of belief,
creeds, sacred scriptures, or the rest, but to ritual practice.
Vodou is often described as a “cult religion” (cult here
refers to a system of ritual worship, not to a dangerous
group). In particular, it is a “possession cult” in which
the gods inhabit people and speak through them, usually
for a short period of time during rituals. Rituals of ani-
mal sacrifi ce as well as trance dances forge and maintain
a bond with the gods. The rites are practiced by initi-
ated members called hunsi, “brides of the gods,” presided
over by priests and priestesses called hugan and mambo,
respectively. Initiates are introduced into the group by a
complicated and spectacular ritual. Worship is held in
sacred cabins or city temples, all with an altar for sac-
rifi ce of animals and other offerings. They have a cen-
tral post that enables the loas to descend to believers and
mount believers in trance as their “riding horses.”

A few Vodou rituals tap into the power of the spir-
its of the dead, and cemeteries have become important
places of Vodou gatherings for worship. The head loa

Rev. Pat Robertson and Vodou
On the day after an earthquake devastated Haiti on
January 12, 2010, the Christian television evangelist Pat
Robertson said on his U.S. television show that Haiti was
struck by an earthquake and had long suff ered for other
reasons, because its African slaves entered a Vodou “pact
with the devil” two centuries ago to overthrow the French
and their system of slavery. “They have been cursed by one
thing or another” ever since, he claimed. These remarks cre-
ated a storm of controversy in the United States and Haiti,
where Vodou has been an offi cial religion since 2003.

On a strictly historical level, Robertson is correct on one
point: Vodou followers did play a large part in slave upris-
ings against the French and their eventual expulsion. But
whether the continuing struggles of Haiti, which has long
been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, can
be blamed on Vodou is another matter entirely. For many
scholars of religion, this superfi cial and dismissive attitude
toward Vodou is the most recent part of a long history of
misrepresentation and quite literal “demonization” of Vodou
in American popular culture, even in journalism.

A Closer Look:

loa [LOH-uh] “Divinity” or
“mystery”; in west African
and Vodou religions, a
god or group of gods

56 C H A P T E R 2 E N CO U N T E R I N G I N D I G E N O U S R E L I G I O N S : WAY S TO T R I B A L L I F E

in the cult of the dead is Baron
Samedi, the “Lord of the
Dead.” His depiction and
name vary, but he often
wears a top hat, a black tux-
edo, and cotton plugs in his
nostrils, all of which are ele-
ments of a corpse prepared
in a Haitian style for burial.
Baron Samedi has a white, skull-
like face and is regarded by all as
a fearsome presence. Although
dead, he is very much alive.
He is charged with sexual energy
and is frequently represented by
phallic symbols. He is known for
obscenity and debauchery, and he enjoys tobacco and
rum. He is worshiped and celebrated in order to keep
him at bay, so that he won’t disturb the living.

Also connected to death—and the African experi-
ence of deadly slavery in Haiti—is the fi gure of the zom-
bie. As we saw above, Yoruban religion has a large role
for the spirits of the dead, and Vodou further blurs the
distinction between the living and the dead. It believes
that a human body can be revived by an especially pow-
erful magician after the spirit of the dead has departed
and used as a slave for the magician’s purposes. They
are the ultimate slaves, the worst possible kind of
“life” for Afro-Haitian people. Zombies remain under
the control of the sorcerer because they have no will,
mind, or soul of their own. This is why in popular cul-
ture zombies are usually depicted as mindless, almost
robotic fi gures that shuffl e around. However, the notion
that zombies eat human fl esh,
thus making other people into
zombies, is a mistaken view
that taps into revulsion against
cannibalism.

Spell and
Counter-Spell
Rituals
Like some of the world’s
largest religions, Vodou has
a place for “magical” prac-
tices, and, also like other
religions, this is found more
often on a popular, not an
offi cial, level. Magic is the
preferred form of Vodou

practice of the lowest social
class in Haiti—the small farm-
ers, the urban working poor,
and the masses of unem-
ployed—although today some
members of the upper class
are also drawn to it. People
use magic to seek deliverance
from all the diffi culties of life,
which for the lower classes in

Haiti are many. Diseases,
poverty, and other diffi cul-
ties are seen as the effect of
demonic spells, which need
to be countered with magic.
Probably the magical prac-

tice best known in the West is the one performed with
a small doll, through which certain magical actions are
seen as being able to harm someone’s health or even
cause death.

Also used are gris-gris, originally images of the
gods in the shape of little dolls but now small cloth bags
containing items such as herbs, oils, stones, small bones,
hair and nails, and pieces of cloth soaked with perspi-
ration, all gathered and bagged under the direction
of a god for the protection of the owner. The gris-gris
became traditional in New Orleans, the American head-
quarters for Vodou, where they were used for attracting
money and love, stopping gossip, protecting the home,
maintaining good health, and for many other uses. A
gris-gris is ritually made at an altar containing the four
elements of earth (salt), air (incense), water, and fi re (a
candle fl ame). The number of ingredients is always one,
three, fi ve, seven, nine, or thirteen. Stones and colored
objects are chosen to fi t the purpose for which the gris-
gris is to be used. Legends of the most famous Vodou

Geoff rey Holder played Baron Samedi in Live
and Let Die. His face paint suggests that he is
both alive and dead.

PH
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EI
LL

/H
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H
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ET
TY
IM
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ES

Baron Samedi
[sah-MEHD-ee] “Lord of
the Dead” in Vodou; head
loa in the cult of the dead

gris-gris [gree-gree] In
Vodou, small cloth bags
containing items gathered
and bagged under the
direction of a god for the
protection of the owner

A shop selling Vodou supplies in the French
Quarter of New Orleans

JS
F3

57A N A F R O  C A R I B B E A N R E L I G I O N : V O D O U

practitioner in the United States, New Orleans “Vodou
Queen” Marie Laveau (1794–1881), claim her gris-gris
contained bits of bone, colored stones, graveyard dust,
salt, and red pepper.

Curse rituals, services of worship in cemeteries, use
of snakes in worship, and zombies have made the Vodou
religion a favorite subject of exoticism—portraying
something in another culture as strange or exciting, and
distorting it in the process. Ever since Spenser St. John’s
1884 adventure account Hayita or the Black Republic,
new sensations about Vodou have continually sprung
up. The Vodou religion, by way of Hollywood, became

an important part of the hor-
ror fi lm genre. Filmmakers
found that exotic presentations
of Vodou could easily frighten
and entertain audiences.

Political Influence in Haiti
Haitian Vodou has at times had an important politi-
cal and social role. Its faithful were able to mobilize
forces against the French colonialist rulers at the close
of the 1700s; this led to the abolition of slavery and the
country’s independence from France in 1804. Through
the years, Vodou believers opposed various Haitian
regimes that were devoted to their own power as the
gap between the rich and poor masses grew. The last
instance of such resistance was to dictator “Papa Doc”
Duvalier, who ruled from 1957 to 1971. After the dev-
astation of Haiti in the earthquake of 2010, Vodou
remains powerful on a popular level.

Socially, rural and
urban forms of Vodou dif-
fer in Haiti. In rural areas,
worship and belief are
oriented to small farm-
ers and are supported by
extensive family alliances.
Involvement with ances-
tors and ritual practices to induce successful farming
are the center of religious practice. Vodou believers in
the cities have adapted their practice to urban relation-
ships there. They fi nd a “second family” in the temple
communities. This urban adaptation of traditional
rural Vodou has found its way to the urban centers of
North America.

Widespread continuous poverty and political insta-
bility in Haiti have led to the need for a religion that can
help the poor cope with their problems. Vodou offers
this help; the other main religion of Haiti, Christianity,
is tied in the minds of many Haitians to the social elites
who oppress the common people. This dismal situation
in Haiti has led to the emigration of many Haitians
to North America. They have taken the Vodou reli-
gion along with them to New York City, Miami, and
Montreal, but especially to New Orleans, where today
there is a museum of Vodou. (New Orleans Vodou tends
to be more fi rmly attached to Roman Catholicism than
other forms are.) Vodou is starting to get a foothold in
some countries of Europe, but
mainly as a magical practice
adapted for those who are not
initiates in the religion.

exoticism [egg-ZOT-
uh-siz-uhm] Portraying
something in another
culture as strange or
exciting, and distorting it
in the process

Your Visit to Varanasi, Indi

I
magine that you’re on a visit to the city of
Varanasi (vuh-RAH-nuh-see) as a part of a tour
of India. You know that Varanasi, located on the
Ganges (GAN-jeez) River in north India, is unique
among the cities of the world, but nothing can

quite prepare you for its sights, sounds, and smells.
Your visit begins with a pre-dawn boat ride on the

Ganges. As your rowboat glides along the river, you see
Hindu pilgrims on the western shore of the river descending
the wide steps—two miles of them at Varanasi— leading
down to the water. They wash themselves
physically and spiritually, and pray toward
the rising sun. A man dressed only in a
loincloth and his sacred thread fi lls a
small copper kettle with river water and
then pours it out in a small stream while
saying a prayer in the ancient Sanskrit
language. After the boat ride, you walk
to the Golden Temple, the most sacred of
the city’s many shrines dedicated to
Shiva (SHEE-vuh), the patron deity
of Varanasi. You see Hindus making
off erings of fl owers to the black
stone emblem of Shiva. You also
visit the newer Hindu temple inau-
gurated by Mohandas Gandhi, the
father of modern Indian indepen-
dence. You return to the hotel for
breakfast before taking a guided
tour of Varanasi.

As you walk with your
group through the narrow, twist-
ing streets down to the river, you
pass several cows wandering
freely, and even a bull sacred
to Shiva. You notice many small

temples and even smaller shrines that seem to be everywhere.
You also notice many old, frail people, some in the doorways of
ashrams and others living on the street, who have come to die
in Varanasi in the hope of achieving liberation from the cycle
of endless reincarnation. You see human bodies, wrapped
and propped up on rickshaws, on their way to the water. As

you get close to the Ganges, you notice three men with
wild hair, squatting on a stone platform overlook-
ing the river. You can’t tell if they are wearing
anything at all, and your tour guide explains that
their bodies are smeared with ash and dried cow
dung. They are smoking hashish in a pipe, praising
Shiva loudly as they draw on the pipe. (You wince

when one of your tour mates makes a pun about
“ganja on the Ganges.”) On the right you see a

large group of women bathing fully clothed
in the water near
the steps, and in
a separate but
close-by area a

group of men in
Indian loincloths. Both the men
and the women have come

to wash away their sins, and
perhaps even the necessity of
reincarnation. The river seems
polluted to you, but this means
nothing to the thousands of

Hindus who worship in it.

“Encountering Hinduism is like your fi rst visit to an Indian buffet. You can’t sample
everything, but if you choose a good variety you’ll have a good introduction.”

Hinduism is mostly about
escaping this material world.

Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

What Do YOU Think?

A man who has renounced the world to
devote himself to Shiva smokes a drug.

H
U

V
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R
IP

A
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< The Hindu god Shiva is often portrayed as the Lord of the Dance.

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60 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

As you keep walking up
the river, you notice a cluster
of large fi res and hundreds
of large logs stacked up
behind them, and you real-
ize with a bit of a shock that
you’ve reached Varanasi’s
open-air cremation area. In
a scene that you’ll remember
for a long time, you see the
steps of the Hindu funeral:
piling wood into a pyre, lay-
ing on the wood a body
that has just been dipped
into the Ganges, a son light-
ing a pyre, priests intoning
ancient scriptures as a body
begins to burn, members of
the Dom group gently tend-
ing a body over three hours
of burning to burn it as fully
as possible, and Doms pushing cre-
mated remains into the river to fl oat
away. To die and be cremated in Varanasi
is thought to bring automatic liberation from
the cycle of reincarnation. Your group must stand respect-
fully at the top of the steps, where you happily realize that
you have a better view and the odor is better, too.

In the evening, you join your guide at the shore of the
Ganges to witness the happy Aarti ceremony that is part of
the evening religious devotions to Shiva. The celebrative
music and dancing, and small candles lit on miniature “boats”
and put into the river to memorialize the dead, soothe your
spirits and make for a good, inspiring end to a challenging day.

If this is your fi rst encounter with the Hindu religion,
you may become bewildered by all its varied beliefs
and practices. Calling something a “religion” usually
implies a unifi ed system of belief and practice, but
Hinduism has little obvious unity. It has no personal
founder, defi ned core beliefs, common scripture that
guides all Hindus, standardized worship practice, or
central authority. This diversity has led to what you
may consider contradictions. For example:

● Hinduism has literally millions of gods, but many
Hindus typically see one god behind them all,
and some see only an impersonal Oneness in and
beyond the universe.

● Hindus often control their bodies to pursue a
hidden spiritual reality behind all physical things,
seeking liberation from the endless cycle of

reincarnation and pursuing the peace that
liberation brings here and now. At the same

time, they joyously affi rm bodily existence with
a striking affi rmation of sexuality, for example
with erotic statues in some temples.

● Many Hindus are strict vegetarians for religious
reasons, but others eat meat on occasion, and
some even sacrifi ce animals at Hindu temples.

● Hinduism teaches personal duties tied to one’s
place in a rather rigid social structure but allows
some people to “drop out” of ordinary life com-
pletely to pursue individual religious goals.

● Hindus number around 900 million today in
India, a number that includes some 220 million
Indian “outcastes.” The modern Indian state now
considers these 220 million as Hindus, but they
are not considered as such by most other Hindu
castes, nor do they often call themselves Hindus.

● Hinduism has a long history of at least three
thousand years but constantly combines old tradi-
tions with new elements to produce a richer, more
diverse faith and culture that bring ancient tradi-
tions into the twenty-fi rst century.

In light of all this obvious diversity, what is the hidden
unity of Hinduism that binds it together? Scholars have
argued about this for more than one hundred years, and
it’s not an easy question to answer. The most common
answer is this: Hinduism, and faithful Hindus, have a rev-
erence for the ancient Hindu scriptures called the Vedas
and perform their caste duties. But this may seem a bit

G
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/C
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B

You realize, with

a bit of a shock,

that you’ve reached

Varanasi’s open-air

cremation area.

61T H E N A M E H I N D U I S M

vague to you, and you should
keep the question open as you
study this chapter. In sum,
encountering Hinduism is a bit
like going to an Indian restau-

rant for the fi rst time. When you see a wide variety of
exotic dishes on the menu, or even if you go to an Indian
buffet, you realize that you can’t taste them all. But at the
end of the meal, you know that your experience in the
restaurant gave you a good introduction to Indian cuisine.

Religion usually implies a unified system

of belief and practice, but Hinduism has

little obvious unity.

LO1 The Name Hinduism
Like the names of a few other world religions, the for-
mal name of Hinduism came from outside the faith.
Hindu fi rst appears around 500 B.C.E. as the ancient

Persian word for the
Indus River and the
inhabitants of its val-
ley. From the 1300s
C.E., invading Muslim
rulers of northern
India used “Hindu”
for all non-Muslim Indians, whatever religion they
were, to distinguish them from Indian converts to
Islam. Beginning in the 1500s, European colonizers
coming to India used it in its current sense to mean the
members of the supposedly single religion to which all
Indians other than groups like Muslims, Christians,
and Zoroastrians belonged. Then, from about 1800 on,
Hinduism gradually became accepted by most Hindus
in India as a valid name for their religion, especially to
distinguish their religion from others. Thus, Hinduism
is an umbrella term gradually imposed on Hindus and
then accepted by them.

The approximately 2 million Hindus living in
North America and the sizeable Hindu communi-
ties in other parts of south Asia (especially Bali,
Indonesia), a few parts of Africa, and Great Britain
also embrace this name. However, more-upper-class

Om (Aum) [OHM] Spoken
syllable symbolizing the
fundamental hidden reality of
the universe

Symbols of Hinduism

Om
Although Hinduism has no offi cial symbol,
the religious symbol most sacred to most
Hindus is the mystical syllable Om. You will
also fi nd the spelling “Aum,” and in fact the
symbol is composed of the equivalent of
our letters a, u, and m. Although as a syllable it has no literal
meaning, Om symbolizes the fundamental hidden reality
of the universe and is the basic spiritual sound the universe
makes, particularly the sound of the world soul. Om is writ-
ten daily in formal contexts and often pronounced at the
beginning of religious reading or meditation. Many Hindus
wear this symbol in jewelry, and it is found in family shrines
and in temples. Pronounced in a deep, lengthy way, it can
resonate throughout the body and the sound of Brahman
can penetrate to one’s center of being.

The Swastika
You may be surprised, even shocked, to
encounter the swastika as a common, ancient
symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
Svastika (SWAHS-tee-kuh) is an ancient Indian
word meaning “sign of good fortune,” and this symbol is widely
used as a good-luck charm. The swastika has “crooked” arms
facing in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction (both direc-
tions are common in Asia). Its arms extend in all directions,
suggesting to Hindus the universal presence of the world
soul. It is continually rotating like the wheel that it resembles,
symbolizing the eternal nature of ultimate truth. This symbol
is often found on Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist temples, and it is
worn on neck pendants. In 1935, the Nazi Party of Germany
adopted the swastika known in Europe, with no historical
connection to the Indian svastika, as its symbol of the party
and the nation—of course with no intent to endorse Hindu
teachings. It is still used today by some neo-Nazi groups. So we
have an odd situation: For people of many Asian religions, the
swastika is a much-loved symbol; for people in the Western
world, the swastika is much despised.

A Closer Look:

62 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

Hindus often refer to their religion as the “eternal
teaching” or “eternal way of life.” Some scholars of
religion also question the adequacy of Hinduism as
a name, preferring to speak of “Hinduisms.” On the
whole, it is fi tting that a vague term like Hinduism is
used today for a religious tradition that has so much
internal diversity.

LO2 The Hindu Present as
Shaped by Its Past

At dawn, a group of men in northern India sits around an outdoor fi re pit and chants poetic hymns from
memory. Nearby, outside a boundary
rope that encloses the area of sacrifi ce,
their teenage sons sit studying the
sacrifi ce, quietly repeating the men’s
words and movements. Also outside
the rope, women are pounding rice,
cooking it, and shaping it into balls. The
men occasionally pour a bit of liquefi ed
butter from a wooden bowl onto the
fi re, which fl ares up momentarily. The
men are singing ancient hymns to Agni,
the Hindu god of fi re, comparing him
to the rising sun. After the sacrifi ce, the
rice balls will fi rst be off ered to Agni, and
then some will be eaten in turn by the priests, then by their
sons, the women, and the whole community. This ceremony
from more than three thousand years ago is carried out
with increasing frequency in India as interest in ancient
Hindu practices grows. However, some Hindus are not
happy about the re-creation of ancient sacrifi ces, preferring
instead the adaptations of these rituals that have arisen in
the course of Hindu history.

History is an important tool for those who study
today’s religions from a Western academic standpoint.
We understand the present of religions by way of their
past. Although Hinduism must be understood histori-
cally as well, history itself is not an important concept
in Hinduism. Most Hindus don’t think of their religion
in historical terms, preferring to look to the spiritual
truths beyond historical events. They often look to
cycles of change for individuals (for example, death
and reincarnation) and for the universe itself (repeated
creation and dissolution), not to the kind of linear
developmental process that “history” usually implies
to Westerners. Nevertheless, studying Hinduism’s past
is valid and helpful, particularly because in Hinduism

new developments reinterpret and update past practices
rather than end them. In Hinduism today, we can see
important beliefs and practices from the entire sweep
of Indian history.

The Vedic Period

(1500–600 B.C.E.)

Around 2500 B.C.E., an Indus Valley civilization thrived
in northwest India, in what is now the nation of Pakistan
(see Map 3.1). It centered in two city-states on the Indus
River, Harappa (huh-RAHP-uh) and Mohenjo-Daro
(moh-HEN-joh-DAHR-oh). The Indus Valley inhabit-
ants were a dark-skinned people whom most scholars
connect with today’s Indians called Dravidians (druh-

VID-ee-uhnz). (About 25 percent of
Indians today are Dravidians.) This civi-
lization traded internationally and had a
high material culture; its main cities of
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were care-
fully planned and even had a sewage sys-
tem connected to private houses. Their
system of writing has not yet been deci-
phered by scholars. The
religion of the Indus
Valley civilization
is also largely
unknown to
us. Many

female deity fi gurines have
been found by archaeolo-
gists, and the Indus Valley
people probably worshiped
goddesses of fertility in con-
nection with their farming. The
cows on their offi cial seals—a
variety of stone objects prob-
ably used in worship—and
sculptures of people in seated
meditation may suggest reli-
gious practices that infl u-
enced Hinduism. But until
much more is known about
these and other features of
Indus Valley religion, its
effect on Hinduism must
remain uncertain.

Most Hindus don’t think

of their religion in historical

terms, but look to the

spiritual truths beyond

historical events.

W
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W
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The Indus Valley people’s offi cial seals featured
the cows still venerated today in Hinduism.

63T H E H I N D U P R E S E N T A S S H A P E D B Y I T S PA S T

The Indus Valley civiliza-
tion was in decline around
1500 B.C.E., when nomadic
tribes who called themselves
Aryans (AIR-ee-unzs), or

“noble ones,” migrated into northwest India from
their home in the Caucasus area between the Black
Sea and the Caspian Sea. These Aryans must be dis-
tinguished from the modern Nazi misuse of this term,
which was identifi ed with Nordic-Germanic people as
a claimed superior race. Moreover, many Hindus dis-
pute this migration/invasion, so Hindu scholars some-
times refer to it as the “Aryan Invasion Theory.” The
Aryans were light-skinned cattle-herding and warlike
tribes with horse-drawn chariots. They were a part of
the migration from central Asia into both India and
Europe; hence the term Indo-Europeans is much more
common than Aryans. They soon took over control of
the Indus Valley peoples. These Indo-Europeans spoke

Sanskrit, a language closely related to most European
languages, including English. They had oral collec-
tions called the Vedas, which form the foundation
of Hinduism. The Vedas represent a diversifi ed and
continuous oral tradition that extends from around
1200 to 800 B.C.E.; they were written down much
later. The earliest Vedas, four in number, were “books
of knowledge” compiling hymns to various deities,
instructions for sacrifi ce, songs to accompany sacri-
fi ce, and spells for everyday life to bring on blessings
and keep away evil.

The heart of Vedic religion was sacrifi ce by means
of fi re, accompanied by sung praises and requests to the
gods. Vedic gods living in
the skies or in heaven play a
role in human life as forces
of nature, forces that can
be infl uenced by sacrifi ce.
In general, Vedic sacrifi cial

Vedas [VAY-duhs] Hindu
“books of knowledge”
consisting of Rig, Yajur,
Sama, and Atharva Vedas

Map 3.1
Indus Valley Civilization and Aryan Migrations
The Indus Valley culture emerged in the city–states of the Indus River Basin. It was in decline

when the Aryan (Indo-European) peoples began migrating into India around 1500 B.C.E.

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64 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

rituals aim at aiding and strengthening the gods, who
then strengthen the world to remain alive and strong, so
that those who offer sacrifi ce may prosper. In this world-
view the gods and humans are partners in a “circle of
life” that maintains the ongoing creative processes of the
world. Both need each other to thrive. The Vedic stage
of Hinduism affi rms the world, accepting the physical
aspects of the world as good and proper. At the daily
and domestic level, the simple Agnihotra ritual to the sun
was performed by the head of most Vedic households
three times each day and is still common in India. Even
given its adaptations over time, it is arguably the old-
est continually practiced ritual in the world. The gods
to whom Agni (AHG-nee), the god of fi re, carried the
sacrifi cial offerings included Indra, the king of the gods,
with traits of both a war god and a thunder god; Varuna
(vah-ROON-uh), the god guaranteeing moral order; and
Brahma (BRAH-muh), the god of creation. Many other
gods, mostly male with some female, are also associated
with physical and spiritual forces of nature.

A key person of Vedic times
was the rishi, or “seer” of the
divine, a priest who was able to
commune directly with the gods.
The rishis achieved an altered

state of consciousness in which they could see and hear
the gods. To reach this state, they drank a drug called

soma, probably hallucino-
genic, pressed out perhaps
from a mushroom. When
the rishi drank soma as a
part of Vedic sacrifi ce, he
took a trip to the realm

of the gods and experienced their
hidden truth. He then was inspired
to compose hymns in their praise,
hymns which came into the Rig
Veda. Soma even became a god, so
powerful were its effects. This quest
for a direct individual encounter
with ultimate, hidden truth has per-
sisted in the Hindu tradition to this
day, although the encounter itself has
changed. No longer is it an encounter
with all the gods; it is discovery of an
ultimate reality hidden in one’s soul
or ecstatic devotion to one’s cho-
sen god. The means of achieving it
have changed (no longer a drug, but
intense meditation), as have those
who can achieve it (no longer limited
to soma drinkers, but open to all).

“ The sun would not rise if the priests did not

sacrifice.” —Famous saying of Vedic times

Near the end of the Vedic period, for reasons not
clear to us, the Vedic system of sacrifi ce grew into a
dominant power in Aryan society. The power of sac-
rifi ce was no longer dependent on the gods’ favor as
infl uenced by the humble prayer and household sacri-
fi ces of ordinary Aryans, but on the faultless priestly
performance of increasingly more elaborate sacrifi cial
rituals. At least sixteen priests, and many more assis-
tants, were needed for the regular sacrifi ces. Sacrifi ce
was no longer just a means to the attainment of bless-
ings such as children and prosperity, but a requirement
for the maintenance of the world itself. A famous say-
ing of the time claimed that “the sun would not rise
if the priest did not sacrifi ce” (Satapatha Brahmana
1.3.1). Religious and social power collected in the
hands of one type of priest among many: the priests
who called themselves Brahmins. The books detail-
ing sacrifi ce and its power are called the Brahmanas,
“Brahmin books.” This concentration of power in the
hands of the Brahmin priesthood, perhaps combined
with other factors such as the infl uence of indigenous
Indus Valley religious practices, would spark change
for Hinduism in its next period of history. It would
also catalyze the birth of a new religion, Buddhism,
which would change religion in all of ancient Asia
and, in modern times, the world.

The Great Bath at Harappa

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rishi [REE-shee] “Seer” of
the divine, who collected
the sounds of the four
Vedas

65T H E H I N D U P R E S E N T A S S H A P E D B Y I T S PA S T

The Upanishadic Period

(600–400 B.C.E.)

In the fi rst millennium B.C.E., Hindus added another
dimension that has endured to this day. This is the quest
for knowledge so deep and sacred that to know it is to
bring eternal freedom from this world of appearances
and constant change. The Upanishads, philosophical
Hindu scriptures from this period, are primarily dia-
logues between teachers and young students who seek
this sacred knowledge in a withdrawal from ordinary
life. These teachers and students renounced the Vedic
value put on ordinary life and pursued extraordinary
truths. They criticized the Vedic rituals as unnecessary,
and they rejected the rising social and economic power
of the priesthood. Their criticism of Vedic sacrifi ce was
so effective that from this period through today the
only remnants of Vedic sacrifi ce that survive are the
relatively simple ones often incorpo-
rated into newer rites, especially wed-
dings, funerals, other traditional rites
of passage, and simple daily sacrifi ces.
The Upanishads urge physical and
mental rigors that become increas-
ingly important for Hindu practice.
Buddhism and Jainism, which will be

considered in later chap-
ters, arose at this time
in India to fi nd a single
required way to enlighten-
ment, but each one denied
key Hindu teachings and
practices. Most Hindus
gradually rejected these
new movements in favor
of Hinduism’s inclusive
approach.

The Upanishads teach
that underlying reality is
a spiritual essence called
Brahman, a single “world
soul” that is the founda-
tion of all physical matter,
energy, time and space, and

b e i n g
itself—in
short, of
everything in and beyond this uni-
verse. (This term is not to be confused
with the Vedic creator god Brahma
or the Brahmin priests.) Although it
is cosmic, Brahman is present in all
people in the form of the atman, a

person’s innermost self or soul. In other words, each
person’s innermost soul is a part of the one world soul.
For most (but not all) Hindus, Brahman is not a personal
being, as “world soul” might imply; it is spiritual, but
it is not a spirit. The religious quest in the Upanishads
involves understanding that Brahman and one’s own
atman are one and the same. The realization of this
truth, which is the deepest form of self-understanding,
brings freedom from ignorance and misery, and release
from the endless cycle of reincarnations of one’s atman.
Unlike the Vedic hymns, the Upanishads do not affi rm
the physical world, but rather aim at transcending it.

This goal of liberating one’s soul by perfect knowl-
edge of it, and the use of physical and meditational
techniques to achieve this knowledge, became per-
manent, important aspects of Hinduism. These tech-
niques gradually coalesced into a system called yoga,
the Sanskrit word for “yoke.” Yoga is an ancient medi-
tational practice that yokes the body and mind in the
quest for religious deliverance. (You may know it as
an exercise and meditation system, but it is much more
than that for Hindus.) Yoga
aims at removing humans
from the overwhelming men-
tal fl ow of the material world, © D

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Statue in Bangalore, India, of the god Shiva
meditating in the lotus yoga position

Upanishads
[oo-PAHN-ih-shahds]
Literally, “Sittings Near a
Teacher”; philosophical
scriptures that spelled the
end of the Vedas

Brahman [BRAH-muhn]
“World soul,” the ground
of all matter, energy, time
and space

atman [AHT-muhn]
Person’s innermost self
or soul

yoga [YOH-guh] Ancient
meditational practice that
yokes the body and mind
in the quest for religious
deliverance

For most Hindus,

Brahman is spiritual

but is not a spirit.

66 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

if only momentarily, in order to recap-
ture their original spiritual purity.

The Classical

Period (400 B.C.E.

–600 C.E.)

A growing number of conver-
sions to Buddhism and Jainism
was a threat to Hinduism.
The Mauryan (MOHR-yuhn)
dynasty that governed north
India was pro-Buddhist, and its
most famous king, Ashoka (ah-
SHOH-kuh), extended Aryan
rule and Buddhist infl uence into
all of India. Hindus dealt with
this threat in a way that became
typical of Hinduism through
today, by integrating foreign
elements into the broader
Hindu tradition. The main
teachings of the Upanishads
were seen as compatible with
the earlier Vedas—whether
they were or not—and accepted
into the Vedic body of scripture.

In addition, they incorpo-
rated a variety of religious practices
of lower, non-Aryan classes that were
converting to new religions. To put it
another way, the Sanskrit tradition
of the Vedas, for the educated upper
classes and the “high” gods, took in
and controlled the tradition of the
lower, non-Aryan population and the
“low gods” of local village and tribal
deities. Local deities became a part of
the village shrines and temples. The local
gods were identifi ed with the older gods, or
regarded as their incarnations, or became one of
their “family members.” The non-Aryans were success-
fully taken into this system, some into the lower castes

and others into the “out-
castes.” This development
solidifi ed Brahmin power
and religious teachings,
and eventually stemmed
the conversions of non-
Aryans to other religions.
However, mass conversions

to other religions, particularly
Buddhism and Christianity, are still
a diffi cult issue when they occur
today among lower classes in India.

Around 400 B.C.E., as the
wandering Aryans fi nally settled
into towns and cities, they built per-
manent homes for themselves and
temples for their gods. Before that,
all sacrifi ce was done outdoors,
with sites as nomadic as the Aryan
tribes. During the Classical period
the two great Hindu epics still
popular today were written, the
Mahabharata (MAH-huh-BAH-
rah-tuh) and the Ramayana (rah-
MAH-yah-nuh). Both relate royal
rivalries, perhaps refl ecting politi-
cal turmoil during this period as
different clans struggled for ter-
ritorial power when they settled

down. They feature a tension
between the aim of upholding
the world found in the Vedas
and that of isolating a person
from society in order to achieve
individual liberation found in
the newer Upanishadic tradi-

tion. Both epics emphasize that
social and moral obligation must

be maintained, and that rulers acting in
the Hindu tradition have a key role in
maintaining it. However, many char-
acters in these epics have renounced
the world, live alone in forests or in
small settlements, and are said to pos-

sess extraordinary powers to bless or to
curse. The epics’ heroes almost always

treat these world renouncers, or sa-
dhus (SAH-doos)—of whom we will speak

below—with great respect and learn much from
them even as they take up their social duties.

Another solution to this tension is found in the
Mahabharata, particularly the part of it known by the
separate title of Bhagavad Gita, “Song of Heaven”
or “Song of the Lord.” In the Gita, the god Krishna
appears to the warrior-class leader Arjuna (are-JOON-
ah), to convince him to do his social duty of fi ghting,
but in a way in which he understands and controls its
effect on him. The Gita’s solution is a masterful blend
of world-affi rming action and world-denying detach-
ment from the results of one’s actions.

True renunciation

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Goddess sculpture at a temple in Mathura,
northern India

Bhagavad Gita [BAH-
guh-vahd GEE-tuh] “Song
of the Lord”; a long poem
on religious duty in the
Mahabharata

True renunciation

does not mean

renouncing socially

responsible actions.

67T H E H I N D U P R E S E N T A S S H A P E D B Y I T S PA S T

does not involve renouncing socially responsible
actions. Rather, it involves renouncing desire
for the fruits of actions even as one fulfi lls one’s
social duty. Selfl ess action without desire for
reward is true renunciation for the Gita, and
no tension should exist between one’s dual obli-
gation to support the world and to seek individ-
ual liberation. The Gita recognizes that this is
diffi cult and that most people must use yoga

and other disciplines
to accomplish it.
This ingenious
approach has

contributed to the Bhagavad Gita’s
status as the most infl uential of
Hindu scriptures today.

A different genre of lit-
erature also concerned with
society arose at this time,
the law codes, particularly
the Laws of Manu (MAH-
new). What epics do in a lit-
erary way, the law codes do in a
formally legal way. They carefully restrict
renunciation of the world to older males. One
must earn the right to renounce the world by
fi rst being in the world as a good student, then as a
husband and father. Opting out of ordinary life can
only be done after one has successfully engaged in
it. Underlying all the law books is the strong Hindu
affi rmation that doing one’s duty for an orderly, sta-
ble society is necessary for this world and after one’s
death leads to better reincarnation. This social order
involves primarily the proper functioning of the main
social-religious classes that arose in Vedic times, as
well as the proper observance of interaction within
and among these classes. Women belong to the vari-
ous classes even though their social roles are not as
determined by their class as their husbands’ roles are.
We will consider these classes more fully below.

The Devotional Period

(600 C.E.–present)

The next period in Hinduism is characterized by three
developments: the rise of devotional movements, espe-
cially the main three devoted to Shiva (SHEE-vuh),
Vishnu (VISH-new), and the Goddess; Tantrism; and
the rise of Hindu reform movements. Of these develop-
ments, the fi rst is so important and infl uential that it has
given its name to the entire period.

Devotion to one’s chosen god is a
main way of being Hindu. Devotion,

or bhakti, enters the Hindu tradition as
early as the Bhagavad Gita, where devo-

tion to Krishna brings a cognitive mental dis-
cipline to guide action in the world. Around

the sixth century C.E. in southern India,
advocates of devotional Hinduism led

movements praising Shiva and Vishnu
in emotional poetry and song. This

devotional experience involves
often-uncontrollable joy in one’s
god, sometimes with fainting,
frenzy, tears of anguish, and ecstatic
speech. By the seventeenth century,

this devotional movement spread into
most Hindu traditions, where it remains.

The devotional movement gradually coalesced into
three movements, one each for Shiva, Vishnu, and

Shakti (SHAHK-tee), the Goddess.
Devotion is typically described in its poetry and

song as deep love for one’s god. Devotees are willing to
sacrifi ce anything in order to revel with their divine lord
in ecstatic bliss. The best example of this is the devo-
tees of the cowherd Krishna, married women who leave
their husbands and homes to frolic with Krishna in the
woods. Women have played an important role in the
rise of devotional movements. Two famous women dev-
otees, Mahadeviyakka (MAH-huh-deh-vee-YAHK-uh)
and Mirabai (MEER-uh-bigh), were both unhappy in
traditional marriages and eventually left their husbands
to devote themselves entirely to a god. Hinduism fi nds
a way to balance

devotion to a god and renunciation

of the world. The language of love that breaks Hindu
social rules is made a symbol of deep love within these
rules. Even holy men who have renounced everyday life
typically wear devotional marks to Vishnu or Shiva.

Hinduism finds a way to balance

devotion to a god and renunciation

of the world.

An actor in traditional clothing and makeup
performs part of an Indian epic.

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bhakti [BAHK-tee]
Devotion, particularly in a
devotional movement or
group

68 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

The Tantras, the basis
of the second major devel-
opment of this period, are
writings based on practices
that arose outside the elite
Brahmin tradition. Many
Westerners today associate
the Tantras with exotic sex-
ual practices, but Tantrism

is much broader than that. The hundreds of Tantras
often criticize established religious practices and the
upholders of those practices, especially the Brahmins.
However, the Tantras also often express central, tradi-
tional Hindu ideas and practices. For example, an indi-
vidual is a microcosm of the cosmos, and by learning
the sacred “geography” and life forces of one’s body
one may, by means of various yogic techniques, bring
about one’s own spiritual fulfi llment. The Tantras them-
selves distinguish between a right-handed path and
a left-handed path. The right-handed path is open to
most Hindus and uses mantras (short sacred words or
sounds used in prayer or meditation), sacred diagrams
called mandalas, and ritual techniques based on body
geography. The left-handed path, appropriate for those
with an especially adventurous, fearless temperament,
centers on rituals that engage in actions strictly forbid-
den in Hinduism, gaining liberation by transcending the
tension between good and evil. For example, by express-
ing lust in sexual intercourse with a forbidden woman,
a man may seek to overcome lust. Left-handed Tantrism
is highly controversial among many Hindus, but right-
handed Tantrism is commonly approved.

We turn now to the next topic in the

Devotional

period: Hindu reform or revisionism. Hinduism was
not, on the whole, so affected by Islam during Muslim
rule in India that it had to make adaptive changes.
However, with the arrival fi rst of European colonizers
and then of Christian missionaries in the nineteenth
century, their interaction with Hindus led to Hindu
movements for change. Attempts were made to renew
Hinduism spiritually and socially, ending practices that
most Hindu reformers found objectionable: the harsh-
est features of the caste system, “superstitions” like
Vedic astrology, popular blessings and curses, the wor-
ship of images, and the like.

● Rammohan (RAHM-moh-hahn) Roy (1774–1833),
who was perhaps the world’s fi rst scholar of
comparative religion, had watched in shock as his
sister burned to death on the funeral pyre of her
husband. He was dismayed at what he saw as the
harmful effects of caste divisions. He founded the

Society of Brahmanism in 1828. Roy claimed that
the Upanishads reveal the one God of all people.
The One was to be worshiped through meditation,
quiet worship, and a moral life, not by the emo-
tions of devotional Hinduism.

● Dayananda Sarasvati (DAH-yuh-NAN-duh SAH-
rahs-VAH-tee) founded the “Noble Society” (Arya
Samaj) in 1875. Dayananda found the pure, origi-
nal essence of Hinduism in the Vedas centering on
monotheism and a reasoned morality. He opposed
much of devotional Hinduism and was opposed to
Islam and Christianity. His movement along with
Ram Roy’s gained little steady acceptance from
Hindus.

● Ramakrishna (RAH-muh-KRISH-nah), who lived
from 1836 to 1886, taught traditional Hindu
beliefs and spiritual techniques. He was a devoted
temple priest of the goddess Kali, but he wor-
shiped other Hindu deities as well—even the
God of Christians and Muslims. He incorporated
selected Western ideas and religions into a Hindu
context and did not attempt to change Hinduism
by making it conform to Western ideas of religion
or rationalism. This program was widely effective
and led to Ramakrishna’s fame in Hinduism.

The twentieth-century Indian movement for
religious reform and independence from the British
Empire—particularly its religious and political leader,
Mohandas K. Gandhi (moh-HAHN-dahs GAHN-dee;
1869-1948)—shows once again the persistence and
adaptability of Hinduism. Gandhi is widely known by
his honorifi c name, Mahatma (“great soul”), and he
certainly was one of the great fi gures of the twenti-
eth century. The civil rights movement in the United
States and South Africa is heavily indebted to him for
nonviolent resistance as a religious-political program.
Although Gandhi drew on different religious tradi-
tions, especially nonviolence in Jainism (ahimsa) and
Christianity (the teaching of Jesus on forgiving one’s
enemies while refusing to cooperate with them in evil),
he was thoroughly Hindu. He emphasized Hindu
teachings and practices that the masses could appre-
ciate, such as devotion, prayer, and trust in divine
grace, and combined this with strong moral reasoning
and action. His favorite text was the Bhagavad Gita,
which provided the religious foundation for his sys-
tem of “persisting in the truth.” This system involves
expressing the truth in every action, no matter what
the result, acting without regard for rewards. Acting
for social good without any regard for personal

Tantras [TAHN-truhs]
Writings in the Tantric
movement of Hinduism

mantras [MAHN-truh]
Short sacred formula used
in prayer or meditation

69T H E H I N D U P R E S E N T A S S H A P E D B Y I T S PA S T

reward is a main point of the Gita,
but Gandhi chose to read the Gita
as a text urging nonviolence, not
war. He forbade violence as a tool
in his political campaigns; instead,
he urged self-control, negotiation
and tactical compromises, and even
self-sacrifi ce.

Gandhi’s style of life drew on
the renouncer tradition in Hinduism.
At middle age he practiced the strict
poverty of a holy man and later in life
took a vow of celibacy. He wore little cloth-
ing and lived on a bare minimum of food, becom-
ing very thin. This austere lifestyle built spiritual
strength for the liberation of Hindus from caste
hatred, domination by colonialists, and widespread
economic poverty. The nonviolent movement he led
secured independence from Great Britain in 1947,
but to his sorrow this independence resulted in not
one nation but two: India and the officially Muslim
nation of Pakistan, to which many Muslims migrated.
He was assassinated by a Hindu in 1948 after ris-
ing complaints that he was too much of a pluralist
and too accommodating to Muslims—some Hindus
had even mocked him as “Mohammed Gandhi.”
Unfortunately, his murder increased the tension
between Hindus and Muslims that challenges the

whole Indian subcontinent
even today, but his positive
legacy continues in India and
throughout the world.

The government of modern
India has tolerated all reli-
gions and has brought some
signifi cant improvement to
the lives of the lower classes
and the outcastes. This has
provoked a religious- political
reaction widely but contro-
versially referred to as “Hindu
fundamentalism.” For the
members of Hindu funda-
mentalist groups, Hindu ism
is more a symbol of national
political identity than a reli-
gion. The main group to arise
is the Indian People’s Party,
often known by its Hindi-
language initials, BJP. Their
principal concern is the per-
ceived danger to the Hindu
majority by conversions

among untouchables and other
Hindus, which they see as a threat
to what they call the “Hindu-
ness,” Hindutva (hihn-DOOT-
vah), of India. They have enacted
laws restricting efforts at conver-
sion by Muslims and Christians. In

1992, a Muslim mosque in the city
of Ayodhya was destroyed by a mob

of militant Hindus, and then rioting by
Muslims and Hindus killed more than a

thousand people.
From 1998 to 2004, the BJP was in control of the

Indian government, with a leader of the BJP as prime
minister. It was during this time that India openly
deployed nuclear weapons, prompting Pakistan to do
the same. Although they now are out of power in the
national government, the BJP and its fundamentalist
supporters still control a few Indian states and have a
strong infl uence on the nation. For example, in 2007
they got the Indian government to give up a plan to
build a shipping canal between India and Sri Lanka,
claiming that this canal would destroy an ancient, holy
“bridge” to Sri Lanka that Hindus believe was built
by the gods. Most Hindus see Hindu fundamentalism
as contrary to the generally inclusive, tolerant spirit of
Hinduism. This will probably
dampen its growth potential,
but Hindu radicalism remains
strong in several parts of India
today.

Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, and Martin Sheen as newspaperman
Vince Walker, in the acclaimed 1982 fi lm Gandhi

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he acclaimed 19

Some Hindus

mockingly

nicknamed Mohandas

Gandhi “Mohammed

Gandhi” because they

thought he was too

accommodating to

Muslims.

70 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

LO3 Essential Hindu
Teachings

In central India, a woman off ers prayer and a sacrifi ce of food in a temple dedicated to Santoshi Ma (san-TOH-shee
mah), or “Mother of Satisfaction.” Santoshi Ma is a goddess
of prosperity, especially the wife’s prosperity with modern
appliances in her home, and the woman in the temple is
asking for a more bearable load of housework. Santoshi Ma
was unknown before her existence was discerned by a few
devout Hindus in the 1960s. A few temples were then built
in her honor, and in 1975 she was featured in a blockbuster
Hindi-language fi lm, Hail Santoshi Ma. The fi lm presented
a mythology for Santoshi Ma’s divine birth and growth as
the daughter of Ganesha, and featured a simple devotional
ritual to gain her blessing. Santoshi Ma became an impor-
tant, much-loved goddess practically overnight, the fi rst
time that modern mass media have infl uenced the rise of a
deity. Because the establishment of new deities has a strong
precedent in Hinduism, Santoshi Ma is now well integrated

into the pantheon of Hindu god-
desses, and her many devotees
see her as one with all the other
goddesses.

In this section, we will dis-
cuss the main beliefs of
Hindus about the world,
human society, and the
individual. We will begin
with a treatment of the

main deities in the three devo-
tional movements we encoun-
tered in the previous section.

Main Deities

in the Three

Devotional

Movements

Shiva. Shiva (SHEE-vah) is
the god who meditates in his
home in the Himalayas. He is a
fearsome god with matted hair,
with a body smeared with ashes
and clothed with animal skins,
and carrying snakes and human
skulls. He repeatedly burns the
god of love to ashes when the
god tries to distract him. In
the cosmic cycle of creation,

destruction, and re-creation, Shiva guides and empow-
ers destruction. However, Shiva devotees today view
this destruction positively, as symbols of the removal
of obstacles to salvation; destruction is a necessary part
of re-creation. The destructive side of Shiva is depicted
in the popular bronze statues called Shiva Nataraja
(NAH-tuh-RAHJ-uh), “Shiva the Lord of the Dance” (see
the photo on the opening page of this chapter). Shiva is
surrounded by fi re, which destroys in order to purify. He
embodies the world-renouncing tendencies of Hinduism
and as such provides a model for this aspect of the
tradition. However, a good deal of Shiva’s mythology
concerns his eventual marriage to the goddess Parvati
(PAHR-vah-tee), mythology in which a feminine, life-
promoting side of Shiva emerges. His other consorts are
Durga, the goddess of death, and Kali, the frightening
destroyer of evil.

Shiva is also an appealing, attractive god. His son
Ganesha (or simply Ganesh), the elephant-headed
god who clears away obstacles to success, is one of
the best-loved Hindu divinities. Ganesha’s image is
found in nearly every Hindu shop and offi ce around
the world. Shiva’s most typical image in his temples is
the lingam (“sign”). The meaning of this is disputed;
it probably depicts the erect phallus, which celebrates
Shiva’s power, but for most Hindus this meaning is not
important. Shaivites often worship Shiva by pouring
milk over the lingam. Another main symbol of Shiva
is the bull Nandi, whose statue outside his temples
is venerated by worshipers. Shiva is also represented
by the trident, and his devotees often wear horizontal

The Taj Mahal, built in the 1600s as a Muslim tomb, has
become the architectural symbol of India and is widely

considered one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

IN
C

./
S

H
U

T
T

E
R

S
TO

C
K

.C
O
M

lingam [LING-gahm]
Symbol of erect phallus in
Shiva’s shrines

71E S S E N T I A L H I N D U T E A C H I N G S

stripes painted on their fore-
head and display a trident.

Vishnu. Vishnu, on the other
hand, is a cosmic king who lives

in blissful splendor in his heavenly palace. He super-
vises universal order and prosperity, protecting and
preserving the world. When needed, he descends to
the world in various incarnations to defeat enemies
of both humans and the gods. Vishnu is a royal, gra-
cious god, revered by his devotees with loving devo-
tion and surrender. His female counterpart is Lakshmi
(LAHK-shmee), the much-loved goddess of fortune
and wealth. Vishnu is often depicted with blue skin,
because he once killed a fi ve-headed snake, taking all
its poison into himself; his skin then changed color
due to the poison’s effect. To his worshipers, this blue
color is a symbol of his power.

Vishnu’s most familiar incarnations are Rama, hero
of the Ramayana, and Krishna, hero of the Bhagavad
Gita. Both Rama and Krishna are today among the best-
loved Hindu gods, which has ironically led to Vishnu
himself being seen as too high to intervene directly on
behalf of the individual in trouble. Devotees of Vishnu
who have renounced the world typically wear two ver-
tical markings on the forehead that come together on
the bridge of the nose.

Shakti and the Goddess. The cult of Shakti and the
mother aspect of the divine had its roots in the Vedas.
The Rig Veda describes Shakti as the powerful upholder
of the universe. She is the sister of Krishna and the

wife of Shiva. She is wor-
shiped as Devi (DEH-
vee), “the Goddess,” who
is one with Brahman. The
literature of Shaktism
is found in the Tantras;
it gives a high place
to women and reacts
strongly against caste dis-
tinctions. In some regions
of India, the Great
Goddess (Mahadevi) is
revered as the supreme
divinity. Female power
in the Goddess alone is
seen as the ultimate cause
of the creation, preser-
vation, and end of the
world.

Like Shiva, the Goddess
is venerated both in her

gentle, motherly aspects and in her cruel, dangerous,
and erotic aspects. Accordingly, she is honored under

The deceptively lovely Durga, goddess of death

Ganesha with Om on his forehead

©
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IN
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Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

72 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

a wide variety of divine
forms. The most well
known are Lakshmi, the
goddess of wealth and
consort of Vishnu; the
black goddess Kali (“dark
one”), riding on a lion;
and the demon-slaying
goddess Durga. The yoni,
a stone representation of
the human female genitalia
usually found in Goddess
temples, is a symbol of the
feminine power of the cos-

mos. The lingam is often set within the yoni to suggest
that the universe is powered by a combination of the
male and the female.

With Hinduism’s millions of gods—traditionally
put at 330 million!—and even with these three more
focused devotional movements, how do Hindus put
it all together in a way that makes everyday sense
for them? Whether a Hindu honors Vishnu, Shiva, or
Shakti, that god is for her or him the sole and the high-
est, whereas other Hindu gods are lower forms. Thus,
one god is thought to appear at various levels. At the
“top” is a nonpersonal absolute, Brahman, the
world soul that cannot be described.
Brahman is so comprehensive that
some Hindu scriptures describe
it as encompassing everything
that exists. Brahman manifests
itself in various personal high divinities
that create the world (Brahma), maintain
it (Vishnu), and destroy it again (Shiva). In
practice, however, followers of one god
will attribute all three func-
tions to him or her, as our
treatment above suggests.
They see all other gods
as standing under their
god or as further mani-
festations of “their”
god. Although the
teaching of the ultimate
world soul plays little or
no role in the religious
everyday—it’s hard to
pray, sacrifi ce, express
emotion to something
that is unknowable—it
has the effect that most
Hindus see no problem

in acknowledging other Hindu
traditions, and sometimes even
other religions, as authentic
paths to the divine.

Hindu Doctrinal Concepts

Dharma is the most basic concept of Hinduism. It is a
wide-ranging term for righteousness, law, duty, moral
teachings, religion itself, or the order in the universe.
Dharma is also the god who embodies and promotes
right order and living. The ancient Vedas emphasize the
order of the cosmos, and dharma builds on it by empha-
sizing the correct ordering of human life. Dharma is
more than a set of cosmic-order ideas applying in the
same way to all Hindus. It’s specifi c to one’s place in the
world: one’s social position or caste membership, stage
of life, and gender. The dharma of a member of the war-
rior class is distinct from that of a laborer; the dharma
of a youth is different from that of the father of a fam-
ily, and a husband’s dharma differs from his wife’s.

A Hindu needs to conform primarily to his or her
class and caste dharma. Most Hindu scripture teaches
this, and it is a particular theme in the most-read Hindu
scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Following the social

and religious rules of one’s caste leads
to better reincarnation; neglecting it

leads to a lesser rein-
carnation. For a man
to leave his caste for a
higher one is unthink-
able. Opposing the
caste system itself
leads to radically lesser

reincarnation. One could
fi nd oneself an outcaste,
a lower animal, or an
insect in one’s next life.
This has led to a remark-
ably conservative social

structure and explains
why, even today, tra-
ditional Hindu val-
ues often frustrate
attempts at social
change for women
and the lower castes.
Hinduism divides life
into four stages, each
with its own particular

dharma—what is seen as
right for each stage. Some

yoni [YOH-nee] Stone
or sometimes metal
representation of the
human female genitalia,
a symbol of the feminine
power of the cosmos

dharma [DAHR-muh]
Righteousness, law, duty,
moral teaching, order in
the universe; also, the first
goal of life in Hinduism

Lingam set in a yoni, receiving worship to Shiva

73E S S E N T I A L H I N D U T E A C H I N G S

classes and most women do not need to observe such
dharma, but the stages are an important aspect of what
a Hindu would consider dharma to be. These four
stages will be dealt with in more detail later.

Samsara is the cycle of reincarnation endured as a
hardship by the spiritual essence of all
living things. The jiva (individual soul)
is subject to reincarnation, because it is
only the jiva that earns reward or pun-
ishment in the next reincarnation (see
the next paragraph). One’s atman, the
deeper soul identical with Brahman,
is not subject to karma, but it goes
along with the jiva. It travels with the
jiva in reincarnation but is beyond it.
Because actions in life involve choices,
at every moment an individual is capa-
ble of making the choices to ensure a
good situation in one’s next life. The
Brihadaranyaka (bree-hahd-uh-RUN-
yah-kuh) Upanishad describes this
well: “An individual creates for himself
his next life as a result of his desires,

hopes, aspirations, failures, disappointments, achieve-
ments and actions performed during this life of his. Just
as a caterpillar gets its front feet

fi rmly on the next leaf

before it leaves the one it is on, a soul creates its next
life before it departs the present one.” This leads us to a

fuller consideration of karma.
Karma is derived from the Sanskrit

for “deeds” and is related to one’s
behavior in preceding lives. After a per-
son’s death, her or his spiritual essence
is reborn in another life if any karma is
attached to it. Whether one is rich or
poor, healthy or sick, male or female,
intelligent or not, talented or untal-
ented, a member of a high or low caste,
a Hindu or not, and endowed with
many other life-defi ning traits depends
on the karma inherited from the lives
that have gone before. Karma explains
and justifi es all human inequalities.
Although the conditions of an individ-
ual’s life are determined in advance by
her or his deeds in previous lives, indi-
viduals must assume personal responsi-

bility for their present actions and their consequences.
Moksha means “liberation” from rebirth that

comes with the entry of the individual soul (atman)
into the highest reality (Brahman). The idea of reincar-
nating without end, or even attaining eternal life as an
individual, is abhorrent to Hindus. The ultimate goal
is to merge one’s atman with Brahman, like a drop of
water enters the Indian Ocean. To be liberated from
samsara, one must be rid not only of bad karma but
also of good karma; any karma at all causes rebirth
after death. Although actions take place, if the self that
does them is not egoistic, karmic results cannot attach
to them. Paradoxically, one must even give up the
desire to achieve liberation
in order to reach it. (To
illustrate this from every-
day life, if you’ve ever had
trouble falling asleep at
night, you may have found
that to fall asleep you must
give up trying to fall asleep
or even try to stay awake.)
Many Hindus, however,
fi nd that complete mok-
sha is diffi cult to achieve,
especially in a time when
many Hindus believe that
their religion is in an era of

“Just as a caterpillar

gets its front feet

fi rmly on the next leaf

before it leaves the one

it is on, a soul creates

its next life before it departs

the present one.”—

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

samsara [sahm-SAH-
ruh] Cycle of reincarnation

jiva [JEE-vuh] Individual,
personal soul that collects
karma and is subject to
reincarnation

karma [KAHR-muh]
Deeds or acts as they
influence reincarnation

moksha [MOHK-shuh]
Liberation from rebirth
and samsara

A soul, symbolized by a ray of light, travels to
enlightenment through seven diff erent lives

N
TA

S
H

A
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T
I

74 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

decline. They are content to collect good karma and be
reincarnated to a better life.

Three main paths lead to moksha, whether one
fi nds it or not. There is a tendency among Hindus to
see one chosen path as the best, but the paths are often
combined as well. The way of active, obedient life,

called the path of deeds (karma),
is doing ritual actions of worship
and meditation, as well as carry-
ing out daily conduct according
to one’s own dharma, but with-
out a selfi sh intent that causes bad
karma. Second, those on the path
of knowledge see the central prob-
lem with human beings as their
inability to realize that they are
living in an unreal world and that
the only thing real is the spirit. The
path of knowledge brings personal
merging with the ultimate unity
behind the visible things of the
world, particularly knowledge of
the unity of the individual soul

and the world soul through yoga
and meditation. Third, the path
of devotion is a loving surrender

and service to one’s main deity. Some who follow this
path see their deity as a manifestation of the imper-
sonal Brahman, but others see their god or goddess
as the Supreme Being, with no Brahman above him
or her.

Garlands for the gods for sale outside a Hindu temple

Popular Misunderstandings of Karma, Mantra, Guru, and Avatar

Karma is not “fate,” as we often hear today in North
America and Europe. Fate is a random, uncontrollable
power that determines human actions and events. In fact,
karma is the opposite of what “fate” means in the Western
world. In karma, each person generates her or his own
reward or punishment, which comes in one’s condition
after reincarnation. Also, one hears muddled talk about
“group” karma—for example, Hollywood actress Sharon
Stone’s suggestion that the 2008 earthquake in China that
killed seventy thousand ordinary people was some sort of
karmic retribution for the Chinese government’s violent
crackdown on dissent in Tibet. Stone said, “And then all
this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought,
is that karma—when you’re not nice that bad things hap-
pen to you?”

A mantra is not a slogan or proverb of “words to live
by,” such as “Her mantra is to enjoy life to the fullest” or
“The candidate’s mantra of change was very powerful.”

Rather, a mantra is a short mystical utterance of great
sacred power, as illustrated by the greatest of all man-
tras, Om.

A guru is not anyone who acquires followers in any
sort of movement, or a person who has wide authority
because of his or her secular knowledge or skills. Rather, a
guru is a private teacher of transcendent religious truth to
a student; a guru leads the student to full knowledge and
release.

An avatar is not only a computer user’s self-
representation in a three-dimensional model for computer
games or a two-dimensional icon for Internet communi-
ties. In Hinduism, an avatar is an incarnation (diff erent,
human form) of a god, as for example Krishna is an avatar
of Vishnu. This understanding of avatar was adapted by
fi lm director James Cameron in his blockbuster 2009 fi lm
by that name, in which a human mind is projected into the
body of a human-like being.

A Closer Look:
Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

75H I N D U E T H I C S A N D W AY S O F L I F E

LO4 Hindu Ethics
and Ways of Life

Krishnan, a thirty-year-old computer engineer in Illinois, logs onto shaadi.com to begin the process of fi nding a
wife. This Indian website bills itself as the “world’s largest
matrimonial service.” Some of Krishnan’s friends have used
it and have urged him to try it, because his parents’ eff orts
at matchmaking haven’t succeeded. (Other young Hindus
rely on the more traditional means of getting a wife.) He
enters the search terms “Hindu,” his social-religious class, and
also his birthday for a “Vedic astrology horoscope” used in
traditional Hindu matchmaking. In his personal statement
for the website, he writes that he is looking for a traditional
Hindu young woman who can grow to love him after they

are married. His parents will always
come fi rst in his life, he says, then
his wife, and then his brothers and
other relatives.

Hindus often say that Hinduism is more a way of life
than a religion. For observant Hindus today, every-
day life and religious life are not separated, because
Hindu ethics traditionally plays a leading role in
everyday life: caste and class, marriage and children,
career and retirement.

Hindus often say that Hinduism is more

a way of life than a religion.

The Caste System

You’ve probably heard about the Hindu caste system,
which divides people in society into economic and
social groups, giving all people their occupations, level
of income, and particular pattern of religious duties.
India has more than six thousand castes and subcastes,
and scholars have long debated the roles of color, eco-
nomics, and power in the caste system. There is a long
history of dissent in Hinduism from the caste system—
and there are many activists working to reform it—but
for the most part it has endured as one of the main
features of Hinduism. Two words are used in Hindu
society to refer to this social system: varna and jati.

Varna means “color” (it is related to our word
varnish). It refers to a Hindu system of classifi cation

of people into four classes, dating back to Vedic times.
Some scholars have theorized that social classes are
based on color, with the lightest at the top and the
darkest on the bottom. This is probably an oversim-
plifi cation, and is controversial in Hinduism, but even
today in India there is a general cultural preference for
the lighter skin tones found in the upper varnas. Also,
class is generally related to economic standing: The
lower one’s class, the lower one’s income. But there are
many exceptions to this; some upper-caste Brahmins
are of modest means, and one can fi nd members of
the common-people Vaisya class who are wealthy
merchants. As a rule, outcastes are desperately poor,
existing on the equivalent of a few dollars a day.

A well-known hymn in the Rig Veda (10.90) tells
of how the four main classes arose from the sacrifi ce
of Purusha (POOR-oo-shuh), a man as large as the
universe. “The Brahmin was made from his mouth;
his arms were made into the Prince; his thighs became
the common people; and from his feet the servants
were born.” The Brahmins are the priests who spring
from the mouth, and it is the mouth that one needs for
chanting the sacred scriptures. The Purusha myth sug-
gests that some people are born with the capabilities
for leading others in important religious ritual. When
Aryans fi rst arrived in India, their scriptures were not
written down but memorized by the priests, who were
seen as the only class of people capable of learning,
memorizing, and reciting them with precise correct-
ness for the purpose of carrying out religious rituals
that mediate between humankind and the divine.

The myth also relates that the arms formed the
“Prince.” This is the class of Kshatriyas, the people in
society who are rulers, such as rajas (kings), govern-
ment administrators, and, because rulership always
involved protection of one’s subjects and expansion of
one’s kingdom, warriors in particular. The strong arms
of Purusha are needed for
action, for an active way
of life, so the myth shows
us that it is the dharma of
some people in life to be
the protectors of others.
A Brahmin could not per-
form this duty, because he
would not have the right
ingredients (of Purusha) in
his personality to be a war-
rior. (However, Brahmins
have often been advisors to
rulers.)

varna [VAHR-nuh]
“Color,” a system of
classification of people in
Hinduism into four main
classes

Brahmins [BRAH-munz]
The top priestly class in
the varna system

Kshatriyas [kshuh-
TREE-yuhz] The warrior
and princely varna class

76 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

The thighs of Purusha form the
large class of the common people, the
Vaishyas, who provide the necessary
semiskilled labor for society to func-
tion. The thighs of the body are strong,
so Vaishyas have the temperament and
ability to work at manual tasks. They
are merchants, small farmers, and arti-
sans. Finally, the servant or peasant is
born from the feet of Purusha. The task
of the Shudras, people in the fourth
class, is to support the rest of society
by acting as a servant. Religiously, it
is only men in the top three classes
who are “twice-born” and are able
to go through a ceremony to initi-
ate them into the stages of Hindu
religious life. Shudras and women of
the top three varnas are not generally
thought to have the personal qualities to be twice-
born Hindus. But Shudras can do well economically,
and women (not men) are allowed to marry a per-
son of one class above them. If Shudras follow their
dharma well, they can be reincarnated into a higher
jati or even varna.

“Outcastes” are those outside the caste

system, not those “cast out” of it.

Below the class system are
the outcastes, a term not legally
accepted in India today. (Note

that this term means “those out-
side of the caste system,”
not “those cast out.”) The
Indian government calls
them “scheduled classes,”
but others call them
Harijans (HAHR-ee-jahns),
“Children of God,” a posi-
tive term with an unfortu-
nate negative connotation
in that “Harijans” is also
a Indian euphemism for
illegitimate children. They
prefer today to call them-
selves Dalits, “oppressed
ones.” Their sheer size—an

estimated 160,000,000—means that they can wield
considerable political power in elections. Some rise to
political fame, and there have been a number of cabinet
ministers and even one prime minister from the Dalit
class. Despite affi rmative action programs for Dalits
that give some a higher education and well-paid govern-
ment jobs, strong discrimination against Dalits persists.
In June of 2007, a group of Shudra shepherds peti-
tioned to be offi cially downgraded into the Dalit class,
hoping to gain access to preferential treatment afforded
by the government; their attempt was met with rioting
by other Hindus. Most Dalits are still confi ned to the
most menial, ritually polluting jobs such as street clean-
ing, manual scavenging, and handling bodies of dead
animals or humans. They cannot drink from the same
water pumps as the twice-born
castes or eat in restaurants with
them. In some villages, occa-
sional violence is used to keep
Dalits “in their place.” Hindus
of the four classes do not con-
sider them to be Hindus, and
their rights and political status
have been problematic in mod-
ern India. They are today the
poorest of Indians.

Jati means “birth,” and this birth caste is more impor-
tant than varna for Hindus because it affects so many aspects
of daily life. (Modern scholars disagree about how to trans-
late varna and jati. Here we render varna as “class” and jati
as “caste.” Both comprise the caste system.) Although there
are only four varnas in Hinduism, there are thousands of
jatis. Caste is not a religious institution as the varna sys-
tem is, but is economic and geographical in origin, now

Vaishyas [VIGH-shuhs]
Third Varna class, the
“common people”

Shudras [SHOO-druhs]
Fourth Varna class,
“servants”

Dalits [DAHL-its]
“Oppressed ones,” the
outcastes below the four
Hindu castes

jati [JAH-tee] Caste into
which one is born

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ar
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Dalits in northern India protesting the caste system, 2009

77H I N D U E T H I C S A N D W AY S O F L I F E

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S
Indian wedding ceremonial plate, with a
variety of foods and spices

combined with varna into an overall religious system.
Most Hindus today refer to jati when they talk of caste,
and it is one’s jati that really dictates the life of the aver-
age Hindu. Each jati has its own special caste regulations
in terms of food, occupation, marriage, social interaction,
and the like. From each caste come a number of subcastes,
making the whole system even more complicated. Castes
may often be occupational, but this does not preclude a
member of one caste working at the occupation of another,
for example in agriculture, adding even more complexity
to the system. The Brahmin class is subdivided into many
castes, just as there are many castes in the Kshatriya,
Vaisya, and Shudra classes, and even among Dalits. Just
as the four varnas are hierarchically organized, so also are
the various castes within a particular varna. A male is obli-
gated to marry within his jati. Expulsion from the family
and caste as a whole is likely to result should this obliga-
tion be broken, but if this and other caste obligations are
kept, the individual is provided a strong network of sup-
port and protection.

The Four Stages

of a Man’s Life

The life of a Hindu male is traditionally divided into
four stages of time. In modern India, fewer people than
in previous centuries observe the system completely and
formally, but even today it is an infl uential pattern for
a man’s life. However, Shudras, Dalits, and women of
all four classes rarely follow the stages. Passage through
these represents the realization of the necessary stages of
life, through which one travels to success in sustaining
this world and to ultimate liberation from this world.
Most Hindu males do not go through the four stages;
many never advance beyond the second.

A Hindu man today

averages age twenty-three

at marriage; a woman,

eighteen.

The fi rst stage of life is that of
a student. A male is taught by his

elders from childhood, sometimes by
a single guru as well. His education

will not only fi t him for a future profes-
sion appropriate to his caste, but will equip

him also for family, social, and religious life in a
way appropriate to his varna and jati. In older times,
this period could last for twenty years or more, but
today the fi rst stage has shrunk to between twelve and
fi fteen years, except for those few who obtain higher
education in a university.

The second is the householder stage, in which the
Hindu male must marry and raise a family. Marriages
are often arranged by parents while their children are still
young—marriage is much too important to family and
society to leave it up to young people! In villages “child
marriages” often occur, but after the marriage the child
bride and child groom are separated until puberty sets
in. On average, a young man is around twenty-three at
the time of marriage, a young woman around eighteen.
Hindus have always felt it important to raise a family, and
even today poor Hindu couples will continue to have chil-
dren until a boy or two are born. During the householder
stage a man works at a trade or profession appropriate
to his caste, primarily to support his family, but also to
contribute to the welfare of the community. He engages
in public and private religious
duties appropriate to his caste.

The third stage of life is that
of retirement, traditionally called
the “forest dweller.” When a man’s children have grown up,
when he sees signs of aging like gray hair and wrinkles, his
duty as a householder can end. In this third stage—if he lives
to see it, which in most of Hindu history isn’t a given—the
man is expected to retire not only from his job, but also from
family and social life and much (but not all) of his wealth
and possessions. Sometimes men in this stage retreat to the
forest to live a more spiritual life, either alone or in a small
group of retirees, but this is rarer today than in the past.
Most pleasures are renounced, although in some cases a
wife could accompany her husband into retirement. His life

78 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

would be that of the celibate
recluse. In view of the hardships
that this kind of life brings, it is not
diffi cult to see why the stage of par-
tial renunciation of the world has
become obsolete for all but a few.

The fourth stage is that of
the “renouncer” or sannyasin
(sahn-YAH-sin), when a Hindu
renounces the world and his previous life completely.
This stage traditionally does not follow after the third;
a man can enter it directly from the householder stage.
All cares and pleasures of life are abandoned, and his
concentration is devoted to achieving moksha before he
dies. The renouncer engages in intense study and medi-
tation, typically with yoga and austerities like solitude
and a sparse diet. He is treated with greatest respect in
Hindu lands. But this respect is mingled with a certain
degree of fear and skepticism, because some holy men
can be hostile, even ferocious, in their words, and some
can be frauds. On taking up the life of the renouncer,
men will often burn an effi gy of their body to show
that they have died to the world. When a renouncer has
achieved moksha, at his death his fellow renouncers tie
stones onto his body and throw it in a river. He needs
no funeral with cremation, for the soul has already been
released from the dreaded cycle of reincarnation.

The Kama Sutra is often seen as
a sex manual, but kama is much

more than that.

The Four Goals of Life

Most Hindus hold to four main goals in life and con-
nect them roughly with the stages of life. The fi rst
goal of life, dharma, a term we have seen above, is a

comprehensive religious concept that governs all stages
of life. A good Hindu must know the truth of Hinduism,
particularly the truth that relates to his or her caste sta-
tus, and practice it. This practice includes both social
morality and ritual duties. Without this fi rst goal, the
others cannot be met. The second goal of life is artha,
material success and prosperity, especially for the sake
of one’s family. A householder is expected to become as
prosperous as possible, while observing the bounds of
proper dharma. This ties into the world-affi rming side
of Hindu tradition and helps to explain the entrepre-
neurial drive and economic success of many Indians in
modern times.

The third goal of life is kama, aesthetic pleasure
both of the mind and the body, obviously also world-
affi rming. This goal is restricted to the householder
stage. Kama is a comprehensive term for all types of
spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and physical pleasures.
The Kama Sutra (SOO-trah), or Scripture on Pleasure,
is often seen as a sex manual, but both kama and the
Kama Sutra are much more than that. Hinduism is per-
haps unique in teaching that the pursuit of pleasure and
wealth is a valid and important religious goal. Though
this may seem either strange or appealing to you, remem-
ber that in Hinduism the pursuit of pleasure and wealth
is always subject to the retributive laws of karma. The
fourth goal of life is moksha, which we defi ned above.
It means “release” from life, particularly from the con-
tinuous cycle of death and rebirth. This goal is best
practiced in the retirement and renouncer stages of life,
although it can be sought in all the stages of life, par-
ticularly in the two paths of deeds and devotion.

LU
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I.I

artha [AHR-thuh]
Material success and
prosperity, the second
goal of life in Hinduism

kama [KAH-muh]
Spiritual, mental, and
physical pleasure, the
third goal of Hindu life

Two renouncers in Katmandu, Nepal

79H I N D U E T H I C S A N D W AY S O F L I F E

Hindu Dress
No particular type of religious dress is required in Hinduism,
as you might expect, and regional cultural styles in India
diff er considerably. The traditional dress for most Indian
women is the sari, a piece of material fi ve or six meters
long that is wrapped and pleated around the waist and
then drawn round over the shoulder so that the free end
is left loose. In diff erent parts of India, and among Jains,
the sari is wrapped in diff erent ways. Underneath the sari,
an ankle-length skirt and a blouse are worn, often with a
bare midriff . In northern India, women prefer light, baggy
trousers called “pyjamas” (from which we get our term) and
a long, loose-fi tting shirt. In mixed company outside the
home or when worshiping in the home or temple, women
will normally cover their hair with the loose end of their
saris or with a separate piece of material. Covering the head
is a sign of respect to the gods as well as to other people.

Indian women of all classes typically love jewelry. Long
earlobes are an ancient Indian sign of nobility, so heavy ear-

rings are often
used to stretch
the earlobes
slightly. The
most distinc-
tive decora-
tive mark of
a married
woman is the
bindi (“little
drop”) on her
forehead. The
bindi may be a
circle of colored
paste, or it
may be a circle
of felt with
an adhesive
backing, which
can more easily
be put on and
decorated
with sequins.
Unmarried girls

often have a small black spot on their forehead; it is not a
bindi, but rather a protection against the “evil eye.”

Although Hindu women most often dress in tradi-
tional Indian ways, Hindu men very often wear Western
clothing, especially in Indian cities. Typical Indian village
dress for men has traditionally been the dhoti. This single
piece of usually white cloth is worn wrapped around the
waist and tucked up between the legs. The kurta (called
a “panjabi” in the U.K. and Canada) is a loose shirt coat
falling around the knees and is worn by both men and
women. It can be worn with a dhoti, with pants and jeans,
and is both casual and formal. The wearing of a turban is
usually associated with observant Sikh men (see Chapter
6), but in India some Hindu men will also wear turbans.
The most important item worn is the sacred thread, a thin
cotton cord worn on the body by men of the upper three
classes, symbolizing full Hindu status. It is given in a spe-
cial ceremony near the age of ten. The traditional garb of
Hindu men, long dis-
dained by the Indian
upper classes in favor
of more-Western-style
clothing, is now mak-
ing a strong comeback
in social circles and in
fashion design.

Holy men have
a distinctive but not
uniform look. Their hair
is often wildly matted,
and they sometimes
cover their body in
light-colored dust or
powdered cow dung,
giving them the look of
death. Some go around
only in a thong, to sym-
bolize their full control
of the senses and bodily
desire. They can some-
times be seen with their
sacred thread, but not
wearing one shows
that they have left
the distinctions
of once-born and
twice-born behind.

Man in dhoti and
sacred thread

Woman in sari, with bindi
on her forehead

A Closer Look:
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Copyright 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

80 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

The Lives of

Hindu Women

The vast majority of Hindu
young women get married.

The Hindu wife is responsible to bear children, raise
them, and run the home. Motherhood is so important
that a woman is considered to be a failure if she is with-
out children, especially a son; this is true even of modern
Hindu women who may work outside the home. On the
other hand, being a mother of sons brings great pride and
auspiciousness. The wife performs worship in the home
at the household shrine, often leading worship there.
However, no woman who is menstruating is traditionally
allowed at the shrine or in the kitchen. She is considered
ritually unclean, and her husband will not touch her dur-
ing this time. After ritual bath-
ing at the end of her menstrual
period, a woman resumes nor-
mal life in the home.

Despite the value placed on
motherhood, abortion is legal and very frequent
in India, even among Hindus. Prenatal testing
by ultrasound is now used widely to ascertain
the sex of a fetus in the womb, even though this
has been outlawed in India since 1994, and if it
is a female, it is often aborted. Some parents
think it better to abort a female than to
support a second or third daughter
and pay for her expensive dowry.
Contraception is encouraged by the
Indian government, but having sons
is necessary for economic support
in one’s old age because India has
no national pension system. One
also needs a son to perform one’s
funeral rites. The use of selective
abortion to obtain sons has led
in some parts of India to an
ominous imbalance between
the proportion of males and
females. As a result, in 2007
the Indian

government and

private agencies

launched a “Save

the Girl Child”

campaign.

Divorce for a woman is diffi –
cult to obtain, especially for women
of the higher classes, despite the
Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 that osten-
sibly made it possible for any woman to get
a divorce. Although divorce and remarriage are quite
common among the lower castes, there is still a general

feeling in village life that a wife
is to blame if divorce occurs
or even if the husband dies
fi rst. The divorced or wid-
owed woman is regarded as
“unlucky” by her family and friends, and life can be
diffi cult for her. Widows rarely remarry and are often
socially ostracized. The suicide rate for widows is high,
even if the ancient (if irregularly practiced) “widow
burning”—when widows climbed onto their dead hus-
band’s funeral pyre to go to heaven with him, an act of
great merit—is now almost unheard of. In urban areas
women do have more status today; for example, they
can now own property, keep their own salary, and open
bank accounts in their own name. Many young Hindu
women go to college, get a job, and delay marriage. Yet
marriage is important, and a woman’s self-esteem and
social standing still have much to do with her husband.
By serving him faithfully, just as she serves a god, good
karma will come to her.

LO5 Hindu Rituals

As you drive up to the new Hindu temple in Omaha, Nebraska, you notice its traditional
Indian architectural design. Inside, the richness of
the Hindu tradition is refl ected in the many diff erent

deities represented there. Most large temples in
India are dedicated to one god, but this temple
has twelve separate sanctums, or holy areas with
altars, each with one or more statues represent-
ing a diff erent god. People from various parts of

India have certain deities that they honor, so
Hindu immigrants from all parts of India can

feel comfortable in the Omaha temple.
You are struck at once by the many

colorful sights, unusual sounds, and
fragrant smells of the temple. Women

are dressed in traditional Indian
saris; men are in Western clothing,
except for the two priests, whose
upper bodies are half bare and
who have a sacred thread visible

over the shoulder. You see diff erent
sorts of worship activities: people bowing

and prostrating themselves in front of the
statues and people sitting quietly in meditation,

some in a yoga position. In a side room, men and
women are practicing sacred songs to be sung at a ser-

vice later in the week. You also notice that in some areas of the
temple, men tend to be separated from women and children.

In 2007 the Indian

government and

private agencies

launched a “Save

the Girl Child”

campaign.

T
E

V
E

E
V

A
N
S

bindi [BIHN-dee]
Forehead mark of a
married Hindu woman

81H I N D U R I T U A L S

Your guide for the tour is a University
of Nebraska professor, a member of the
temple’s leadership. As he skillfully leads
you around, he tells you that the temple
was built primarily as a center of wor-
ship, teaching, and Indian cultural life for
people from India who live in Nebraska
and Iowa. The temple is open for Hindu
festivals, for a main weekly service on
Sunday morning—an adaptation to
American religion, he says—and for tradi-
tional ceremonies marking the life stages
of Hindus, from birth to death. He adds
that an important part of the temple’s
purpose is the education of people of
other religious backgrounds, visiting or
participating in prayers and rituals.

As you might expect, worship
and meditation in Hinduism
are diverse. Worship is a daily
event for observant Hindus,
whether performed at home,
at a temple, at an outdoor
shrine, or on a pilgrimage.
Worship is most commonly
called puja, a word suggest-
ing “honor” and “venera-
tion.” Ritual is important to the Hindu, and much of it
is ancient, although with regional and devotional-group
variations.

Images

Most people associate Hinduism with many gods, all
of them represented by images. Westerners, especially
Protestant Christians who look upon images as objects
that encourage false worship, often use the term idol,
but image is more appropriate. Idol suggests that it
is the statue or picture alone that is worshiped, and
it is generally a pejorative term, although one will
hear Hindus using it happily. Image suggests some-
thing beyond the visible form that receives the worship
offered to the visible form. Hindus use the term murti
for the image of a deity, whether three-dimensional
(as in a statue) or two-dimensional (as in a picture or
poster). The murtis are representations of the deities,
rather like a photograph represents a person. A murti
draws the mind of the worshiper to the greater essence
of the god. However, an image can be more than just a
symbol. The power or essence of the deity is believed
to be in the murti, either temporarily, as for some

festivals, or permanently, as in the case
of some temple images that are treated
as the gods themselves, with the god
thought to reside inside the statue.

Shiva has both an anthropo-
morphic form in an image and the
powerful symbols of the lingam and

the trident. The female side of
the divine, the Goddess, is rep-
resented by the yoni, the symbol

of creative female power that is
the counterpart to the lingam.
Hindus of the lower castes and
those Hindus outside caste do
not worship the “high” gods
of Hinduism, but the “low
gods,” especially village and
localized urban deities. The
high gods such as Vishnu
and Shiva are generally con-
sidered to be uninterested
in the daily events of the

ordinary man or woman;
their avatars and related
lower gods do that duty
for them.

Worship in the Temple

and the Home

Temples large and small are present in India, from great
pilgrimage centers to humble huts along a side street.
At many of these temples a great variety of deities are
worshiped. Generally, however, the deity and the tem-
ple belong to one of three strands within the Hindu
pantheon—Shaivite, Vaishnavite, and Shakta, including
all their avatars and family members.

The deity, represented by a statue, picture, or other
symbol, is the central part of the temple. The god is
considered to be a royal guest and is treated as such
throughout puja with adoration, attention, care, and
entertainment. Purifi cation
is essential for the wor-
shiper, and one usually
bathes in running water
and sips a little water
three times to indicate
purity. Washing the murti
is essential, but often the
washing is symbolic—a
fl ower or a small piece of

An image draws the mind to the
greater essence of the god.

puja [POO-juh]
Devotional actions of
worshiping a god or
venerating a human
person

murti [MUHR-tee] An
image of a deity

82 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

cotton is used to touch the deity. Dressing the deity is
also important, and the clothes chosen are bright, beau-
tiful, and often embroidered with gold-colored threads.
Ornaments are also placed on the murti, as well as
fl ower garlands, perfumes, and oils. Because the deity
remains at a temple, it is both woken up in the morn-
ing and put to rest at night with equal care. At many
temples, sculptures help to teach about the gods and
their stories, and they both shape and direct devotion.
Larger temples will have priests who act as teachers.

The offering of food is also important— usually
cooked rice, fruit and vegetables, liquefi ed butter,
and sugar. The Hindu women of Bali, Indonesia,
make elaborate pyramids of food (the wealthier
they are, the higher the pyramids) that they carry
to the temple on their head as a sacrifi cial offer-
ing to the deity. A cooked chicken may be put in
the pyramid, surrounded by rice dishes and
many kinds of fruit. The deity is believed to
take the essence of the food, and the “left-
overs” are given back to the worshiper as
what is known as prasad (PRAH-sahd).
Whatever the offering, both the gods
and the worshipers eat the food and
benefi t from its richness. Fragrance
and light are also offered the
deity—fragrance in the form of
incense sticks and light in the
form of a burning lamp usu-
ally made from a burning wick
placed in ghee (clarifi ed butter),
which is waved before the deity. By
applying a tilak (TEE-lahk)—a mark
made with crushed fl owers some-
times mixed with another
substance—to the forehead
between the eyebrows of the
deity, the worshiper indicates
awareness of the spiritual purity and
power of the deity, which in turn is passed
to the worshiper. The worshiper may also entertain
the deity with hymns that offer praise and of course
increase the devotion of the worshipers. Groups of
people— usually males, but sometimes with women,
who sit separately—can be seen singing hymns infor-
mally on the temple verandas in the evening.

Bowing is the traditional way of showing respect to
someone in India. The more respect one wishes to show,
the lower one bows. In the case of a god or a royal person,
lying fl at on one’s face is in order. Combined with bow-
ing, bringing the palms together and raising them to the
forehead are actions normally used in greeting in India,

and they are used to greet the gods as well. The Hindi
word namaste (NAHM-ahs-tee) or its equivalent in other
Indian languages, “I bow to you,” are spoken as this is
done. Because famous gurus are also honored with puja
that sometimes approaches the worship of a god, people
might touch the guru’s feet in respect or remove by hand
the dust from his feet before touching their own head,

indicating that the dusty feet of the guru are holier
than the head of the one paying respect.

For worship in the home, nearly
every Hindu household has a home
shrine, frequently in a special devo-
tional room or in the kitchen, which
is considered ritually pure. In this
shrine, the family god, together

with the gods and goddesses hon-
ored by individual family members,
has the central place as images
done in brass; often, photographs

of a guru or saint and the fam-
ily ancestors are in the shrine.

To begin daily worship in
the home, the believer
purifi es himself or her-
self by bathing. Then,
with the help of man-

tras, the place of ritual
is purifi ed, and any evil
spirits lurking to inter-
fere with the puja are
driven away. A small bell

is rung to honor the gods
and get their attention as the

ritual begins. On occasion the
gods are washed, clothed, fed,
and given gifts, but worshipers
always stand reverently with
palms joined. At the climax
of the ritual, a lamp is swung

before the shrine: the divin-
ity resides in the fi re, and the faithful receive it within
themselves by holding the palms of their hands over the
fl ames for an instant and then touching their eyes.

Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage is an aspect of ritual life important for many
Hindus, although most Hindus do not have the time or
money to engage in it. The destination of a pilgrimage is
often a river, the ocean, or a spring. But temples built on
sacred mountains or in sacred cities are also places of pil-
grimage. Worshiping in a place with a stronger connection

South Indian bride making namaste

83H I N D U R I T U A L S

to the divine brings purifi cation from sin and
ritual impurity, gains merit, fulfi lls vows,
leads to the betterment of
one’s next lives in this
world, and even brings
deliverance from
the cycle of rebirth.
Millions of pilgrims
come to Varanasi
on the Ganges
River every year
to wash their
sins away in the
water. The larg-
est pilgrimage
event in the world
is the Kumbha Mela
(KOOM-buh MEHL-uh), held once every twelve years,
when tens of millions of pilgrims gather near Allahabad,
where the two sacred rivers—
the Ganges and the Yamuna—
merge. Pilgrimage is often “big
business” in cities that host it.

Funerals

Despite all the emphasis in Hinduism on karma and
reincarnation, its death rites still emphasize the deceased
happily joining dead ancestors rather than achieving
a good reincarnation or release from all moksha. (A
period of refreshment in heaven is often thought of as
a prelude to being reincarnated.) Death is considered
so ritually polluting and inauspicious that the images of
deities in the home shrine are removed while the body is
in the house. Unlike Western funerals, no one partakes
of food or drink in any part of a Hindu funeral ritual.

The body of the deceased is washed soon after death,
wrapped in a new cloth—white for men and red for
women—and carried on a stretcher from the home to the
cremation ground in a procession led by the eldest son.
(Of course, funerals are held all over India, not just at the
cities on the Ganges River, such as Varanasi.) Cremation
on a wood fi re is the traditional Indian method of dispos-
ing of human remains. Cremation is thought to separate
the immortal soul from the body in a good way, remi-
niscent of fi re sacrifi ce. At the funeral ground, Dalits of
the Dom caste handle the body and incur the ritual pol-
lution of burning it. Fresh, fl owing water is usually near
the cremation grounds, and the body is dipped in it for
ritual purifi cation. The body is then placed on the wood,
with the feet facing south toward the home of the god
who rules the dead. It is covered with a layer of wood

and then clarifi ed butter, and scrip-
tures are chanted over the

body by a priest as the fam-
ily circles the body. The

eldest son then lights the
funeral pyre, which
will burn for two to
three hours. After
cremation begins,
the youngest son
leads the procession
home.

The Doms
tend the fi re for
several hours to
keep it burning

hot, occasionally
turning the body with long poles to consume it more
fully. The ashes and remaining bones (the larger and
denser bones of the human body cannot be consumed by
a natural cremation alone) are fi nally put by the Doms
into fl owing water and left there, for a cooling and puri-
fying effect. When the period of death rites is over, a Dalit
is given all the household linen to wash. On the twelfth
day, four balls of rice are offered to symbolize the happy
union of the deceased with his or her forebears, the point
of the funeral rites. Only when the house has been thor-
oughly cleaned can the household deities be returned.

Although cremation is the desired method of disposal
of the dead, burial is not uncommon. The poorer classes
usually practice burial because it is cheaper. Young chil-
dren of most castes who die are buried, or sometimes put
into a fl owing river, rather than cremated. In the cities
of India, cremation in modern crematoriums is now the
norm, with ashes scattered later in sacred rivers. Customs
are slightly different in North America. The body will be
washed and dressed in new clothes, placed in a coffi n, and
surrounded by fl owers. Cremation has to take place a day
or two after death because of the necessary legal arrange-
ments. At the crematorium the priest will talk about the
life of the person, and after returning to the house after
cremation has begun, prayers are said for the departed
soul in front of the sacred fi re or
household shrine. The ashes of
the deceased would preferably
be sent to a relative in India to be
scattered in the Ganges, or sent
to one of the businesses recently
sprung up to receive and scatter
ashes, or if that is not possible
cast into a fast-fl owing river in
North America.

P
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IM
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Worship at a home shrine

84 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

Yoga

Yoga, with its emphasis on fi tness for the body and
mind, has become a main tool for achieving libera-
tion, or at least the mental disci-
pline that can lead to liberation.
Buddhists, Christians, and
people of no formal faith have
adapted yogic methods to help
them on their own paths to peace
and freedom, or just to physical fi t-
ness. As said above, yoga means “yoke,”
which its spelling resembles. This refers
to the path of union with, or yoking to, a
god or Brahman. The most popular type of
yoga in India and the West is
hatha yoga, which empha-
sizes breathing and physical
posture as a way to ultimate
knowledge of Brahman in one’s atman; karma
yoga is the path of active service that breathing
and postures assist; jnana yoga is refl ective, philo-
sophical yoga; and bhakti yoga is the path of devotion

to a god. Bhakti yoga is the
simplest form, using repeated
chanting of a mantra in a fi xed
posture to focus on a god and
offer one’s life to a god.

The most popular form of yoga in the

West is hatha yoga, with its emphasis on

breathing and physical posture.

Most yogic practices draw, at least in signifi cant mea-
sure, on these eight steps.

1. First following fi ve ethical guidelines on behavior
toward others, avoiding violence, untruthfulness,
stealing, lust, and covetousness

2. Following guidelines on behavior toward oneself:
cleanliness of body and mind, contentment, sustained
practice, self-knowledge, study, and surrender to God

3. Learning and using formal yoga postures

4. Practice of breathing exercises, coordinated with
physical postures

5. Withdrawal of the senses, meaning that the
exterior world is no longer a distraction from
discovering the interior world within oneself,
particularly the atman within

6. Concentration,
meaning the ability
to focus on a single
thing, uninterrupted
by external or internal
distractions

7. Meditation no
l onger focused on a
single thing, but all
encompassing

8. Finally, achieving
samadhi or “bliss.”
Building on meditation,
the self transcends itself
through meditation
and discovery of the
atman that brings one to
Brahman.

LO6 Hinduism in North
America Today

Shortly before the 2008 release of the Hollywood fi lm The Love Guru, written by and starring Mike Myers, self-styled
North American Hindu leader Rajan Zed complains about it to
mass-media outlets. Zed charges that its portrayal of Hinduism
is inaccurate and insulting. The potential for damage to North
American Hindus is great, Zed argues, because Hinduism is not
widely understood here. Despite Zed’s eff orts, the consensus
among Hindus living in North America seems to be that they
feel comfortable laughing at themselves and even laugh at
well-meaning stereotypes like Apu the convenience-store
merchant on television’s The Simpsons. However, some por-
trayals of Hinduism in the mass media—such as the 1984 fi lm
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with its false, brutal
depiction of worship of the Hindu goddess Kali—have caused
concern to many Hindus. Any concern over The Love Guru,
however, fades rapidly as it is harshly reviewed in the press and
then fails miserably at the box offi ce.

H
O

TO
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IN
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4
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LA
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A Bharatnatyam dancer shows yoga expertise

85H I N D U I S M I N N O R T H A M E R I C A T O D AY

Although Hinduism had moved beyond its own bor-
ders before the modern period, it was primarily a result
of Indian emigration to other countries and the result-
ing establishment of Hindu culture in such places as
Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bali. Sometimes, as with Nepal
and Sri Lanka, it was the result of Indian conquests that
brought along principal aspects of Hindu culture and
belief. In the main, Hinduism has been the religion of
only the Indian people, and converting other peoples
has not been done. However, in the last two centuries
various Hindus have indeed sought to spread Hinduism
outside of India, particularly in North America.

Hinduism has been viewed in widely differing ways
in the West during the last two centuries. Customs
such as widow burning (rarely done these days) and a
caste system that resists reform have made many North
Americans resistant to Hinduism until more recently.
However, some Westerners were attracted by Hindu
ideas of life in harmony with nature on the outside and
the spirit within. Vegetarianism and Hindu philosophy,
particularly Vedanta, have also attracted Westerners to
Hinduism, especially in the more intellectual echelons
of North America.

Hindu Movements in

North America

In the last century or so, varied expressions of Hinduism
have found their way to the West in movements led
by Hindu gurus. Ramakrishna’s favorite disciple,
Vivekananda (VIH-veh-kah-NAHN-duh; 1863–1902),
was the fi rst successful Hindu missionary to the West.
In 1893 he addressed the fi rst World Parliament of
Religions at Chicago; he was enthusiastically received
there and in his other travels throughout the United
States. In 1906, Vivekananda established the fi rst
Hindu temple in North America, in San Francisco. He
returned to India as a national hero. The Hinduism
of Vivekananda was much less devotional than
Ramakrishna’s own piety and stressed the philosophi-
cal teachings of the Upanishads. Vivekananda believed
that the Vedanta was the sum of all world religions, and
he was one of the world’s fi rst advocates of religious
pluralism. After Vivekananda came the Self-Realization
Fellowship of North America, founded by Paramahansa
Yogananda (PAR-uh-mah-HAN-suh YO-guh-NAN-duh)
in 1920 and based in Los Angeles, where it still has its
headquarters. It teaches a form of yoga to enable mem-
bers to realize “the god within.” The Self-Realization
Fellowship has more than one hundred local meeting
places in the United States and Canada today.

Two recent gurus who have gained wide popu-
larity in North America are Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
(MAH-ha-REE-shee MAH-hesh YOH-gee; 1911–2008),
founder of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement better
known as Transcendental Meditation (TM), and Swami
A. C. Bhaktivedanta (BAHK-tee-veh-DAHN-tuh; 1896–
1977), founder of the International Society for Krishna
Consciousness, or ISKCON. Both movements have
emphasized how their teachings align with Western
science and the mental or emotional benefi ts obtained
from them. TM is based on Vedanta, emphasizing each
person’s inner divine essence and the liberating pow-
ers that may be harnessed when one knows one’s true
identity. Yogic meditation practiced in the morning and
evening is the way to tap into the transcendent and its
calming, directing power. When the English musical
group the Beatles took continued instruction in Great
Britain and in India from the Maharishi in the late
1960s, Transcendental Meditation became even more
popular. The popularity of yogic meditation today in
North America, severed from its deep religious connec-
tions, is due in large part to the TM movement.

ISKCON is more commonly known as the Hare
(HAHR-ee, “divine lord”) Krishna movement after
its main mantra. A part of the devotional movement,
it emphasizes enthusiastic devotion to Lord Krishna.
Many academics regard it as an authentic (true to
Indian roots) form of Hinduism practiced in the West,
but at times it has been dogged with charges that it is a
dangerous “cult.”

Some Hindu parents in North America

send their children to a Hindu

summer camp.

Hindu Migration and Life

in North America

In the past few decades, especially since a liberalization
of immigration laws in the 1960s, an increasing num-
ber of Indians who practice Hinduism have moved to
the United States and Canada. This Hindu “diaspora”
(dee-ASS-pohr-uh), a “spreading” from its native land,
has brought hundreds of thousands of Hindus to North
American cities, especially on the east and west coasts.
Some of these more recent immigrants are merchants,
but many of them are highly skilled professionals who

86 C H A P T E R 3 E N C O U N T E R I N G H I N D U I S M : M A N Y PAT H S T O L I B E R AT I O N

are eager to integrate into North American civic life.
They also want to preserve basic Hindu beliefs and
behaviors in an environment not conducive to them.
Every home of observant Hindus has a shrine to the
god(s) the family serves, and worship is conducted at
the shrine a few times a day. In 2001, the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City opened
an exhibit, “Meeting God,” that documented the
home and business shrines
of several Hindus in the New
York area.

Many Hindus join cul-
tural organizations to keep
traditions like music and
cuisine alive. Some Hindu
parents have started to send
their children to summer
camp—but camp that pro-
vides teaching and experience
in Hindu life. They also build
Hindu temples in which to practice Hindu worship, and
at times these temples are built in authentic ways by
workers brought from India. Finding Brahmin priests

from India to staff these temples is diffi cult, so activi-
ties like singing devotional songs that can be practiced
by all Hindus become even more important than in
India. Having many different Hindu groups worshiping
under one roof, something not done in India, can be a
challenge.

Hindus typically view marriage within one’s caste
as a necessity, and because most marriages are often still
arranged to some extent, Hindu parents may network
for suitable spouses living in North America or even in
India. As with most immigrant groups in North America,
intergenerational tension often springs up as second- and
third-generation Hindu young people take on the val-
ues and practices of their non-Hindu peers. Dating and
mating are often diffi cult for Hindu young people with
Western ways; this is the theme of several fi lms, such as
Mira Nair’s excellent “Monsoon
Wedding” and “The Namesake.”
Over time, Hindus, like other
religious groups, will probably
reach a workable, if uneasy,
compromise between their reli-
gion and life in North America.

Hindu Faith and Indian Food
India has considerable regional variations in food, many of
which have come to North America, but the most impor-
tant aspect is a preference for vegetarianism. Because all
animals are sacred to Hindus due to a general reverence
for life, and particularly for the souls incarnated in animals,
it is most often considered wrong to kill animals for food.
Vegetarianism is believed to benefi t the body, the mind,
and the soul. Even so, many Hindus are not strict vegetar-
ians, and those who can aff ord it will eat meat occasionally.
The sacrifi ce and subsequent eating of animals, the goat in
particular, is common enough in India and Nepal. Brahmin
priests are rarely involved in such sacrifi ces, which are done
by lower-caste priests mainly in the smaller village temples.

The cow is the most sacred of all animals to Hindus,
and no observant Hindu would ever eat beef. (You should
never look for a beef dish at any self-respecting Indian
restaurant!) Although meat from a cow is forbidden, cow’s
milk and the products made from it are considered very
healthy. To put it in our terms today, vegetarianism is com-
mon, but a vegan diet that excludes all animal products
would be unthinkable to most Hindus.

Foods high in protein are important in a basically
vegetarian diet, and dal, a lentil dish, is popular through-
out India. Vegetables cooked in spices are common, as are
foods that are quickly fried in butter. The Bhagavad Gita
(17:8-10) teaches that healthy foods are “tasty, soothing
and nourishing.” It describes unhealthy food as things that
are “acidic, sour, and excessively hot.” (The strong curries
of Indian food often make Westerners’ eyes water, but of
course what makes food “excessively” hot is a matter of
acculturation. The Gita notes foods that will give an Indian
indigestion.) The particular balance of having both hot
and cool foods in a meal is also important for bodily and
spiritual health.

The males of the family traditionally eat fi rst and
separately from the women, and then the females eat what
remains. Because all food in Hindu sacrifi ce is fi rst off ered
to the deities and then received back by the worshiper, the
practice of eating the males’ leftovers as a sort of sacrifi cial
food enables the wife to pay honor to her husband. This cus-
tom is still maintained in traditional India today, though it is
not so common among Hindus living in the Western world.

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