Anthony Wallace defines religion as belief and ritual concerned with
supernatural beings, powers, and forces.
Another perspective on religion focuses on bodies of people who gather
together regularly for worship, and who accept a set of doctrines involving
the relationship between the individual and divinity, the supernatural,
or whatever is taken to be the ultimate nature of reality.
Anthropologists have stressed the collective, shared, and enacted
nature of religion, the emotions it generates, and the meanings it embodies.
Durkheim stressed religious effervescence, the bubbling up of
collective emotional intensity generated by worship.
Victor Turner used the term communitas to refer to an intense
community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality,
and togetherness.
Like ethnicity and language, religion also is associated with social
divisions within and between societies and nations.
Religion is a cultural universal, although different societies conceptualize
divinity, supernatural entities, and ultimate realities very differently.
Expressions of Religion
Neanderthal burials and European cave paintings may be evidence of
early religious activity.
Animism
E. B. Tylor was the first to study religion anthropologically.
Tylor proposed that religion evolved through three stages: first
animism, then polytheism, and finally monotheism.
Animism was a belief in spiritual beings that, according
to Tylor, originated from peoples' attempts to explain dreams
and trances (in which the soul was active).
Polytheism is the belief in multiple gods.
Monotheism is the belief in a single, all-powerful deity.
Mana and Taboo
Mana is a sacred impersonal force that can reside in people,
animals, plants, and objects.
Belief in mana was especially prominent in Melanesia (the area
of the South Pacific that includes Papua New Guinea and adjacent islands).
Melanesian mana, similar to our notion of efficacy or luck,
could be acquired or manipulated by people in different ways,
such as through magic.
One could acquire mana by chance, or by working hard to get
it.
Because success was attributed to mana (and failure to a
lack of mana), the notion of mana provided an explanation for
differential success that people could not understand in ordinary,
natural terms.
In Polynesia, mana was attached to political offices.
Polynesian chiefs and nobles had more mana than ordinary
people did.
Chiefs were so charged with mana that contact with them,
or with things they touched, was dangerous to commoners.
Consequently, the bodies and possessions of high chiefs were
taboo—set apart as sacred and off-limits to ordinary people.
Magic and Religion
Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended to accomplish
specific aims.
In imitative magic, magicians produce a desired effect by imitating
it (e.g., the use of "voodoo dolls").
With contagious magic, whatever is done to an object is believed
to affect a person who once had contact with it.
Magic can be associated with animism, mana, polytheism, or monotheism.
Uncertainty, Anxiety, Solace
Religion and magic can help reduce anxiety (e.g., facing death,
enduring life crises).
Malinowski argued that people turn to magic as a means of control
when they face uncertainty and danger.
The Trobriand Islanders turned to magic only in situations
(e.g., sailing) that they could not control and that therefore
were psychologically stressful.
In contemporary societies, magic persists as a means of reducing
psychological anxiety in situations of uncertainty (e.g., baseball
pitching).
Rituals
Rituals are formal—stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped—and
performed in sacred places at set times.
Rituals include liturgical orders—sequences of words and
actions invented prior to the current performance of the ritual in
which they occur.
Rituals convey information about the participants and their traditions,
and translate enduring messages, values, and sentiments into action.
Rituals are inherently social, and by participating in them,
performers signal that they accept a common social and moral order.
Rites of Passage
Rites of passage are customs associated with the transition from
one place or stage of life to another (e.g. Native American vision
quests).
Rites of passage have three phases:
Separation—when participants withdraw from the group
and begin moving from one place or status to another.
Liminality—the period between states, during which
the participants have left one place or state but have not yet
entered or joined the next.
Incorporation—when participants reenter society with
a new status, having completed the rite.
Liminality involves the temporary suspension and even reversal
of ordinary social distinctions, behaviors, and expectations.
Communitas refers to an intense community spirit, a feeling of
great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness during collective
liminality.
In certain societies, particularly nation-states, there are "permanent
liminal groups" (e.g., sects, brotherhoods, cults) whose members adopt
liminal features such as humility, poverty, equality, obedience, sexual
abstinence, and silence.
Totemism
Rituals play an important role in creating and maintaining group
solidarity.
Social solidarity was also promoted by totemism, which was important
in Native Australian religions.
In totemic societies, each descent group had a totem—an
animal, plant, or geographical feature—from which they claimed
descent.
The members of a totemic group did not kill or eat their
totem, except once a year when people gathered for ceremonies
dedicated to the totem.
Totemism uses nature as a model for society.
People relate to nature through their totemic association
with natural species.
Because each group has a different totem, diversity in the
natural order becomes a model for diversity in the social order.
At the same time, because all totems are part of nature,
the unity of the human social order is enhanced by symbolic association
with and imitation of the natural order.
Social Control
The power of religion affects action.
Throughout history, political leaders have used religion to promote
and justify their views and policies (e.g., the Taliban Movement in Afghanistan).
Leaders may mobilize communities, and thereby gain support for their
own policies, either by persuasion or by instilling hatred or fear.
Witch hunts can be powerful means of social control by creating a
climate of danger and insecurity that affects everyone, not just the people
who are likely targets.
In state societies, witch hunts often take aim at people who
can be accused and punished with least chance of retaliation.
Witchcraft accusations are often directed at socially marginal
or anomalous individuals.
Witchcraft accusation may serve as a leveling mechanism, a custom
or social action that operates to reduce status differences and thus
to bring standouts in line with community norms—another form
of social control.
To ensure proper behavior, religions offer rewards and punishments,
and many prescribe a code of ethics and morality.
Kinds of Religion
Although religion is a cultural universal, religious beliefs and
practices vary cross-culturally.
Wallace identified four types of religion: shamanic, communal, Olympian,
and monotheistic.
Shamanic Religion
Shamans are part-time religious figures (e.g., curers, mediums,
spiritualists, astrologers, palm readers, diviners) who mediate
between people and supernatural beings and forces.
Shamanic religions are most characteristic of foraging societies.
Shamans often set themselves off symbolically from ordinary
people by assuming a different or ambiguous sex or gender role.
Communal Religion
Communal religions have shamans as well as community rituals
such as harvest ceremonies and collective rites of passage.
Communal religions are polytheistic—that is, their
adherents believe in several deities who control aspects of nature.
Although they are found in some foraging societies, communal
religions are more typical of farming societies.
Olympian Religion
Olympian religions first appeared in states.
Such religions have full-time, professional priesthoods that
are hierarchically and bureaucratically organized, like the state
itself.
Olympian religions are polytheistic, characterized by pantheons
of powerful anthropomorphic gods with specialized functions.
Monotheistic Religion
Like Olympian religions, monotheistic religions have priesthoods.
In monotheism, all supernatural phenomena are manifestations
of, or are under the control of, a single eternal, omniscient,
omnipotent, and omnipresent supreme being.
World Religions
Christianity (with more than 2 billion members) and Islam (with 1.2
to 1.3 billion practitioners) are the two largest religions in the world.
More than a billion people claim no official religion.
Religion and Change
Revitalization Movements
Religious movements are social movements that occur in times
of change, in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter
or revitalize a society.
Christianity originated as a revitalization movement.
The colonial-era Iroquois reformation led by Handsome Lake is
another example of a revitalization movement.
Cargo Cults
Cargo cults are revitalization movements that emerge when traditional
communities have regular contact with industrial societies but lack
their wealth, technology, and living standards.
Native communities attempt to explain European domination and
wealth and to achieve similar success magically by mimicking European
behavior and manipulating symbols of the desired life style.
The cargo cults of Melanesia and Papua New Guinea blended Christian
doctrine with aboriginal beliefs and practices.
Cargo cults take their name from their focus on cargo—European
goods that have been brought to the region by cargo planes and
ships.
Because of their experience with big-man systems, Melanesians
believed that all wealthy people eventually had to give their
wealth away.
Cargo cults emerged as a means of magically leveling Europeans,
who refused to distribute their wealth or even to let natives
know the secret of its production and distribution.
Cargo cults paved the way for unified political action through
which indigenous communities eventually regained their autonomy.
Secular Rituals
Ritual-like behavior can occur in secular contexts.
If the distinction between the supernatural and the natural is not
consistently made in a society (e.g., the Betsileo view witches and dead
ancestors as real people), it can be difficult to define what constitutes
religion and what does not.
The behavior considered appropriate for religious occasions varies
tremendously from culture to culture.
Box: Islam Expanding Globally, Adapting Locally
Islam, the world's fastest growing religion, has adapted to many
different nations and cultures.
Although all mosques share some common features, they also incorporate
architectural elements unique to the regions in which they are built.
Prayers are conducted in Arabic, but local people understand
theological concepts in the terms of their own languages.
Islamic concepts and traditions are also shaped by the presence
of other religions, such as Hinduism.
Many Muslims live as minorities in non-Islamic nations (e.g., Europe,
South Africa).
