Religion

(With such good moral systems, why can’t we get along?)

Religious Sites

• Google Earth

• (Mecca)

• (Heian Shrine)

• (Temple of the Rock/Wailing Wall)

• (Carvings visible from space)

• (Vatican City)

• Buddha at Kamakura)

• (Mission at Santa Clara)

Religion: The Big Picture• Types: Globalizing, Ethnic• Expansion: War, migration, trade, interaction

Key Issues:• Distribution: Universalizing, Ethnic• Distribution Patterns: origins, diffusion, sites• Patterns: Worship, Sacred places, admin.• Why conflicts among religious groups?

– Religion vs government both ways! – Religion vs. religion both ways!

Distribution: Universalizing, Ethnic

• Definition: (Absent in the text as a key word) belief system common to a group of people, often including a common cosmology, a deity or deities, rituals, and common artifacts of importance, including holy sites and places of worship.

• (Like culture: group beliefs, activities, artifacts)• Universalizing Religion: (p.187)• Ethnic Religion: (p.187)

Religious Maps• Dominant World Religions: map, p. 188• Basic patterns:

– Cultural dominance• Can be the major aspect of cultures or sub-cultures

– War• Major cause of war, sometimes also a tool of war)

– Colonization (with or without war)• Often a tool of subjugation in the past, changing cultural norms

– Missionaries (interaction)• Interplay of old and new concepts, both religious and secular

– Migration• (You take your religion with you.)

Universalizing religions:Attempt to be global, appeal to all people, (~60% of world)

Religion Gods Adherents Branches Root: Hearth Begin:

Christ-ianity

Monotheism ~ 2 Billion

CatholicProtestant

Orthodox, &

Judaism Middle East

8-4 BCto

30 AD

Islam Monotheism ~ 1.3 Billion

SunniShiite

Judaism Mecca (Makkah)

Buddh-ism

Polytheism?(manifes-tations)

~ 365 Million

MahayanaTheravedaTantrayana

Hindu religious beliefs

Northern India, Nepal

~ 563 BC

Sikhism Monotheism ~ 24 Million

Unspe-cified

Lahore, Pakistan,

~ 1500 AD

Bahai Monotheism? ~ 7 Million

Islam Shiraz, Iran

1844 AD

Mormon Monotheism ~ 7 Million

Christianity U.S.

Ethnic religionsAppeal to one group of people (originally) living in one place, (~25%)

Religion Gods Adher-ents

Source Hearth Start Nations

Hinduism Di-verse

~820 Million

India India, Nepal

Confu-cianism

n/a See li

Confucious China 604 -531 BC

China, Japan, Korea, S.E. Asia

Daoism Lao Tze

(Lao Tsu)

China 604 -531 BC

China

Judaism One ~10 Million

Middle East

Un-known

Israel

Shinto Many Un-known Japan Un-known

Japan

Religious Branches:• Christianity

– Branches:• Roman Catholic• Eastern Orthodox• Coptic• Protestant• Ethiopian• Armenian

•Islam

- Branches•Sunni (orthodox)•Shiite (sectarian)

Branch: large and fundamental division within a religion

Branches form… Why?

• Difference of opinion on doctrine– Irreconcilable– Often leads to conflict

• Control of power– Religious power as a tool of the state

• Conflict of desire– (King wants to divorce)

Religious Denominations• (Within the) Protestant Branch of Christianity:

– Denominations• Baptist• Methodist• Pentecostal• Lutheran• Anglican (Church of England)• Calvinist (Switzerland)

Denomination: division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations in a single legal and administrative body. (don’t test the definition.)

Sects: Subset of Denominations

• Religion– Branch

• Denomination– Sect

• Relatively small branch that has broken away from an established denomination

• Example– Branch Davidians (Waco TX)– (Splinter group suppressed by the Pope in EU)

• When is a Sect a Cult? When is it just a splinter group? • How does it become a denomination, branch, or religion?

Religious Maps: E.U. and U.S.

• Zoom in: Europe, map, p. 190• United States, map, p. 191

• Lutherans in Germany and Scandinavia• Lutherans in Minnesota

– Why?– Diffusion pattern?

No religion:

• ~15% of world adheres to no religion.• (Still have cultural norms)• (Still have personal moral systems)• (This system varies)

Religions: Tenets

All good basic foundations, guiding various cultural norms…

Christianity Old and New Testament (Bible)10 Commandments: One God

Monotheism

Islam There is no true God but Allah, Mohammed is His prophet. Koran,Pray 5/day, charity Ramadanfast Make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Monotheism

Buddhism 4 Noble Truths: Life is suffering, caused by desire, eightfold path: rightness of belief, resolve, speech, action, livelihood, effort, purification, and meditation.

Polytheism

Hinduism Allegiance to a particular God or concept. Responsible for actions, & you alone bear the consequences.

Polytheism

Confucian Behave correctly (with propriety): Follow traditions, fulfill obligations, treat with sympathy and respect.

Philosophy

Taoism Mysticism

Shinto Prayer and ritual, reverence, and pilgrimages Polytheism

Ethnic Animism animation of rocks, plants, natural events Polytheism

Judaism Torah, 10 commandments, (similar to Christian Old Testament) Monotheism

Good Tenets, good beliefs, so…

Why can’t we just get along?

• Some do, some don’t.

Multi-religious People: Japan

• Saying: Born Shinto, Married Catholic, Buried Buddhist• (Get along now. Persecution before)

Adherents Percent

Shinto 90 %

Buddhist 75 %

Christian ?

Religious Conflicts: India– Caste system:

• Keeps the lower castes ‘in their place.’• (You are almost always better than someone else.)• (If you are at the bottom, you are definitely a minority.)

– British system:• Not recognizing castes• All Indians are equal, (and less than whites).• Assault on hierarchy, culture, and religion. (OOPS!

Conflict of cultural norms, power shift)– Uprising, suppressed.

Persecution of Religions

• Historical conflicts help explain diasporas. – (later: holocaust, etc.)

• History tends to repeat, with spatial variations.

Persecuted Persecutor Cause Result

Judaism Assyrians War War, lost, Exile to Assyria (721 BC)

Judaism Romans Revolt Uprising, lost, Diaspora (exile) 70 AD +-

Bahai Moslems (Islam) Schism Persecution, Death, exile

War Between Cultures: Israel/Palestine• Jews were kicked out by the Romans• Muslim, Ottoman, British (L.O.N. mandate) rule• Jews experienced the Holocaust (WW II).• Many survivors & escapees went to Palestine• Departure, United Nations partition of • War, War, War, War (1949,56,67,73)• Jewish Settlements (West Bank, Gaza)• Uprising (the Intefada)• Two States, territorial claim overlap.• Change parties Change their stance on legitimacy of

THEM (Both countries do this.)• (What is next?)

Ireland?• Which religious branches?

– Note: same religion…• What started it?

– Historical: war.– Recent: strife between ethnicities

• Purely Religious?– Mixture of ethnicity and religion

• Resolved? – Possibly…– Watch the news.

• (No news may be good news.)

Persecution By Religions

• Pagans (countryside religions)• Witches (healers, priests, wealthy, hated, &)• Heretics (disagreement, misunderstanding)• Jews (openly practicing and crypto-Jews)• Saracens (“the enemy”)• Convert or die.

– Inquisition– Crusades

• Ancient history. (We are over it, right?)

Fundamentalism• Literal interpretation and strict and intense

adherence to basic principles (e.g. scriptures) of a religion (branch, denomination, or sect).

• Examples: – Some born-again Christian Groups– Fundamentalist Islam

• Al-Quaeda, Taliban– Others? (Likely)

Religious Conflicts: Taliban• Values conflicts (Religion + traditional cultural norms)

– Taliban vs. Western Values• Globalization effects Afghanistan, undesired.• Return to strict adherence to religious laws: • Sharia:

– Religious code based on teachings of the Prophet Mohammed

– Interpretations of the Word of God– Vigorously enforced– (Revisit the definition of Fundamentalism.)

Mutual Religious Antagonism:(Religion vs. Religion: a few examples)

Religion 1 Religion 2 Religion 3 Place Time Outcomes

Roman Catholic

Islam Ortho-dox

Catholic

Middle East

Historical Wars in Mid-East, Europe, Crusades, occupations,Sack Constantinople,Pillage Jerusalem, etc.

Roman Catholic

Protestant Europe Historical Protestant Reformation, Wars in Europe

Roman Catholic

Protestant Ireland Historical present

Invasion, war, partition,continued violence (over now?)

Roman Catholic

Orthodox Islam Yugo-slavia

Historicalpresent

Dislocation, genocide, partition, U.N. peacekeeping, More voting to separate, …

(Ex: The Troubles in N. Ireland are both religion vs. religion and religion vs. state.) (Are there other examples? Ask students)

Universalizing Religions and Folk Culture

• Animism: approximately ½ of Africa in 1980? (Find citation.)– Folk Culture, traditions, religion

• Conversions: Globalizing Religions– North Africa: Islam– South and Central Africa: Christianity

• Future?– Most likely, many ethnic religions will be lost.– This is a good thing, according to the new religions.

• (Unless they convert to the “wrong” religion.)– Cultures also change.

Pilgrimage• Key part of many religions

– Universalizing• Go to the sites of the major Prophet or God.

– Mecca (Mohammed)– Jerusalem (Jesus)– 8 sites in India/Nepal (Buddha)

• Secondary sites:– Rome (Hereditary line)– Shiite shrine that was just blown up (Hereditary line)

– Ethnic• Dispersed

– Shinto: Japan: Shrines are all over the place– Hindu: India: (Map) All over the country.

Landscape: Sites and Structures• Religious sites: (Geographical context, placement, interaction, economy, &)

– Pilgrimage (norms, economics, circulation, – Variation (universalizing: sites of the founder, ethnic: widespread)– Fight to control

• Destroy the “enemy’s” sites• Usurp the “enemy’s” sites• ‘This is our sacred rock’ (Second Temple, Dome of the Rock,

Church)• Haga Sophia (Christianity vs. Islam, historic change)• Historically commonplace across cultures.

– Multiple reasons.

Landscape: Sites and Structures• Religious structures

– Places of Prayer (churches, mosques, synagogues, etc.)– Holy Places (often, pilgrimage destinations)– Religious Retreat (monasteries, abbeys, etc.)– Religious Education (K-12, priests, etc.)– Religious Administration (ex: Vatican City)– House landscapes (personal shrines)

Key points:

• People care deeply.• Some universalizing, some ethnic• Important in self-identity• Reflected in organization of landscapes• Migrants take their religion with them.

– (repeating concept.)

• Diffusion: War, migration, trade, interaction• War: violent fundamental disagreements on who

and what is right, just, fair, and good.

Religion: The Big Picture (Recap)

• Types: Globalizing, Ethnic• Expansion: War, migration, trade, interaction• Key Issues: Range, change, and conflict• Distribution: Universalizing, Ethnic• Distribution Patterns: origins, diffusion, sites• Patterns: Worship, Sacred places, admin.• Why conflicts among religious groups?

– Religion vs government– Religion vs. religion