Here's something interesting that I hadn't known until recently. I've done quite a bit of reading and study on this and I can't put entire books into a post! So I'll have to just do a summary, best I can...
I'm sure nearly all of us thought that the 'world religions' were actual things, and had existed since such-and-such a date. right? Not so. It is indeed hard to sum up what I've got from entire books... will try. The very idea of separate, unified religions is only 2-3 centuries old in most of its aspects.
Christianity did distinguish between the Jews and themselves early on, but they didn't call themselves Christians, and had no word, 'Christianity'. In its Latin and Greek forms, 'Christians' started being used as a word a few centuries after Christ, to just denote somewhat with Christian personal values. The term 'Christianity' to denote a faith only went into useage after the Reformation.
Islam came up with that name by itself, but the word began to get used commonly only for Muslims to debate with those of other beliefs and defend themselves... they needed a word to call themselves only in respect of the 'other', but originally among Muslims the word 'Islam' wasn't used, rather 'iman' or faith.
'Religion' in its modern use is very new - about 200-300 years. Before then as Latin 'religio' etc, it simply meant pious. Only relatively recently it came to be used to talk of 'a religion' or 'religions'. Until 1624 there wasn't really a great deal of feeing about there being such separate religions, and only in that year, in the first book along these lines, was it posited that some religions may be 'right'. some wrong, some better than others. That gave rise over time to the concept in the West that Christianity was 'the' true religion...
Since it was the West who journeyed to and colonised the East, it was Western concepts which were imposed upon the peoples there. Words for Buddhism, Hinduism, etc, and all the faiths now separated out into their own separate forums on HP just didn't exist. HP is following the social construction imposed upon other peoples by - like most of the world today - going along with this.
The West simply came up with a term such as Hindu and then placed an 'ism' on the end. Thus Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, etc. These are Western ideas which may not fit what really existed or the beliefs of the people themselves.
The word 'Boudhism' first appears in print in 1801, 'Hindooism' in 1808, 'Taouism' in 1839, etc. The point here is that, if we take Hinduism as an example, before the West arrived it did not exist as a discreet, single religion with one name. India simply had a mass of people practising a wide variety of faiths with some similarity here and there. There was no concept in India then of one 'Hindu' belief. Same for Buddhism, etc. These names for religions were made up or constructed by Westerners in order to donote 'the other'. In other words to be able to talk about 'us' and 'them', the 'them' being inferior.
Interestingly, faced with this challenge, when the Christian colonists denigrated, say, Hinduism, the peoples of India who had not accepted Christianity reacted back in intellectual defence, and gathered together in the first real feelings of nationalism - but in gathering together they had to call themselves something so copied the construction put upon them and called themselves - Hindus. Even though before the arrival of the West they had never really been 'one' religion.
So what scholars are realising, looking back in time, is that the various 'world religions' are recent social constructions, created by Western intellectuals or colonialists, in the last 2-300 years, in order (even if only unconsciously) to impose Western concepts (such as that of a 'religion') upon them. As the saying goes, the victor writes the history. Since it was the West that became dominant in the East, it was the West that could artificially construct these religions, by naming and framing them (and creating false ideas such as the 'ageless ins
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Dear Venetian,
That’s very interesting and is much as I’d always suspected!
I’ve always felt very strongly, for instance, that Jesus did not come to establish a new religion, a system of creeds and ceremonies, but a way of life, a spiritual way of thinking and one-ness with God that gave man dominion over all the limitations of matter and its associated suffering. He radically overturned the thousands of Jewish laws which had been added to the original 10 Commandments as well as re-interpreting spiritually the literal translation of those Commandments, (notably the one pertaining to honouring the Sabbath Day) which he specifically said he honoured. This way of the Light (as I believe it was first called) so grabbed people that it just couldn't be contained within the walls of the synagogue - the synagogue didn't want it anyway as it challenged all their long and dealy held beliefs!
Christianity did distinguish between the Jews and themselves early on, but they didn't call themselves Christians, and had no word, 'Christianity'. In its Latin and Greek forms, 'Christians' started being used as a word a few centuries after Christ, to just denote somewhat with Christian personal values. The term 'Christianity' to denote a faith only went into useage after the Reformation.
By the way, in Acts 11:24 & 25 it says "Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch."
That would make it a lot earlier than you state above. However, it’s possible that the word Christians was added by a later editor to the account, like the justification for the Trinity was added to the original Greek wording of 1 John 5:7,8, in Erasmus' 1522 edition. The added wording had not been in his original 1514 edition, "so a church official manipulated Erasmus to add the wording to his Greek text."
Anyway, that’s going off-topic and I don’t want to open that particular can of worms!
Love and peace,
Judy
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Hi Judy,
Yes, I was trying to sum up quickly, but to quote a book on the word 'Christians':
"The term 'Christians' (Greek Christianous) was first used by outsiders in Antioch (Acts 11, 26), a title at first resisted. The first published useage of the Greek term Christianismous was in the second century CE in Antioch by Bishop Ignatius, with a meaning indicating how Christians should learn to live, a reference to personal qualities, not institutions.... the term 'Christianity' only went into current useage after the Reformation and was not commonly used until the period of the Enlightenment when it became used to refer to a system of beliefs whose reasonableness and use were matters for debate."
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Fascinating discovery, Venetian. It occurs to me that, despite the established churches' 'panic' about decreasing congregations and people 'wandering lost' into various spiritual paths, what is actually happening is that we are breaking down the social constructions and finding something beyond the Western boxes which have been placed around all these differing faiths.
As more and more people find their faith outside the dogma by melding the best of everything they encounter, will we eventually end up with a world-wide faith which subscribes to no set religious rules but a universal spirituality instead? I wonder...
Blessings
Moonfeather
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Hi Moonfeather,
Yes, I find it a fascinating topic and it took someone forcing me back into academic study to discover it all. The idea of different 'religions' as a Western social construction to a large degree.
What also takes a bit of thinking through is that here in the West we are taught about the different major religions: e.g Christianity, Islam, Hinduism [but what IS that LOL?], Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Taoism, etc, as being 'different' almost like different football clubs. In other words, they are all kind of the same thing, but also different, so you choose one from amongst them. Deep academia is now realising that this concept of differing religions just is not genuine. Books and conferences are happening on the subject.
For example, a typical Western approach would be, as in RE books for kids, to print a chart of the different sacred texts of each religion to compare them as if they are similar but to choose from, or maybe to print a chart of how each religion celebrates festivities or thinks of the afterlife. And etc. (Taking the texts, for example, they are the be-all and end-all for some religions, but only a starting point for debate in others.)
But this is ALL a Western view and construction. The different major religions cannot necessarily be compared in this way. 'Christianity' may be something you 'join', whereas Hinduism is simply a way of life. Some are dogamtic, whereas others embrace the other religions as well and are liberal. Of course there is some truth in the idea that the major religions are something similar and which you pick and choose from; but at the highest level a Taoist master, Hindu yogi, and Christian saint would all for sure meet up in one room and find nothing separating themselves. They would simply compare notes.
It's a new understanding in Western academia, that the West itself has imposed this idea of 'world religions', but now we are also deconstructing it. 😀
To really get the idea, one might try imagining being a person living in India in 1500. Such a person would never have conceived of his/herself as being Hindu. It was simply a way of life and a way of touching the Divine, and little separation would have been felt to any others of different means of faith. They didn't call themselves 'Hindu'.
One can't deny that politics entered in e.g. the Christian Crusades, so there have been and also have not been 'world religions' until quite recently. You can see it either way.
The key point is that they were firmly delineated by the West around 200 years ago.
Venetian
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Hello David,
Yes, it has only been a short time since different religions were delineated into separate groups, but I think Islam was one of the first to truly identify itself as 'Islam' and that's what early Muslims called it. I believe that Islam is a 'desert' religion, meaning that the tenets and the rules of Islam came about because people were desert nomads at that period. I don't know the full facts of that, though, but I do know that it is Abrahamic and has certain things in common with Judaism.
So separation really came about with Islam, but true religious delineation did arise as Western culture arose. I think that in that period of 'enlightenment', people were beginning to separate themselves anyway, even in Christian thought and the advent of Protestantism. Yes, before the time of Islam and between the mid 7th century to the mid sixteenth,`people weren't much bothered about their religious adherence, they just 'believed.' My belief is that separation began with the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, and was administered from Rome. Indian religious separation came about when colonalism happened.
Just goes to show that nothing stands still, it is ever-moving.
Love,
Patsy.
xxxxxx
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Yes, Patsy. When the latest text books talk about 'religions' being only a modern construction, I do think of Islam and think, "But what about that?" Muslims, ironically, were also the people who, upon arriving in India, coined the word 'Hindus' for the 'others' who weren't Muslim there.
V
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Yes David, absolutely. My understanding is that separation came when Islam evolved, and it has been trying to 'regroup' everyone into Islamic thought ever since.
Love,
Patsy.
😮
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
ORIGINAL: songstress
My understanding is that separation came when Islam evolved, and it has been trying to 'regroup' everyone into Islamic thought ever since.
As does Christianity of course. Whereas the other major religions tend not to be at all evangelical.
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Wonderful stuff !
But did it not really start here [DLMURL] http://www.thebeastmovie.com [/DLMURL]
I also discovered recently that the only reason that the working class people in Britain converted from Paganism to Christianity was that they were promised that it brought true liberation, freedom and equality.
Equality being the most influential and yes this was the true way of Jesus, he showed us a new convenant of love, not a church but guidelines for joy, happiness, freedom from harm through love. His way was not conversion but giving love and being compassionate beyond measure.
It begs the question what other carrots were offered to other people in other nations to convert? Bearing in mind that the majority were already living the experience without doctines and dogma prior to conversion to a specific set of principles?
Did the separation not come with the opposing forces trying to convert people to their own way?
e.g,. the battles and wars between Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, etc etc They may not have been separated into religions but were the muslims in the crusades called infidels?
Can you give us more clarification David on this?
being love
Kim xx
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Once again David, we concur. Islam and Christianity are evangelical, and so therefore try their utmost to 'rope in' converts. I have not heard of any other religions that do this.
It all started many centuries ago, and it's still going strong!
Love,
Patsy.
xxxxx
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Do you know what, Kim? I don't believe that anyone ever gave up their pagan beliefs. People still celebrate Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, put up Xmas trees and give presents, and throw salt over their shoulders if they spill any, and most of all, people still put objects into coffins before the dead are buried/cremated.
For all our supposed sophistication, we are still heathens at heart.
Love,
Patsy.
[&:]
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
ORIGINAL: songstress
Islam and Christianity are evangelical, and so therefore try their utmost to 'rope in' converts. I have not heard of any other religions that do this.
It all started many centuries ago, and it's still going strong!
Hmm. Come to think of it, for want of a better term, 'deep' Christianity and Islam are not really very evangelical, if at all. The 'world religions' themselves are not in themselves one thing, but each have thousands of hues and branches. It's the superficial and simplistic renderings of Islam and Christianity that become evangelical. (Though it also works in membership growth for these simplistic sides of the 'religions'.)
For example, it's often stated that Christianity is in decline in the UK. Evangelical BAC style of belief is not, but in growth.
V
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
I think we are just more aware of the religions that have had a powerful effect on the history of our country.
For more than 2000 years, Brahmanism has been waging a war against Buddhism. Hundreds of Buddhist temples have been destroyed or forcefully converted into Hindu tamples, and Indian languages have been undermined by means of Brahmanic Sanskritisation. In Nepal, Brahmanisation has had the most devastating effects, uprooting its indigenous religion of Buddhism and exterminating the Mongoloid inhabitants. Nepali women have been forced into the shameful flesh trade as concubines and `Devadasis'. All these millenia old Brahmin-inflicted institutions have now reached monstrous proportions : the Buddhist religion has been virtually exterminated, Tibeto-Burman languages are nearing extinction, and hundreds upon thousands of Mongoloid women are forced into prostitution by the Brahminist Mafia.
That makes modern day Christianity look like a kitten in comparison.
Apart from the recent news of calls for trials of heresy by the Bishops.
Dear Patsy
Yes I agree and a lot more besides!
being love
Kim xx
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
A good example of fanaticism. In this case on the link by a supposed Buddhist. Basically no other Buddhists would agree. There are always fanatical sites out there to find, supposed to be on behalf of any religion.
The basic concept with which this thread began, or the topic, is that only in recent times has the idea of discreet 'world religions' been created, by social construction from Western writers. This isn't a heated, emotional topic, but a fascinating (IMO) intellectual one about how concepts, thought-processes and memes are created.
Ironically, then the very non-Western peoples took these concepts aboard. For example, the peoples we now call Hindus never did call themselves Hindus (as they encompass so many diverse beliefs) until they needed to create an overall self-identity in the face of the British Raj, with national independence in mind. Indian people began to call themselves Hindus roughly around the time of the 1880s, the time of Ramakrishna and the political movement, Brahmo Samaj. Then even more so with the coming of Gandhi. So that is very recent!
However IMHO the link above is - I won't comment in fact. There are some strange people out there and they are all free to create websites. 🙂
Example: "Mongoloid women are forced into prostitution". If they are in Mongolia, then this is a part of communist China. Their fate is not in the hands of Hindus by any means, but in the hands of the secular Chinese state.
V
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
P.S. This is also interesting on the subject of meme-creation or the shaping of concepts as to 'where one belongs'.
It is little realised today that just as Hindus slowly began to think of themselves as that and call themselves that, they also distinguished between themselves and 'English'.
I am putting 'English' in quotes, for the way the word was used from the 1880s in India, only in a minoirity of cases were they referring to Caucasians who had moved to India from Britain. In most cases, people were called 'English' if they were Indians who had attended Western-style secular education, begun to wear different clothing, and taken up that general culture, if only slightly, as many had (and many have today).
😀 Ramakrishna used to make fun of his two 'English' disciples, Vivekananda and Mahendra. Similarly, M and Vivekananda, who were respectively a head teacher and a pupil at an Occidental-style secular school, found it a total culture shock to encounter mystical Ramakrishna, with very amusing results. They were trained to believe in secular explanations, he was always talking of an ever-present God. Each side would good-naturedly make fun of the other.
Vivekananda just couldn't conceive that God was 'in' everything, such as a cup or bowl even, and he laughed at this. He was caught up y his secular education English-derived. Ramakrishna ended the impasse eventually by touching V's chest, sending him into samadhi for days, during which V saw and felt the Divine everywhere. But up until then, he was not 'Hindu', but 'English'. 😉
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
well talk of conversion had already begun on this thread prior to me joining it, so I was picking up where you left off I thought, please don't start me off on fundamentalists that as been a big subject for me in recent months but yet I have it on good authority that they are an endangered species (from wherever they come) LOL!
And men fighting again in ancient times.......I better say no more otherwise I will be blamed for bashing men again but yet who are the people behind conversions and the matters of fighting mentioned above. Say no more!
Perhaps we could return to the topic basically of strains of spirituality meeting as one.
All paths leading to the same roundabout of GOD.
All mountain peaks reaching the same height and the ultimate cosmic and mystical experience.
I have to say R did not have to touch my chest for me to experience what V experienced in your story Venetian.
But this is your thread of which we enJOY so please continue with the discusssion in the way that you wish to see it develop.
being love
kim xx
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
PS
It seems again the winners write the history books and also what they would like and how they would like religion/circumstances to be viewed, anything other then that is either deemed heretic or fundamental.
Good for us to be open to discuss all views not just our own.
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
well I am happy to be Maid Marian with a little sword of truth and prefer as John Lennon put it to make love not war which reminds me of Tolstoy once more. But yes G you are correct there about women I guess I just cannot get my head around women on the battlefield not even Joan of Arc, it is beyond my conception but in modern day women are known to use their powers in more discrete but dark and manipulative ways. Whats worse? I always said in the past when a man puts his hands up and says I'm a B you know what you are dealing with but very few women would admit that about themselves.
So touche!
Apologies Venetian! Please excuse the interruption.
being love
kim xx
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
I would only hope and pray David, that there is NEVER one world religion. I want to be able to follow my own thoughs and beliefs - one religion smacks of crowd control! We've surely hade enough of that? George Orwell and1984 springs to mind. I can think of nothing worse. Brlliant reserach and very interestng, thanks for posting it up. Love Gxxx
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
Hi Gillyann,
It's a cliche of course, but 'One ultimate Truth approached in many ways'. This is what Hinduism in particular understands (as Hinduism in particular isn't one religion - that's the Western construct). The overall idea of world religions is often erroneous. Islam - yes, it had a definite beginning and not SO many departures. But academics now often write of 'Christianities' as that supposed religion has tens of thousands of different sects with their own beliefs, forms of worship, etc.
'One religion' would definitely only come about by political control, and I am sure never can or will. (Though the fanatics try!)
I'd say that not only does every individual have their own unique way of conceiving of the Above or of approaching God, but even that the One, He/Her/Itself will have a huge variety of ways of self-conceiving, of thinking of Itself.
V
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
No David, I wouldn't want a 'world religion.' It'd be like a prison sentence, but without the bars.
Love,
Patsy.
😮
RE: The Idea of 'World Religions'
"I want to be able to follow my own thoughts and beliefs"
That is exactly what it will be and everyone is instrumental in its co-creation.
Life experience is the supreme text of knowledge
and conscious awareness is the key to its integration.
Love beyond measure
Kim xx