2.1 Religion as a Divine Gift of Reason

The starting point for modern understandings of religion was probably Deism –which Ernst Troeltsch (1925) called the Enlightenment’s philosophy of religion –and the discussions surrounding it. Deism represents a concept of religion that is based on a rationalistic world-view. In its logically consistent form, it rejects as irrational all “positive” religions that claim to be based on special revelations; or, rather, it rejects them insofar as they are regarded as irrational. Deism posited a “reasonable” belief in God and a “reasonable” morality. From the times of Herbert of Cherbury up to the literature of the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century, this approach became increasingly popular among intellectuals.

Herbert of Cherbury ([1624] 1968, p. 29–46) maintained that God had given the gift of reason to all human beings. Reason, according to him, contains a few fundamental truths, such as the existence of a creator-God, the duty to venerate him primarily through moral conduct, the obligation to repent and avoid sins, and the belief that a just punishment for sins would be meted out in this life and in the next. On this view, all revealed religions represented later reproductions, or even falsifications, of this original natural religion.

Thus deism interprets religion as essentially a naturally given, universal metaphysics and morality. The world is an ordered cosmos whose laws mirror divine reason. Humans can recognize God in the laws of nature and morality. Kant’s famous formula “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me” encapsulates the deistic view. However, even if many proponents of Deism believed that Christianity came closest to natural religion, this view stands in clear opposition to all “positive” religions and their particularistic truth claims. In short, a Deist understanding of religion would be immensely skeptical towards a “positive” religion’s ability to promote peaceful coexistence, or even to further global peace, unless they give up their particularistic truth claims that contradict the religion of reason.

2.2 Religion as an Experience of Revelation

Among the reactions to Deist rationalism is the Romantic concept of religion. It opposes the rationalistic view of religion as ethics and metaphysics, and makes aesthetics central in their stead. For Romanticism, the same as for its twentieth century heir, phenomenology, religion is primarily an individualized experience of revelation. Religion is seen as an “experience” of “the holy”, the “sacred”, the “unconditional”, the “eternal”, or whichever way it has been named. The kind of experience may vary, taking the form of mystical contemplation, ecstatic possession, or simply a more highly cultivated religious sensibility with regard to the cosmos or the infinite.

This approach sees in religiousness a human capability that is given a priori, and that differs from any other kind of experience. It sees the human being as having a disposition toward religion, as homo religiosus. Nonreligiousness is regarded, like being unmusical or unreceptive to art, as a lack of cultivation of the general human potential, as Schleiermacher ([1799] 1996) emphasized long ago. Eliade (1959) later criticizes modern culture for its deficiency in this regard, and contrasts it with a fictive “archaic humanity”, which is supposed to have lived in constant relationship to “hierophanies”, i. e. revelations of the sacred.

Representatives of religion understood in this sense are seldom religious officeholders or laypersons; usually they are individuals who have particular religious gifts. Hence Romantic and phenomenological studies have paid far more attention to religious virtuosos than have other approaches. The emphasis on virtuosity suggests, at least implicitly, a cultural criticism of a modernity whose materialism and utilitarianism have suppressed and marginalized this kind of experience.

This view of religion is often manifested in authors who see themselves as virtuosos or initiates and present their studies with prophetic or mystical affect. Rudolf Otto’s (1958) statement that anyone who has never had a religious experience himself need read no further is a famous example of such a view.

With the rejection of religion as metaphysics, ethics, dogma, and holy scriptures, the early Romantics reject as inauthentic all claims made by the state, orthodoxy, and organized religion. Religion is not supposed to explain the world or provide a foundation for morality; it serves neither church nor state; it is not in competition with science and does not function to produce social discipline. Religion is based on human creative potential, which escapes any instrumental-ization and serves to promote the individual’s full development. In religion, humans transcend themselves and their species with regard to the experience of a higher order. The Romantic concept rejects the notion that any concrete religion embodies the “truth”. Religion is an individualized, even subjectivized revelation. So, one trend within this understanding of religion is geared towards the religious virtuoso, a universal religious elite sharing deep insights in, and experiences of, the sacred, and cultivating a universalistic ethos.

But there is another trend that also stems from the Romantic and phenomenological traditions, the mystification of “archaic man” as homo religiosus. Here individuality is often seen as the specific genius of a “Volk” represented by the peasantry. This view often serves nationalistic purposes by drawing a sharp boundary between the pious “Volk” on the one hand, and all the rest (intellectuals, non-believers, religious and ethnic minorities) on the other. The Romantic understanding of religion was therefore quite unprepared for the promotion of peaceful co-existence, and disinterested in furthering global peace when it understood religion as a marker of ethnic identity.

2.3 Religion as a Function of the Brain

In recent decades, neurologists have increasingly concerned themselves with religion. Surprisingly, it is a Romantic/phenomenological understanding of religion that informs many neurological studies. Andrew Newberg and his collaborators associate religion largely with mysticism.

Or, in another passage:

The neurologist V. S. Ramachandran (1998) has also studied religion and attempted to localize God in the limbic system. Like Newberg, Ramachandran assumes that religion is primarily an emotional experience. Hence he mainly examines epileptics. Most remarkable are the cases in which patients are said to have had deeply moving spiritual experiences, including a feeling of divine presence and direct communication with God, everything around them filled with cosmic significance.

The central problem of these neurological approaches is that they understand religion one-sidedly as the experience of virtuosos. For Newberg and his colleagues, the model is the mystic, and for Ramachandran, the shaman. Be that as it may – any relationship of religion to ethics and peacemaking seems far-fetched.

2.4 Religion as Projection

Theories of projection are generally theories critical of religion. These approaches always imply the assumption of a misunderstanding. Feuerbach’s anthropocentric critique of religion sees religion as a projection of ideals of human perfection onto a metaphysical authority that operates as a superhuman god, dominating and paralyzing its inventors. Freud sees religion as an illusion, as wishful thinking, and as indicating the lack of a strong ego and an insufficient acceptance of reality. For Marx, who further develops Feuerbach’s approach and partially anticipates Freud’s, religion is initially an expression of misunderstood nature and later of distorted social relations.

Marx sees religion as an expression of false consciousness. He follows Hegel in assuming that the history of humanity leads from the realm of necessity to that of freedom. But he sees the development of human consciousness not as a relatively independent process, but rather as the manifestation and consequence of the development of the material conditions of human existence. According to Marx, humans create themselves as a species by producing and reproducing their concrete lives. The role of religion as an expression of social consciousness changes in the course of socioeconomic development.

In societies that have little control over nature and are organized in a relatively egalitarian way, the material environment is the great riddle. In earlier times, humans mythified nature, which seemed to them to be dominated by invisible powers, and at that stage religion expressed primarily a misunderstanding of nature’s “true” ways of functioning. An increasing mastery over nature resulted from the division of labor, which produced class differences, especially between intellectual and manual labor, and led to the development of private property. In the course of this social development, knowledge was acquired about nature, as well as how to control it through technology. Nature was demystified and seen increasingly as a rationally ordered whole, governed by laws that required no religious explanation. Whereas this development of the natural sciences and technology led to the demythification of nature, social relations were becoming steadily more complex. Social development created growing social differences, and modern capitalism increasingly reified and depersonalized social relations. It now seemed that society, not nature, was becoming more and more difficult to understand.

For one thing, consciousness is falsified by alienation, which manifests itself in the organization of labor and in the resulting social relations among members of different classes, as well as within the same class. In other words, human existence is stunted by being reduced to purely economic relations. Labor as creative, sensuous, meaningful activity is seen as no more than a means of physical survival or of maximizing profits. People come to see themselves primarily as self-centered actors in the economic process, treating their peers as competitors for jobs or profits. Interpersonal relations take on an instrumental character. The production and exchange of commodities characterizes the social. People encounter each other not as human beings in all their complexity but as “one-dimensional”. In addition, there are the interests of those who benefit from these alienated structures and, in order to justify their privileges, develop a legitimating ideology that alternates between illusion and deliberate deception.

With this socioeconomic development, religion also changes from an expression of the failure to understand nature to an expression of alienated social relations and social structures. It can assume a series of different functions and forms. It can serve to justify the existing form of society and domination, urging acceptance of this form, for example, by referring to God’s will or to a better future in the afterlife. Occasionally, religion can also articulate protests against unjust relations, but because of its illusory ideas it is incapable of formulating a realistic proposal for transforming society.

Since religion, for Marx, is ultimately little more than an expression of alienated social relations – that is, an illusion and a form of escapism in the Freudian sense on the one hand, and a justifying ideology on the other – religion can hardly contribute to peaceful coexistence; and its promotion of “global peace” must be either an illusion or part of the ideology of a specific class.

2.5 Religion as Sacralized Social Principles

For Durkheim and his school, religion and society are inseparable from each other. On the one hand, Durkheim argues that religion is an eminently social phenomenon; on the other, that almost all mental categories and institutions developed out of religion. In other words, neither religion nor society has priority over the other; instead, they mutually produce each other. Likewise, Durkheim ([1912] 1995) equates religion with the sacred. The social can develop only on the basis of the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Without distinguishing between the sacred and the profane, what is commanded and what is forbidden, what is sanctioned and what is not sanctioned, society cannot be formed. Religion refers to the sacralized central cognitive, moral, and aesthetic principles and classifications without which cooperation and coordination would not be possible.

For Durkheim, human beings and society have two dimensions: one profane, the other sacred. Man is profane in his bodily needs and desires, in his egotism and self-centeredness. He is sacred as a moral, social being, which is able to transcend these limitations. Society is profane in its everyday economic life, which primarily serves the needs of physical reproduction. Even though Durkheim shows that economic orders are regulated morally, everyday life is still very distant from high religious festivals and rituals, in which the central symbols of social principles and ideals are invoked and people’s hearts are moved. For Durkheim, a society based on utilitarian self-interest – that is, a fully profane society –cannot exist and represents a contradiction in terms. Society always has a sacred dimension and thus a religion. Society constantly creates ideals, and the ideal society is a necessary component of real society – and not some sort of accidental addition.

This sacred dimension finds visible expression in non-everyday rituals in which social norms and ideals are periodically reinforced and even renewed. In ecstatic group experience, people overcome their particularist interests and carry out new acts of sacralization. Thus, if Durkheim, in his analysis of religion identifies God with society, he should not be understood as endorsing existing conditions. He is referring here not to society as it actually is, but rather to its moral principles and ideals of order. God symbolizes society’s self-transcendence.

At first glance, Durkheim’s version of religion seems to represent the opposite of Marx’. For Durkheim, all religions are true; for Marx, all are false. For Marx, religion becomes superfluous through science and the overcoming of alienation; for Durkheim, religion remains an indispensable component of society, even if partially replaced by science. What we must not overlook in this opposition, however, is that Durkheim’s concept of religion has very little in common with conventional ones. However, his unique understanding of religion, with its fusion of religious and socio-political orders, is problematic, especially historically. For one thing, it ignores historical phases in which religious and political communities are not identical. Wherever religious diversity or religious pluralism predominate, or where orthodoxy and heterodoxy are opposed, this approach encounters difficulties in mediating between subgroups and the society as a whole.

Thomas Luckmann was aware of these shortcomings and argued that religion in modern societies has lost its original political function and has become privatized. However, it does for the individual exactly what it used to do for society. For Luckmann (1967) any form of personal self-transcendence is religion. He regards self-transcendence as an indispensable presupposition for the formation of the person. For him all people are therefore religious in the same sense that societies are for Durkheim.

2.6 Religion as an Interest in Salvation

Max Weber’s action-oriented, interpretative sociology examines religion primarily from the point of view of its contribution to the shaping of a specific habitus of typical social actors and its formative influence on culture in general. It has become commonplace to object that, at the beginning of his unfinished manuscript “Religious Communities”, Weber fails to offer a definition of religion – and indeed, that he explicitly refuses to do so. This interpretation seems to me to be based on a misunderstanding. Here, Weber does not reject the possibility of a scholarly definition of the object defined, but rather – as he expressly states –a definition of the “essence” of religion. Clearly referring to such attempts in the literature of his times, he critically notes that an “essential definition” cannot be achieved through a priori definitions. On the contrary, it would require the study of many different religions in the forms in which they appeared historically. In case something like an “essence” of religion exists, it can only be determined empirically through a comparative historical study of religions (Weber 1978).

Weber, however, does not seek to define the “essence” of religion; he pursues the sociology of religion by investigating the “conditions and effects” of religiously motivated action. In his view, this can be done only in terms of content, not in terms of form. Only through “subjectively intended meaning” can an analytical unity of the object be created, since religions in their “external course” manifest such diversity that a coherent definition of the object is not possible (Weber 1978, p. 399). And even if one were to discover formal parallels between religions, these same forms could have very different meanings.

For Weber, religion concerns the conditions and effects of a specific kind of social action. What changes in the course of social and cultural developments are the definitions of “salvation”, along with ways and means of achieving the goal of salvation. In “primitive” societies, salvation interests are understood as purely immanent, this-worldly. Since the goal – “that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6:3) – often cannot be achieved on one’s own, the aid of extraordinary personal or impersonal powers may be needed. Still, access to these powers is reserved for especially – usually ecstatically – gifted persons, on whose mediation ordinary persons are therefore dependent. A differentiation between religion and other spheres of action cannot be discerned here on the basis of the goals pursued, but only on the basis of the means used, and the specific actors involved.

With the development of “religions of salvation” and their rejection of “the world”, a special religious interest emerges and becomes institutionalized, namely, the goal of being saved from the world. This specifically religious goal may conflict with everyday interests or at least be in a tense relationship with them. The rigorous pursuit of this peculiar religious interest is often an activity for especially qualified individuals. Only in exceptional cases, like ascetic Protestantism, is it extended to all laypersons. Weber is primarily interested in how, and to what degree, religious goals of salvation and paths to salvation have helped shape the behavior of the laity. He starts from the assumption that – depending on the salvation goals and paths to salvation, as well as the corresponding religious demands on various social groups – different tensions, conflicts, and contradictions resulted, which in turn led to different processes of rationalization. His guiding interest here is to explain the unique development in the West of a mass ethics focused on this-worldly, rationalized, and disciplined action.

In addition to long-term religious developments and their effects on secular ethics, which Weber ([1904/05] 2002; [1920] 1951; [1920] 1958) discusses in The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and in The Economic Ethics of the World Religions, he proposes an analysis of religious institution building with his conception of “charisma”. According to Weber, the “religious experience” of especially gifted persons is the origin of every religion. Still, he is not interested in whether this “experience” is genuine. Neither does he declare it to be the “essence” of religion. Instead, he is concerned with its social effects, and, above all, with whether others believe in this “experience”, as well as what consequences this might have for social action. Thus Weber adopts the Romantic idea of religion while transforming it into a sociological question at the same time.

Since religious experience is transitory, it has to be institutionalized. The purely personal, charismatic power relationship between the religiously gifted person and his followers is transformed into a regulated, enduring relationship, and converted into a permanent relationship of authority on traditional or bureaucratic foundations. Hence, in religions of salvation there is an increasing adaptation of salvation interests to secular interests. In other words, in his theory of religion Weber is concerned chiefly with the role of religion in defining and transforming ideal and material interests in their mutual relations, as well as in the elaboration of a specific ethos or habitus. In this respect, he would be open to an analysis of a religiously pacifist or peaceful ethos.

2.7 Religions as Competing Firms

For the past thirty years or so, utilitarianism has undergone a revival in the social sciences, and it has also entered the sociology of religion in the form of “rational choice” theory. This perspective includes many approaches, which differ from one another chiefly in the ways in which they deal with cultural factors. In principle, the theory is based on the assumption of rational actors and stable preferences. Whereas Weber, for example, showed that material and ideal interests are culturally determined and may often be in conflict, rational choice theory, by assuming that preferences are constant, seeks to exclude culture as a variable.

Rational choice theory can be applied both to individual action and to religious market research. In relation to individual action, maximization of utility is the key element, with utility in the case of religion described as compensation for goals that cannot be achieved (Stark/Bainbridge 1996). In this respect, the approach shows similarities to Freud’s theory of compensation and projection, but without offering an explanation for the deep psychic level. According to this view, religion holds out the prospect of a satisfaction of needs that are not met in normal life.

This implies that the suppliers of religion are in competition with each other. The one with greater demands will outcompete the more lenient ones. In other words, peaceful co-existence between religions can only function if the rules of the game, i.e. competition, mission, etc., are accepted by all religious firms. Otherwise, hostility and tensions between religious associations will be the rule, since the best strategy against competitors is to dramatize group cohesion, identity, and boundaries, while stigmatizing others. The prospect of peace is based on particularistic promises of salvation, not on interreligious dialogue or peaceful coexistence. Only the respectively own truth claims are true. As we can see from this brief overview – depending on which understanding of “religion” one applies, rather diverse relationships to politics and peacemaking will emerge.

2.8 Religions as Religious Traditions

In our everyday language we often tend to equate the term religion with what I would prefer to call religious tradition. Of course, we can use the concept of religious tradition colloquially, referring to self-definitions of religious associations and/or key symbols of religions. We teach introductory classes to Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, and there is nothing wrong with this terminology as long as we are aware of its pragmatic character. However, in popular perception, concrete religions are often understood as representatives of stereotypical “religious traditions” believed to be profoundly different and particular. People talk about Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism as if they were monolithic entities based on diverse “ultimate values” imagined as being rather static across history. Such a more heavy-handed understanding represents a big ahistorical abstraction with strong theological implications. It establishes Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism in the singular, and in capital letters.

Such a notion of religion as a timeless religious tradition homogenizes and essentializes religions. It defines boundaries, establishes authority, creates orthodoxies and heterodoxies, and ignores ubiquitous syncretisms. Seen from this perspective, the history of a religion appears as the unfolding of an original idea or ideal, which is internally consistent and basically never changes, in spite of transformations on the surface. Moreover, it is essentially different from the ideas or ideals on which other religions are based.

This understanding of religion emphasizes essential doctrinal and symbolic differences and ascribes to a religion a static attitude towards the world. Ultimately, religions are characterized by unchanging modes of behavior, which are inscribed in whole cultures or civilizations. This perspective creates extremely resilient boundaries between religions and ascribes the greatest importance to religion as a marker of social identity. It produces the clichés according to which one religion is peaceful, the other militant – even if the empirical evidence proves that all religions have been peaceful at times, and militant at others. This is the “clash of civilization” perspective (Huntington 1996).⁹⁸

2.9 Understanding Religions as Systems of Practices

The best antidote to such essentializing views of religious traditions is to define religions as systems of meaningful practices with reference to superhuman powers in time and space (Riesebrodt 2010). The inclusion of superhuman powers, i.e. powers that are believed to control or influence what is beyond normal human control, clearly narrows the object of study to the “normal” – nowadays not only Western – usage of the term “religion”. The understanding of religion as a system of practices steers our attention to the empirical evidence. This perspective does not deny that there are continuities over time and across national and geographical boundaries, but it does not assume that such connections automatically shape similarities and differences, or even social identifications and expectations of solidarity. Of course, religious identifications can be, and have been, important historically; and yet, there are also local, regional, and national identifications or identifications with language, culture, gender, age, and class, which can be more important than religious ones. My point is to not take anything for granted here.

This perspective attempts to understand each religion (as a system of practices) or each religious community on its own terms, which means in its own religious, social, and political context. It is not so much the religious tradition writ large and doctrinally defined that helps us understand the religious communities we study, but it is the religion as a system of practices in its concrete religious, social, and political context that might redefine what is meant by “religious tradition” empirically. This perspective rejects the construction of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism in capital letters and instead focuses on Christianities, Judaisms, Islams, and Buddhisms in the plural. It allows for innovations, transformations, and reinterpretations of religions and does not assume that boundaries between religions necessarily represent boundaries of identity or solidarity of greatest importance.

To give an example: Pentecostal and charismatic groups in Latin America and Africa have partially redefined what Christianity means. Of course, one could attempt to separate the “truly” Christian elements in doctrine and worship from “pagan” African or “Catholic” Latin American elements, but this would be an exercise in theology in order to distinguish orthodoxy from heterodoxy, orthopraxis from heteropraxis. From my perspective, it is much more interesting and fruitful to study such religions on their own terms, namely as they are practiced.

This proposed perspective has an impact on how we see the ability of religions to coexist peacefully with other religions, or to contribute to global pacification. Obviously, this is not a timeless property of any religion. The same religious traditions have produced or contributed to a great variety of religions (as systems of meaningful practices). All religious traditions have therefore known periods of conflict, as well as of peaceful coexistence; of strict demarcation and polemics, as well as of respectful communication, assimilation, or even identification. A brief look at the early history of Buddhism or Christianity teaches us that seemingly peaceful and apolitical religions were transformed into state religions within a couple of centuries. Who would be so naïve to assume that this did not profoundly transform these religions, their structure of authority, and strategies of legitimation, their worship practices, ethics, and doctrines?