The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice

Michael D. Palmer, Stanley M. Burgess, Michael D. Palmer, Stanley M. Burgess

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781119572107, 9781405195478
• eBook ISBN: 9781444355376
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Wiley - Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice brings together a team of distinguished scholars to provide a comprehensive and comparative account of social justice in the major religious traditions.

• The first publication to offer a comparative study of social justice for each of the major world religions, exploring viewpoints within Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism
• Offers a unique and enlightening volume for those studying religion and social justice - a crucially important subject within the history of religion, and a significant area of academic study in the field
• Brings together the beliefs of individual traditions in a comprehensive, explanatory, and informative style
• All essays are newly-commissioned and written by eminent scholars in the field
• Benefits from a distinctive four-part organization, with sections on major religions; religious movements and themes; indigenous people; and issues of social justice, from colonialism to civil rights, and AIDS through to environmental concerns

PART I
Major World Religions

Introduction

The world’s population is currently about 7 billion people. The vast majority – perhaps as many as 84% – are believed to be practitioners of or adherents to a religion or a sacred belief system. About one third claim to be Christian: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, Anglican, Pentecostal, Evangelical, and others. More than a fifth are Muslim: Shiite, Sunni, and others. Hindus make up approximately 14%. Buddhists make up almost 6%, as do adherents to other traditional Chinese religions and belief systems. Practitioners of primal-indigenous religions make up another 6%, while practitioners of all other religions, including Judaism (0.22%) and Sikhism (0.36%), make up the remaining small percentage of religious people. Up to 16% of the world’s people claim to be nonreligious (www.adherents.com).

This part includes twelve essays, two on each of six religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. The first essay for each religion addresses the historical development of the religion’s approach to social justice, with attention to some or all of the following:

• Ideology: the authoritative beliefs, including the moral/ethical norms, that form the central conceptual framework for explaining the religion’s approach to social justice.
• Narratives: central narratives, myths, epics, historical accounts, or other stories that tell something special about the religion’s approach to social justice.
• Practices: the religion’s celebrations, reenactments, and rituals that disclose its approach to social justice.
• Experiences: defining experiences that shape the distinctive social justice beliefs, stories, and practices of its adherents.
• Social arrangements: the religion’s network of social arrangements and institutions that affect how its adherents practice social justice.

The second essay on each major religion focuses on the religion’s approaches toward and expressions of social justice in today’s world.

Given the prevalence and diversity of religious belief and practice throughout the world, what qualifies the six religions discussed here as major world religions?¹ If numbers are the (or at least a) determining factor, then Christianity (one third of the world’s population), Islam (one fifth of the world’s population), and Hinduism (16% of the world’s population) are all surely major world religions. The relevance of numbers for including Buddhism (6% of the world’s population) and Confucianism (exact numbers unknown) among the major world religions is less compelling. A census cannot justify including Judaism among major world religions; at 0.22% of the world’s population, Judaism is tiny.

Judaism fares rather differently if viewed from the perspectives of antiquity and cultural influence, however. Despite its small population it is an ancient religion, which has had a profound impact on western culture in general and Christianity in particular. A similar case can be made for Confucianism, which today has a relatively small population but historically has had enormous cultural reach in central and southeastern Asia. For example, in many southeast Asian countries today, Confucian ideology and practices are so integral to the culture that people do not distinguish sharply between Confucianism and Buddhism.

In the end, the decision to limit the presentation of major world religions to six is somewhat arbitrary. The six presented here are surely important from the standpoint of antiquity and cultural reach. To be sure, they are not the only ancient religions. (Jain, Shint

, Daoist, and Zoroastrian religions are all ancient.) Nor are they the only ones that have shaped culture, if not globally then certainly regionally. (Shint

’s historical impact on the Japanese archipelago of Hokkaid

, Honsh

, Shikoku, and Ky

sh

has been profound.) But each of the six religions highlighted here has a long, rich, and diverse history and each has exerted a profound impact on the larger culture.

Are there more (or fewer) than six major world religions? Is it even necessary to create a category called major world religions? These questions need not be answered here. The central purpose of this section is to present six religions in such a way as to invite the reader to think critically about a range of historical and contemporary issues situated at the intersection of religion and social justice.

Note

1 It is worth noting that the name world religions is not uncontroversial, partly because of its historical connection with European colonialism that began in the fifteenth century but reached its zenith in the nineteenth century. A religion was said to be a world religion if it affected social and political events around the world, presumably placing it on a par with the major European colonial powers. In time the expression fell out of favor with some and was replaced by more inclusive language such as “the world’s religions.”

CHAPTER 1

Buddhism

Historical Setting

Mavis Fenn

New religious movements are not created in a vacuum. They represent a response to concerns, both individual and social, that arise in particular historical circumstances. Their ability to take root, or not, depends on their ability to address these concerns in a manner that engages a significant segment of the broader population. Central to a movement’s ability to attract new members is its ability to debate the issues of the day with the established order and other new groups whose ideas may differ. The seventh to sixth centuries BCE saw significant changes in the Ganges plain area of India; changes that provided great opportunity for some and great suffering for others. Debate about these changes and the possibility of certain knowledge amidst those changes as well as about why there is suffering and what our response to it should be, produced three major world religions: Hinduism, the Jain religion, and Buddhism, our concern in this essay.

The changes were multiple. The development of the iron plow allowed for the intensification of agriculture. Many people were displaced from the land and forced to move into the newly emerging cities. These cities often provided a breeding ground for disease and violence. While agriculture flourished, ownership of the land devolved into the hands of individual families. Politically, there was a shift from an oligarchic tribe/clan system to a system of kingship. Trade flourished, guilds were established, and a banking system developed. The newly emergent mercantile class had money but little status, as the established order had no place for them.

While we cannot enter the minds of the people at the time, it is not difficult to speculate about how these rapid technological, social, and political changes may have affected people psychologically. Themes of identity and the nature of change and suffering are central in the philosophical debates of the time, as are ideas regarding the proper construction of society. Dominant in India from about 1500 BCE to the present is a hierarchical social system rooted in the vision of ancient religious texts called the Vedas. The Vedas are a collection of religious texts brought to India by the Indo-European peoples, various tribes that moved into India perhaps from about 2000 BCE onward. Some groups continued their migration to Iran, and on to Europe. The term “Indo-European” refers to the family of languages that share certain linguistic characteristics and thus to the tribes as a whole.

We cannot understand Buddhism, including its ethics and social concerns, without understanding something about the religion of the groups of Indo-Europeans whose religious vision came to dominate India.

Religious Background

The religion of one of the major Indo-European tribes that migrated into India, the Aryans, was based on a group of texts called the Vedas. These were not written texts. Sound was considered to be sacred and the chanted word was considered to be spiritually efficacious. Received by ancient sages known as rishis, these texts were chanted by priests and passed down to future generations through memorization.

There are four Vedas in all. The oldest is the Rig Veda. This contains a series of hymns to a variety of gods: gods and goddesses of nature like Ushas (Dawn); Indra, the god of war; and Varu

a, the god of order. It also contains foundational stories such as the story of creation. While there is more than one cosmological myth, the one that has predominated is Rig Veda 10.90, the Purusha S

kta. This hymn recounts the creation of everything and presents the worldview that came to dominate Indian religious thought to the present day.

The Purusha S

kta describes creation as the product of sacrifice. The primal being, Purusha, is sacrificed and from this sacrifice the natural world, the supernatural world, the universe, and even the social order are generated. Sacrifice, then, forms the basis of the religious system. Sacrifices are made, hymns of praise to various gods are offered, and petitions for worldly blessings, long life, children, and a place in heaven are made by priests on behalf of the people, and conveyed to the gods by Agni, the god of fire. The gods, if pleased, grant the petitions. And, because sacrifice brought the cosmos into existence, repeated sacrifice maintains that order. Over time, the notion arose that if the sacrifice were performed precisely, the gods were compelled to grant their blessings; since only the priests could perform these major public sacrifices, they gained a great deal of power. As their power grew, so did the number of animals that were sacrificed.

The social order created from the primal sacrifice is hierarchical. The priestly class is dominant, the warrior or noble class comes next, then the peasant class, and finally the servant class. Because it was generated through sacrifice, the social order, like the universe itself, is considered to be eternal, unchangeable, and sacred. Due to a series of philosophical developments, not the least of which was the notion that karma (action) was not only sacrificial action but moral deed, this class system developed into the caste system and the belief that individuals were born into a specific class based on the accumulation of their moral deeds was accepted.

The environment into which Vedic religion was introduced was not a tabula rasa. Prior to the immigration of the Indo-Europeans, the Indus Valley was a thriving civilization with a variety of religious expressions. Archaeologists have found numerous fertility symbols, representing examples of natural, animal, and human fecundity, some dating back to about 2500 BCE. As well, they have unearthed symbols of emaciated male figures seated in meditation poses. Perhaps the most interesting find for students of Indian religions is a figure commonly known as proto-Shiva. Seated in a meditative posture, this male figure wears a helmet of bull horns, the sign of animal fertility, between which vines are growing, a sign of natural fertility. The Hindu god, Shiva, is known both as lord of the animals and for his ascetic prowess. In this figure, then, scholars have seen not only the combination of the two main themes of Indus Valley religion – fertility and asceticism – but the development of a Hindu god from the influence of the indigenous tradition on the newly introduced Vedic religion.

Transformation of Values

Our sense of identity and the comfortableness with which we accept our beli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I: Major World Religions
• PART II: Religious Movements and Themes
• PART III: Indigenous People
• PART IV: Social Justice Issues
• Index