Religion: A Crash Course

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Adam Ford

• Publisher: Ivy Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781782408734
• eBook ISBN: 9781782408741
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Religions flourish everywhere around the planet, shaping people’s lives, providing meaning and spiritual guidance in a perplexing world, giving comfort in times of distress. Divided into 52 sections and grouped into four chapters Religion: A Crash Course takes a geographical approach. It covers the ancient religions that emanate from the Indian subcontinent, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism through to the Abrahamic faiths of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims of Arabia and Europe. The third section looks at the way Indian religions found their way to China and Japan, mingling Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto. Finally, the less well-documented tribal religions of Africa, Australasia, and the Americas are explored as well as recent phenomena in the New World: the Mormons, Rastafarians, and Pentecostalists.

1
MANY GODS & NO GOD IN ASIA

Sentient beings are numberless: I vow to save them.

Passions are inexhaustible: I vow to extinguish them.

Dharmas are immeasurable; I vow to master them.

Buddha’s truth is incomparable; I vow to attain it.

BODHISATTVA VOW

INTRODUCTION

The religions of the Indian subcontinent are so mixed and varied, so wide in their beliefs and non-beliefs, that they provide as colorful a spectrum of alternatives as can be found anywhere in the world.

Biodiversity of beliefs

The indigenous Indian religion Hinduism is ancient and without a named historical founder; it shelters such a complex and massively varied collection of beliefs and practices, gods and goddesses, philosophies and popular devotions, that it can be compared to the rich biodiversity of a forest. Like a natural forest it has grown, evolved, and changed over the millennia. Esoteric mysticism, for example, is able to flourish side by side with popular tree worship; while belief in a single Supreme Being, the One, sits happily with the colorful polytheism that covers Hindu temples with a pantheon of painted gods and divine animals. The origins of this great religious movement can be traced back four thousand years to the culture of Indo-Aryan invaders from southern Russia, the same people who invaded Europe at a similar time. The name Hindu is from a Persian word meaning river, having particular reference to the great River Indus (same root), which separated Persia and the West from the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Traditionally, however, Hindus have called their religion Sanatana Dharma in Sanskrit, roughly meaning the “eternal teaching” or “eternal religious order.” The conquering Aryans quickly imposed their will on the indigenous peoples of India (Dravidians and others), absorbing some of the local gods and established rigid control of society through a pattern of social order called the caste system. For well over a thousand years the organization of religious practice was dominated by a Brahmin priesthood.

Rebirth and reincarnation

A common theme running throughout the various religions of India is belief in reincarnation: that death is followed by rebirth, each of us having experienced a multitude of lives as we are reborn again and again. Each individual is responsible for the way they live and is able to make spiritual progress through this chain of rebirths by building up a store of good karma. This belief offered hope to those born in the lower castes of society—perhaps next time they would be born higher up the social scale. Alongside this belief is a cyclical view of history holding that, as with individual lives, great eras of history come and go, experiencing birth, growth, and death, but through vast eons of deep time.

An individual path

A new individualism was emerging in northern India around 500 years BCE; cities were growing, partly fueled by the development of iron technology. Traditional patterns of rural society were being replaced in urban centers and the needs of individuals were changing. They yearned for something that was not being satisfied by the elaborate ceremonies and sacrifices of the priest-dominated system of the Brahmins. The Buddha, himself a city dweller, was alert to these needs and responded by developing a new radical way of understanding the world, offering a spiritual path for the individual: one that went beyond the popular gods of traditional Hinduism (but without denying them) and offered the possibility of finding inner peace in the ineffable state of Nirvana. Equally important and attractive was that the Path he taught was available to anyone, whatever their caste. The Buddha’s teaching was so radical that he even gave up all ideas of there being a Creator God, and on these grounds some commentators have suggested that Buddhism is not really a religion at all but an atheist philosophy.

The same social unease produced another great revolutionary thinker in the days of the Buddha: Mahavira, founder of the Jain faith (which also dispenses with any concept of a divine creator), a religion known for its extreme respect for all life right down to the level of insects. The doctrine of ahimsa—“non-harming”—permeates Jainism’s whole worldview and has even influenced some modern non-violent political movements, such as that of Mahatma Gandhi.

New faiths

While the Buddha and others were exploring new forms of spirituality, another religion was developing north-west of the River Indus: Zoroastrianism, which arose from the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster. A unique feature of this faith is that it viewed the world as the scene of a great conflict between the forces of good and evil. Later, in the seventh and eighth centuries, many followers of this religion fled into India from Muslim persecution, and came to be known as the Parsees (“Persians”).

Finally, the sixteenth century saw the rise of Sikhism—an overtly monotheist faith founded by Guru Nanak, who aimed to reform religious society by making it casteless, open to everyone, and taking what he considered to be the best from Hinduism and Islam. His followers proudly defended this new religion by becoming effectively a military community when persecuted by the Mughal rulers of India.

BIOGRAPHIES

GURU NANAK (1469–1538)

Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was born a Hindu in the Punjab (present-day Nankana Sahib, Pakistan), although he leaned rather more to the simplicity of Islam in his teaching. He started adult life in the service of a Muslim official, but an inner restlessness made him quit his post, as he was much happier in the presence of yogis and other holy men. A religious experience transformed the direction of his life. When bathing one time, so the story goes, he disappeared. He did not return for three days, having been, in his words, “summoned to the Court of God” (possibly indicating a silent retreat in the forest). From then on he traveled widely, as a religious reformer, teaching men and women to find the Truth that lay behind Hindu and Muslim practice. He was influenced in his thinking by Kabir (1440–1518), a Muslim weaver from Benares who also claimed to have had a personal experience of the divine, referring to God in his poetry as the Beloved. Nanak, with his own songs, poems, and clarion calls for the Truth, attracted many followers, who came to be called Sikhs (meaning “disciples”). For the final years of his life, he lived as leader of a community on land given by a wealthy follower, and appointed Guru Lehna, whom he re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Many Gods & No God in Asia
• 2 One God in Western Faiths
• 3 China, Japan & The Pacific
• 4 Africa, Australia & The Americas
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• Index
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Picture credits
• Dedication
• Copyright