Cross Cultural & Historical Study of Religion

The Cross-Cultural and Historical Study of Religion

In the study of religion, even more than in other fields, a problem arises when the researcher or student imposes his or her own categories and values upon the material. What results is a distortion of the actual beliefs and practices of the religion, since the student is seeing through an inappropriate lens, or filter. Yet, since religion is so fundamentally about what is most important to us, and what we believe to be the most true of reality, it is difficult to avoid this kind of distortion.

For example, in her book, Encountering God, Diana Eck (1993) noted that most of the Christian movement still does not accept a truly pluralist perspective in regard to the world's religions. In general, the most liberal viewpoint still remains inclusivist by nature. Inclusivism, to her, means that the individual still views other religions as lesser than Christianity, although included within it as a partial revelation of the truth. While this is an advance over an exclusivist position, which argues that other religions are entirely mistaken and outside of the route to salvation, it still judges other religions in terms of the Christian tradition. Thus, the religions are not completely rejected, but they are also not understood and appreciated on their own terms.

The intent in the following pages is to examine some of the problems involved in the cross-cultural and historical study of religion and some of the way

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from inside one tradition at the practices of another. There are different approaches to the issue. Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza (1982) advocates the use of what she terms a "hermeneutic of suspicion," in which Biblical texts are examined for their patriarchal assumptions. It is her contention that the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible are culturally determined documents and that because the culture at the time was deeply patriarchal, the writings are distorted in that direction. To reveal the true word of God, then, requires the critic to peel back the layers of distortion to uncover the kernel of truth and meaning. In a similar approach, although not dealing with gender issues, Itumelung Mosala (1989) explored the book of Micah in order to uncover the social and class issues that underlie the ultimate composition of that book. For him, the different aspects of the text reveal at least a partial history of the class and social struggles of the time, with similar results to that in regard to women. While Schussler-Fiorenza noted that the lives and struggles of women tend to be obscured by the text, because they were subordinate, Mosala noted that the lives and struggles of the poor tend to be obscured, because they were unimp

Category: History - C