Anthropology of Religion

The purpose of this research is to examine ways in which the difference between oral and written culture affects the ritual life, with reference to the religious traditions of Christianity and Buddhism, as well as the religion of the Lakota/Teton Native American tradition. The plan of the research will be to set forth the cultural context in which the anthropology of religion predicated of a linguistic tradition marked by written and unwritten modes of communication may be discerned, and then to discuss how the linguistic shape that a culture assumes may have an impact on the ritual practices of Buddhist, Christian, and Native American cultures.

That there is a connection between the shape of cultural development and the language of a given culture has long been acknowledged by the scholarly community. As Wells puts it: "[W]hat a common language does do, is to show that a common intercourse has existed, and the possibility of intermixture; and if it does not point to a common origin, it points at least to a common future" (Wells 125). Undoubtedly, a religious belief helps define the shape of a given culture. But this definition has a certain circularity, inasmuch as religious expression must be a product or function of embedded--and idiosyncratic--cultural forms and customs. As Eliade explains:

If one goes to the trouble of penetrating the authentic meaning of an archaic myth of symbol . . . this meaning shows a recognition of a certain situation in the cosmos and that, conse

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gels likens the gnostic focus on "the solitary, interior path" to that of Buddhism (174). Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, tended to "sacralize" religious experience, finding ritual coincidences to "sanction" major events and stages of the (social) human life cycle: "the sharing of food, in the eucharist; sexuality, in marriage; childbirth, in baptism; sickness, in anointment; and death, in funerals" (Pagels 176). The gnostic line of thought was consistent with a life of religious solitude. The effect of inventing orthodox ritual to invite theology itself, or the elaboration of supporting or explanatory texts with regard to ritual, as well as a community of faith and eventually an institutional framework marked by a whole range of ritual codes and a specific canon of doctrinal authority. An authorized belief system codified in such text-driven rituals as the mass and the sacraments enabled Christianity to conform as it spread, irrespective of political or ethnic organization and despite the eventual division between secular and religious institutions. The authority of text also meant that Christianity could even survive internal reformation and sectarianism; Protestant sects "remained within the basic framework of ortho

Category: Philosophy - A