Newspeak: Religion (part 3)

Before moving on to something other than my nominalism about the word 'religion,' I'd just like to point out a few more problems with it.

First of all, 'religion' as the term is used in 'comparative religions' is relatively meaningless. If by 'religion' those who use the term mean one's view of the world, the ultimate reality, and human nature, then those who study comparative religions should study atheism, deism, the Transcedentalism of Emerson, hedonism, and all the other sorts of beliefs that have brought about comparative religious studies. If by 'religion' they mean any belief in something greater than man or existing on a level different from him, they still should study theosophy, fairies, UFO's, hero-worship, and other similar phenomenon. Either way, the term 'religion' is being used inconsistently. And the result of this inconsistent usage is that people separate themselves from what they are studying so that they think they have an objective, third-person viewpoint, when in fact the worldview from which they look at religion is just as parochial and limited a worldview as every other.

The other problem with the word 'religion,' unlike all those previously mentioned, comes from the internal perspective of those who might consider themselves religious.



This problem analogous to the problem Chesterton pointed out in how we discuss men and women. When a marriage is having problems, those in it tend to use the modern parlance of "working on their relationship." As Chesterton said, this makes it sound like man and woman are two objects that are placed in some external relationship with each other, like a chair and a table may be placed in some relationship to each other. It is not the relationship that each needs to work on, so much as loving the other; they aren't dealing with an abstraction but with a person.

Similarly, for each of the world's three significant monotheistic religions--and I apologize to all of you for listing you together as if you were all one type--religion is not an abstraction. It is also about a Being, about a Person or Persons. As C.S. Lewis points out in That Hideous Strength, really Christian people don't talk about religion. They talk about God.