Religion: historical, cultural, and contemporary perspectives

Religion is truly a lived experience. In today's volatile world, with world events hinging on various interpretations of religious texts perhaps more than in any other time in human history save, perhaps, during the Crusades, humanity is increasingly aware that religion is not a stoic object of study. Rather, it is a living breathing force in which we live and which inhabits us, whether we seek it or not.

Robert Orsi's edited work, "Gods of the City," provides vivid evidence of how and why religion is a lived experience. The best example of this, perhaps, lies in Karen McCarthy Brown's "Ecological Dissonance and Ritual Accommodation in Haitian Vodou." Here, Brown chronicle the unique religious subtexts and culture of Haitians living in New York.

Mama Lola, a Brooklyn Vodou priestess I have worked with for more than fifteen years, originally thought that her move away from Haiti would be a move away from the Vodou spirits as well. At that time, she said, 'I don't think I'm going to need no spirit in New York.' Yet whenever she tells this story, she quickly adds, 'And I was wrong!' Mama Lola found that the same pain and struggle that required the help of Vodou spirits in Haiti were present in New York, although in different forms, and if the problems were there, the spirits had to be there too. But how could the spirits be active in New York if they were tied to the particular spaces and places of Haiti? Mama Lola's solution to this cosmo-logistical problem is, on the surface at least, deceptively simple. 'The spirit is a wind,' she says. 'Everywhere I go, they going too... To protect me.' (Orsi, 79)

Here, Brown provides a perfect example of the nature of the force Orsi tries to compile into his volume. The spirit of religion transcends space entirely. Mama Lola thought she had no need for religion when she moved from Haiti to New York, but she found immediately that she was wrong.

In fact, perhaps she found a greater need for Vodou away from her homeland, now living in her newly adopted homeland. In New York, she resumed her connectivity to religion by becoming a Vodou priestess. Here, Brown illustrates the fact that yes, perhaps religion transcends issues of space, but perhaps more accurately, humans create their own sense of space with religion, their own sense of community.

For Mama Lola, the Haitian spirits easily convert to her new York life as they, like the wind, follow her to protect her. But rather than comment only on the spiritual, Brown notes the practical effect that religion has had on a sense of community in Haitian circles in New York:

There is another, perhaps more important, way in which Mama Lola and many other Haitians living in New York remain in touch with the spirits: they return to Haiti. While Haitians in New York may suffer the melancholy that comes from being away from home, they do not suffer the trauma of cosmic proportions that their African ancestors did when they realized that home was irrevocably lost. Even the sizeable number of Haitians in New York City who are undocumented aliens, and therefore cannot at the present time travel back and forth between New York and Haiti, have reason to hope that this will not always be their condition." (ibid)

In the exploration portion of this paper, the paper will further examine how exactly religion impacts every day life and how it maintains a sense of the past.

Essay 1b

Robert Orsi's compilation truly demonstrates how religious activity sustains an understanding and awareness of the past. For Orsi and the authors in "Gods of the City," the importance of religion is not so much to find a pathway to eternity, or a route to salvation; rather, it is a method to ground oneself in one's past, to sustain a belief in culture more than in any group of deities.

In order to explore this idea, this paper will closely examine Karen McCarthy Brown's "Ecological Dissonance and Ritual Accommodation in Haitian Vodou" chapter of Orsi's book. We may begin with a critical paragraph:

The significance of the earth is, in the final analysis, its ability to connect human beings with their ancestors and with the Vodou spirits. The soil, which contains both the bones of the ancestors and the seeds of the next harvest, provides the context for exchange among the living, the dead, and the spirits. The living need the spirits to come from Ginen, the watery world below the earth, and to possess their "horses" in order for those spirits to gain voice and body. The living need the blessings, advice, and protection that only these embodied spirits can give. The spirits and ancestors, in turn, need to be nourished by the praise, the gratitude, and, most of all, the libations and food offerings that only the living can provide." (Orsi, 84)

Here, religion and spirits contribute directly to a connection to history and to their ancestors. That is the key to the Haitians' belief: Even if they are far from home, and even if they cannot return to their motherland, they are connected through a living, breathing immersion in their religion, in their belief in Vodou and their spirituality.

Indeed, those are the blessings of which Brown speaks: the ability to connect to ancestors through spirituality. In this manner, the ancestors are constantly a part of the Haitians' lives.

Brown successfully actually grounds the spirituality and religion in the actual soil. That is the clearest assessment of how religion sustains an idea of the past and of ancestors; and this is how the Haitians go about being religious.

And although Brown and Orsi provide the evidence of Haitians' religion grounded through and for the past, this interpretation translates across cultures and religions. Hindus, for instance, are incredibly awed by their past and their ancestors, and they too ground their spirituality and religion in the actual soil, but planting ancestors' spirits in the soil in their homes' compounds.

In Hawaii, gravesites are often constructed at the place of an ancestor's death, and spirituality is grounded in those sites. This is very similar to Brown's observations of Haitian religion and spirituality.

But the soil, in Brown's assessment, not only grounds in the past, but looks to the future as well. That is exactly what a "living religion" entails. This returns us to Mama Lola: The wind, the spirit, follows her and represents not only a connection to her past and to her ancestors, but also her faith in her future. Her future is physically tied to the wind, physically tied to her spirituality.

This tie to both the past and the future results automatically in a more secure present. This secure present helps Brown's Haitians and all other cultures with feelings of displacement and longing. Take, for instance, the following paragraph:

Africans enslaved in Haiti knew they could not return to their homeland. This realization was traumatic for many reasons. High on the list was loss of contact with the land, literally with the earth of the homeland, and therefore with the protection of the ancestors buried in that earth. The profundity of the loss may help to explain the significant cosmological shift that accompanied it:

Africa was "spiritualized" and transposed to the New World where it became an invisible but directly accessible parallel world lying beneath the feet of displaced Africans. It is a matter of some importance that, with Africa lodged there, both the Vodou spirits and the ancestors could once again receive the libations poured for them. In contemporary Haiti, people use the word "Ginen" to refer both to the continent of Africa that lies across the Atlantic and to the home of the spirits and the ancestors that is found in the water beneath the earth on which they stand." (Orsi, 82)

Here, Brown details the link that spirituality provides from the past to the future. The Ginen term, for instance, does not refer to a past in a distant motherland; rather, like for Mama Lola, the term Ginen is something that follows a culture wherever it may currently reside.

Terms and beliefs such as the Ginen define the present through linking the past and the future. After all, as Brown comments, Africa was spiritualized and transposed to fit a current model of life that did not even exist in Africa.

On the level of everyday life, this translates into a displaced group of people acting eclectically in their belief structure and day-to-day meanderings. A Haitian crossing guard, for instance, in New York, performing a job that does not even exist in his native Africa, and exists in very little capacity in Haiti, still links to his past beliefs through a transposable religious spirituality.

That is the true value of a living religion. Rather than being grounded solely in a past that in reality does not exist for practitioners of Vodou, the religion is grounded in the past, yes, but with a vision to securing the future and with a vision to adapting the religion to events that actually constitute the practitioners' lives in the New World.

But that is where the Haitian Vodou religion actually is more adaptable than many mainstream religions practiced in America. Christianity, Judaism and Catholicism all tie their practitioners down to certain restricting activities: whether it is going to church on Sundays, refusing to eat pork, or other historical cornerstones of the religion.

Vodou simply is like the wind, simply follows the practitioner wherever he or she may go, and allows flexibility in its practice.

Mama Lola surely does not feel restricted by the religion of Vodou; rather, she feels empowered and secure in her belief and, more importantly, in her future well-being.

But at the same time, Brown's interpretation of Vodou's everyday practice does not erode the historical significance of the Haitians' spirituality: Vodou, after all, is still grounded heavily in the past, but it does not manifest itself in actions the practitioners absolutely cannot take if they are to be pious.

Rather, Vodou's historicism and grounding in the past is more conceptual, with its everyday practice being tailored to each individual's needs, wants and religious beliefs.

Vodou, through Brown's eyes, is the quintessential displaced religion in America: It is a powerful connection to the past that does not constrict growth in everyday life in the future.

Essay 2a

Religion varies in its fervor, influence and funding across the globe, but nowhere so much as it does in America. America, the quintessential pluralistic society, presents a major challenge to those who raise money on behalf of religious groups and organizations.

In America, religion is not as tied to everyday life as it is in many other countries. Of course, people go to church on Sundays, but even the most devout Christians, for instance, do not necessarily live life with God always in focus throughout the rest of the week.

This lack of constant immersion in religion is compounded by the sheer variety of religions present in America. Take, for instance, the ongoing debate over whether the pledge of allegiance, mentioning "God," may be recited in classrooms or whether its recitation is unconstitutional.

No country in the world save America would even debate such a question, but what makes it even more interesting is that Americans, cowboys in their lifestyles, are generally very conservative spiritually and socially. For instance, the "cowboy" Horatio Alger view of the American is linked both to an incredibly dangerous wild-west explorer image and to a devout set of Judao-Christian morals and ideals as well.

The contradiction may be explained by the fact religion is almost a luxury item in America. In Pakistan, for instance, an Islamic republic, most of the population prays five times a day, and most activities are thought of in terms of Islam. School teachings are based around the religion even in the more liberal, westernized schools, let alone the maddrasses.

Orsi in his "Gods of the City" presents many essays which detail exactly how religion is relevant in America. He selects authors who paint a fluid image of religion, such as Brown's depiction of Haitians in New York. However, we must look to "Selling God" by Lawrence Moore to get a real sense of the challenges that religious organizations face in order to survive and thrive.

Lawrence Moore first links the education level of a society with religion's success in that society:

In the seventeenth century in some parts of colonial America, Protestantism's encouragement of literacy seemed to be working in exactly the right way. Many people could read, but their reading habits reinforced orthodoxy rather than encouraged questioning. People read to sustain their faith. To be sure, the widespread ability to read also spread news of religious dissent that stirred all the American colonies both in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Yet interestingly, the dissenters who caused the most trouble, antinomians of one sort or another and emotional revivalists, were often the ones who placed the least emphasis on reading and intellectual discourses shaped by reading. If anything can be judged by quantifying the various categories of colonial print material, we may cautiously conclude that Protestant religion was the great beneficiary of the colonial press. Reading did not undercut the large amount of deference accorded to appointed and elected leaders."

In other words, Moore believed that reading was performed mainly to sustain faith. Today, reading and education levels are still a challenge for leaders of religious organizations charged with keeping their faiths thriving.

Today, with the proliferation of many religions in pluralistic America and the variety of internet and print and television news sources, Americans are not at a loss for information. In fact, there is an information overload in this country that exacerbates an already confusing spiritual situation given the sheer number of major religions active in America.

Since all religion is based more on faith than on science, and media information is mainly science-oriented, religions struggle to disseminate information that will help their organizations thrive and they also struggle to counterbalance the threat posed by education and familiarity with other options.

Religions in America compete with much more than simply atheism. Rather, American religious groups must contend with information, other religions, religious apathy, and truly, various other forms of entertainment.

Moore discusses these elements of competition both directly and indirectly in his work. Where the colonial American Protestant religion was a beneficiary of the print media, today, with the exception of such conservative bastions as Fox News, journalists belong to a fourth estate which looks at all things that demand no questions, such as religion, with a certain degree of skepticism.

Since religion does not have any vehicles to propound their own philosophies as does the generally more liberal media, religion must find other ways to succeed and thrive. For Moore, this means actually marketing the concept of God and the concept of belief.

Religious groups must follow the Haitian example set forth by Brown in Orsi's book: Religions cannot hold true to only their traditionality. Rather, they must adapt with the times. Catholicism, for instance, has taken a lot of criticism for its overly prudish stance on sexuality. In a day and age that is rampant with both minor sexually transmitted diseases and major ones such as HIV / AIDS, a religion simply is not viable if it insists that contraception is frowned upon.

A religion that insists on holding true only to the past and its history and ancestors simply cannot thrive in today's pluralistic and information-swamped American society.

That is why Mama Lola's practice of Vodou is so effective and so telling. She holds on to those historical and traditional elements that translate to her everyday life, not to those elements that hinder her everyday life. If American religious groups are to successfully "sell God," they must follow suit and allow their practitioners much leeway in their belief structures.