Religion: Just What Is It? 

By Jacob Rumble 27/08/1936 – 28/06/2019
Written 23 May 2015

So what is this thing called religion? An endlessly fascinating aspect of religion is that so many people are so confused about it. This is often infuriating and frustrating but it also carries a potential for better understanding.

The dictionary offers the usual traditional definition: Religion is a belief in a divine or superhuman power to be worshipped as the creator of the universe. A Roman Catholic philosopher says that the essence of religion is authority and obedience. A Protestant philosopher speaks of it as a feeling of absolute dependence. A liberal philosopher describes religion as primarily one’s conscious concern for self and fellowmen growing out of an effort to find meaning in the universe and to create the good life on earth. An agnostic tells us that religion is, quite simply, to do good. A sociologist pronounces an obituary on religion by saying that it is, in most people, a “hotchpotch mixture of amateur cosmology, private superstitions and neuroses, fossil folklore, conformity, guilt, fear, and impulses toward common decency.” As most of us know, the word religion comes from the Latin word religio meaning “to tie fast,” or “to bind together”.

To some of us, religion is a good word, but for others it has acquired a bad or dubious reputation. We talk a great deal about it, but we are remarkably unclear as to what religion is or what being religious means in our lives. A noteworthy sign of the times is that we commonly hear people of character and worth saying, “I don’t have any religion” or “I am not religious.” As this word is understood in the liberal tradition, many essentially religious persons think they are not so, while even more people whom we would have to term irreligious consider themselves very religious indeed.

Shortly before he went to prison for his crimes, a notorious gangster had dinner with Dr Billy Graham. After telling newsmen that the evangelist was not trying to convert him, the gangster said, “I have lied, stolen, sworn, murdered, committed adultery and so forth – but one thing I am thankful for: I have never lost my religion.” The interpretations of religion are fascinating without end!

Freethinkers like Voltaire and Tom Paine were considered enemies of religion in their day: devout folk were sure they were out to destroy it. Yet there have always been others who have been able to see in these honest doubters a religious quality, even if unconventional. 

What do people mean by religion anyway? What is a religious person? If we are to use these terms responsibly we must try to include in them Schweitzer’s reverence for life, the Catholic’s colourful ritual of the Mass, the cosmic piety of Einstein whose vision transcended a personal God, the Bible-believing of a Protestant, the Jew’s faith in a righteous God, and the beliefs and rituals of devout Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists. All of these aspects are seen by their advocates as the essence of religion. To say the least, the word does not carry any uniform meaning any longer – if it ever did. For someone to say he has no use for religion, or that he is or is not religious, leaves us almost totally in the dark as to what kind of person he actually is, what he is rejecting or accepting.

How could such confusion have arisen as to the very meaning of a word in such constant use as this one has been, with so many trained professionals labouring so long to expound and demonstrate its meaning? Somewhere the distinction which John Dewey made in his classic A Common Faith, between “religion” and “the religions” has escaped us. We are somewhat in the position of a man who has been the victim of poorly administered law courts, unwise laws, or corrupt police and have come to feel that “there is no justice.” Religion and the religions, the universal and the particular, have been allowed to become mixed up with each other, so that often when we think we are talking about one we are really talking about the other. One result is that the average Catholic, Buddhist, Protestant, Moslem or Jew is under the impression that what he has is religion, when what he actually has is a religion or, more properly, a part of one. We think of religion as embodied in churches, temples, prayers, scripture-reading, the concept of God, or listening to sermons. In fact, these activities and institutions are not necessarily religious at all; they are merely details of local religions that people practice.

What has happened is so plain that it hardly needs to be argued: it is not religion, but the religions that are the problem. It is not religion, but some of the religions that are being called into question by thoughtful people. It is not truth, but the ways in which human beings today, as always, have organised, institutionalised, formalised, credalised, theologised, ritualised and rationalised their varying perceptions of it. It is some of the religions that lag behind the thrust of thought, the probing social conscience and the scientific understanding men have achieved; and are thus out of touch with the insight we now have into the meaning of religion itself. In every age this fine distinction between religion and the religions, between the true religious spirit and the forms into which it hardens, needs to be kept alertly alive. Failure to bear this in mind is at the root of much of the confusion about what is religious, irreligious, or anti-religious.

People often say, “You know, I haven’t any religion.” Yet these are individuals seeking intelligible meaning and vital purpose in their lives. We, however, must learn to see past this semantic block; they are not without religion, but they can no longer take seriously the beliefs and myths they picked up in childhood. Having rejected these in the process of growing up or thinking things through in later life, they have come to think that they have no religion any more.

The modern outlook in religion says to these seekers: everyone has some religion, whether he is aware of it or not, whether he wants it or not, and whether he knows what it is or not. It may not be a very adequate or mature expression, but everyone has some inner conviction, and it is his responsibility to develop it so that it can help him live effectively. This conviction, such as it is, consists of the values by which he actually lives, and these are not always the same as the beliefs he thinks constitutes his religion. Our religion is our way of life in the most inclusive meaning of that hackneyed phrase – the quality, depth and breadth of our existence, the spirit that animates our living.

Growing one’s own religion is really a kind of adventure – an adventure of the spirit. Three distinct aspects of this adventure in which we are all engaged in one way or another are philosophy, theology, and religion. Among the difficulties we encounter is that these three are constantly being set in opposition to each other, as if one were good and the others bad, which is of course nonsense; and that they are constantly being confused with each other, as if they were merely different names for the same thing. When someone who doesn’t happen to believe in God as ordinarily conceived, is said to have no religion or to be a worthless character, the confusion should be obvious: people are mistaking that persons theology for his religion. 

Our religion, as the “binding-together” of our life, has to do with our commitment to the supreme values of our existence, our convictions on what in life really matters, what is most worthy of our effort and sacrifice. It differs from both philosophy and theology in that while it is also concerned with an integrated view of life, it is not content with a theory that can account for all existence. The religious person is actively devoted to the values to which he or she is committed: these values are held to be of the greatest worth and urgency in the world. As John Haynes Holmes said, “To be compelled to serve an ideal cause by conviction of its enduring value, not merely for ourselves but for humanity and its high destiny, this is religion. Whatever unselfishly occupies as the heart of life, for him is his religion”.

The kind of religious person we are does not depend on what we believe or disbelieve about God, or about the next life. It does depend on the concern we have for the character of our day-to-day experience, for the well being of our fellow-humans and for the contribution we make to the world that gives us life. This religious concern may express itself through a church, as it does effectively for a great many people. But in the world as it now is, it often finds equally effective outlet through avenues in no way connected with organised religion. People who habitually identify religion with churches, gods, and bibles are usually slow to recognise that a truly religious concern for the quality of life is presently running in other channels, often bypassing those used in the past. This is partly because the traditional channels are frequently choked by formalism, the clutter of dead ideas and distaste for fresh and unfamiliar ones. It is partly because our whole life has broadened out in this age. There is real religion outside the churches.

Our regard for quality is alive in every significant field of activity – not only in churches but in schools, laboratories, libraries, social reform movements, legislative chambers, studios, concert halls, theatres, scientific expeditions, sport arenas, magazine stands and so on. We are now coming to understand that any individual, institution or activity is religious when animated by the urge to enrich, broaden, deepen and heighten the quality and meaning of human life, to realise the inner possibilities of human beings. Even the sanctified church or an ordained clergyman may be irreligious or anti-religious if this concern for the quality of the whole of life, for the flowering of man’s inborn potentialities, has no important place in the outlook or spirit of that church or clergyman.

What makes a person irreligious is not his unbelief, his atheism, humanism or his agnosticism. It is his lack of caring for life around him. What makes him religious is not his belief in God, or his participation in rites and ceremonies. Rather, it is his sympathies, his understandings, his sensitivity and his reverence for the potentialities in people, his appreciation of the gift of life and of the world to which he belongs, and the way he bears his responsibilities as a contributor to the well being of his world. Emerson once remarked that it is the way of the spirit to build itself a house, then to grow too great for the house any longer to contain it, and finally to leave the house behind. 

The modern religious outlook suggests to us that we have tended to think too narrowly of the spirit of man, that we have been too long content to have it shackled to certain established concepts and fixed forms that bear the conventional label of religion. Meanwhile the religious spirit in its infinite creativity flows on, escaping the neat little boxes in which we try to imprison it because of the limitations of our human minds. Religion is forever leaving behind the ideas, institutions and habits to which men in the past have attached its name. The spirit is forever outgrowing the house it has built for itself. If religion means anything, it means the continual evolution of one’s sense of values concerning oneself, one’s fellowmen and one’s universe.

In his definition of religion, John Haynes Holmes, long ago put this potent truth into persuasive words:

“Religion is a mysterious, mystic impulse working within us to make us greater than we are, and the world through us better than it is; to lift us to levels above the low range of appetite and satisfaction; to drive us to goals beyond the prudential goals of time and sense. Religion belongs distinctively to man, not because he can think, speculate, build churches or rear altars, but because he can sense the whole of life, catch a vision of the ideal in things real, and because he is willing to give his life to fulfilling this vision among men.”

The important thing is not that you are a Protestant or a Catholic, a Unitarian or a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, a Hindu or a Buddhist, but that you are a human being, seeking to express in your life more of goodness, beauty, truth and love than you have yet achieved or dreamed. As such, you belong to a fellowship greater than any of the religions that has ever existed. As such, you worship at the Temple of Humanity; a temple not yet built, but in the process of being built, albeit painfully slowly. In that temple, all those who love, all those who aspire, all those who strive to think clearly, to act responsibly, shall know themselves as one.

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Jacob and his wife Monica started attending the Cape Town Unitarian Church in the '60's. They eventually became members and brought their three children to church with them. They were active members and Jacob led the Sunday services from time to time. He was a deep thinker and wrote prolifically about his thoughts on our role in the world whether from a religious or moral perspective.