Your religion… is it bigger than a breadbox?

Last updated on: December 17, 2014 at 2:21 pm by Leah Libresco

Your religion… is it bigger than a breadbox? 2014-12-17T14:21:32-05:00 Leah Libresco

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve been meaning for a while to highlight an interesting project that Christian H has been carrying out on his blog: coming up with taxonomies for religions. And I’m a big fan of the reason he started this project:

While trying to find ways to frame my understanding of different religions, and different individuals’ religion, is a worthwhile activity in itself, I would be lying if I claimed that my primary motivation was anthropological or psychological. Rather, I’ve primarily been imagining that this project would be useful for writing fiction: in a realist context, for creating a plausible variety of plausible religious characters (including those who believe themselves irreligious*); in a fantastic context, for creating a plausible variety of plausible religious characters and for creating a plausible variety of plausible fictional religions. If you write or worldbuild for any other reason, I suspect it might also be useful to you; the place where I can imagine this happening the most for the most people would be when playing D&D or some other tabletop RPG.

Christian comes up with a bunch of interesting questions, to help you as writer/character creator/anthropologist get a feel for a (real or fictional!) religion and the way it shapes the life of its followers. For instance, is the religion mostly about following specific, concrete rules, applying more abstract/highfalutin’ maxims to the choices we face in life, or finding a way to make the right kind of story out of your life? He does a good job connecting these prompts back to the literature (not exclusively of religion–Judith Butler turns up, too).

A few preliminary comparisons come to mind. The view of religion as obedience to commands sounds an awful lot like what Tillich describes as a juristic type of faith, and the view of religion as application of universal principles sounds like Tillich’s ethical type of faith, though it also sounds like Tillich’s element of prophetic self-criticism in its willingness to change according to context. Meanwhile, the view of religion as the attempt to give an account of oneself to the universe, or to God, sounds somewhat like the experience of holiness as judgement over the present that Tillich says characterizes the moral type of faith. I would be hesitant, though, to equate the view of religion as a provider of answers with the experience of holiness in the here and now; at most they seem alike in their focus on finding something in the world before you. The two schemas seem to have some overlap, but they differ enough that I don’t think we should collapse them together, or at least not quite yet.

I think readers of this blog will have a lot of fun exploring Christian’s posts (index post for his sequence here) and he’d appreciate your comments and suggestions. Personally, I find it quite helpful because it offers a script for examining religion that isn’t the one we’re used to, which may have been too tainted by past arguments to be able to provoke inquiry and curiosity (cf my posts on exploring philosophies in a LARPing spirit).

Christian’s project reminds me a bit of a Sorting Hat typology that recently caught fire among my friends. I’ll link you all to the About page for the details, but the very fast explanation is that Sorting Hat writers classify the houses according to two dimensions: Idealist/Loyalist and Felt/Constructed. Idealist houses are focused on the Good and the True, loyalist houses tend to root their values in the needs of/connections to other individuals. Felt houses have an intuitive connection to whatever motivates them, constructed ones are systematizers. Thus:

Gryffindor: Idealist/Felt
Ravenclaw: Idealist/Constructed
Hufflepuff: Loyalist/Felt
Slytherin: Loyalist/Constructed

The longer explanation at the site is a lot of fun, and they do interesting profiles of how different fictional characters (in Harry Potter and outside it) would fit into their system, Like Christian’s project, it’s a nice way to jumpstart curiosity/exploration as you’re creating a character or even thinking about how to relate to a friend.

I doubt that the Sorting Hat folks have managed to carve reality perfectly at its joints, but flawed/incomplete typologies can still be a big help in getting me to engage with confusion, since it gives me something to start asking, even if it’s “In what way doesn’t this problem/system/person fit well into this typology?” Which always tends to be a better beginning than the non-question: “I’m stuck!”

Oh, and for anyone who’s curious, under the sorting hat typology linked, I’d consider myself: rkgenarbhfenirapynjcevznelfylgurevafrpbaqnelfhcresyhbhf

(That text looks too long because rot13ing doesn’t work well to camouflage short answers of different lengths, so I threw in some dummy text).

Epistemology/Philosophy

Previous Post

December 16, 2014

Tell Your College Women Friends About Arete!

Next Post

December 19, 2014 7QT: Building Imaginary Bridges, Destroying Phantom Boats

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 7 Quick Takes Apologetics Atheism Book Conversion Debate Tactics Debates Epistemology/Philosophy Housekeeping Ideological Turing Test Marriage Morality in Practice Parsing Catholicism Possibly Heretical Radio Reviews/Recommendations Sequence Index Spiritual Practice Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: The Ten Commandments were written on three stone tablets.

Select your answer to see how you score.

FALSE TRUE