Truth
Explain What Is Religion?
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Religion
What is the meaning of the word religion?
John o’London replied that the popular confusion between religion and Christianity, between religion and particular divisions of faith, between religion and doctrine, and between religion and the churches can be baffling. Christianity may go, faith may faint and fail, doctrine may become rational, churches may fall derelict, their congregations forever dead, but it does not follow that there will be less religion in the world.
While the word is Latin in origin, the Romans did not know whence it came. In modern times, R Graves thought it came from the Latin for “the right thing”, that being what everyone should attend to, to be moral. But the consensus is that it refers to being bound, as by a vow. What was considered binding was someone’s devotion to their god—vows were originally made to gods—and so it remained in its earliest English usage, but, in its true and widest sense, “religion” means simply being bound by, and therefore reverence for, everything held to be sacred, and any manifestation of this feeling. It has to do with belief in something, but it need not be irrational belief or faith, it can be one’s art, principles, society, justice, science, and so on, and it has been used in this sense since before the sixteenth century.
So, what anyone holds for themself to be sacred is their religion, and in so far as they love and persue it, they are religious. The religion of Richard Dawkins is reason, science and evolution, and it is no “religious” slight or insult to him to say it, and nor need he reject this interpretation of it applied to him.
The broader use of the word survives in some of our daily expressions, and, of course, oddly in those which have least connection with divinity. If we say that someone carries out their instructions with “religious care”, or that they take a Turkish bath “religiously” once a week, we are using the word closer to the core of its meaning than when we describe them as religious, meaning he is pious or orthodox or diligent in public worship. In this meaning the word signifies a care or heeding, a persisting zeal—what one would expect from a sincere vow.
Shakespeare again and again uses it thus. In Twelfth Night, Viola has made her exit in a man’s attire:
Sir Toby Belch: A very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a hare.
Fabian: A coward, a most devout coward, and religious in it.
So, also, Henry V says, “My learned lord, we pray you to proceed And justly and religiously unfold Why the law Salique…”.
Jol concluded that we shall disperse much fog when we recognise that anyone’s religion is the sum of the highest things they care for. But one hopes that what someone cares for will be held on sound principles, and not merely on the pious but dangerous hope called faith.
