1.1 What is religion?  (Page 5/6)

The universal religions, on the other hand, have divorced themselves from a specific society to such an extent that they have become "portable". They can adapt themselves to almost any society in which they find themselves. Universal religions are clearly oriented towards converting people of other faiths. Christianity, Buddhism and Islam are the most often quoted examples of universal religions. Keep in mind, though, that there are always "mixed" types. For instance, Hinduism contains aspects of all three these types, depending on whether one investigates it on the village, caste or philosophical level.

But there is a problem with this classification system, useful as it is, if we are looking for the essence of religion. It simply classifies traditions according to their missionary zeal, or lack of it. In terms of this system, classical Marxism-Leninism, with its drive to "world communism" would have to be classified as a "universal religion". While there are some scholars who maintain that it was precisely that, it is problematic to call this philosophy, which denied the truth-claims of all religious systems, a religion. In other words, we cannot use this classification to define religion as something that tries to convert other people. More fundamentally, conversion is mainly a concern of the universal religions; the other groups care much less about it. In essence, it says that there is a group of missionary religions and two kinds of non-missionary religions. But how can one use a defining characteristic of one group to set up a system that then goes on to define all the groups? In other words, isn't this like the old South Africa, where you were either "white" or some kind of "non-white"?

This shows us that we can never look at religious phenomena with a blank mind, ready to receive "what is out there". Our previous experience always colours our perceptions. Not that this is fatal to good thinking, as long as the reality of the influence of this previous experience is recognised and used positively. Thus, classification systems, although useful, cannot give us the essence of religion, either. All they do is reflect our existing ideas about religion.

This shows us that we can never look at religious phenomena with a blank mind, ready to receive "what is out there". Our previous experience always colours our perceptions. Not that this is fatal to good thinking, as long as the reality of the influence of this previous experience is recognised and used positively. Thus, classification systems, although useful, cannot give us the essence of religion, either. All they do is reflect our existing ideas about religion.

What can we learn from all this? Simply that religion is NOT a SINGLE thing. To understand religion, we must accept that it is a composite, something made up out of many things, any one (or even more!) of which may be present or absent without affecting the "religious" nature of the whole. We cannot isolate a single aspect such as belief or worship or prayer and set that apart as the "essence" of religion.