The History of Religions outside the Academy. Is religious illiteracy a social problem?

di Pietro Piro [*] 

The best men of our time are animated by the impulse to withdraw from all the exteriority of a world deprived of the divine by industrialism, mammonism, democracy, to immerse themselves in the depths of the soul and listen carefully to the mysterious voices that reporting the ‘echo of a better world. It is the poignant desire for mystery. But this anxiety, legitimate today more than ever, easily pushes us to take false paths. Whoever wants to cross the immense sea of mystery must have a safe guide with him. 

Odo Casel, Die Liturgie als Mysterienfeier. 

The History of Religions as a rigorous science? [1]

First of all, I would like to recognise the person who convinced me to dedicate so much time and energy to study the history of religions: Aldo Natale Terrin [2]. There are so many memorable moments that we spent together. I would like to remember him today while we walk in the Black Forest near Freiburg as evening falls. It amused us with great irony comparing The Imitation of Christ [3]  with some passages from Upanisad  [4], which he would cite from memory. I remember, right in that moment, he said to me: “In our whole life we can’t do anything but try to anticipate the moment of farewell”.

I apologise in advance because my participation isn’t meant to be a “scientific contribution”, but a real appeal to your conscience. The occasion of this extraordinary meeting [5] allows me to address the people who I believe carry a particular sensitivity. It’s evident in a world where everything must be measured and valued, made of scales and indexes, religious historians must also produce work that respects formal criteria and strict rules. It seems to me the direction taken in the last few years is this: an attempt to be placed in the field of science [6] with full rights and to exist alongside other disciplines without a sense of inferiority.

I believe this attempt increasingly produces important and rigorous work from the point of view of philology, comparative logic and methodological rigor. However, what I get from reading some of these contributions – every generalisation is wrong – is that they are increasingly “cold”. This coldness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps, in fact, the material that interests religious historians isn’t very different from that of mathematicians, physicists or biologists [7].

I remember what attracted me to religious studies as a twenty year old – and continues to arouse a lasting passion – was that, at the core of the question, there was the possibility to get in touch with what Rudolf Otto called the numinous, something fascinating and dreadful [8]. Therefore, it wasn’t about a similar search to those in other seats of knowledge, but of a progressive approach to a special subject that demands not only great intellectual sacrifices but also a particular human sensitivity.

Approaching the History of Religions meant for me to certainly acquire a complex system of beliefs, gestures, cultural traditions, rituals and many more things still. But this was only the outer wrapping of the question. In fact, it was about progressively acquiring a familiarity with sacred things that, due to their nature, can’t be approached without special attention, sensitivity and preparation. So, it seemed impossible to me to approach this subject without an especially emphatic cultural sensitivity. A sensitivity that exudes from all the religious historians I fed on and which made them, in my eyes, not only scientists, but real “masters”.

Unfortunately, I believe the continued shrinking of public interest in these subjects is the price to pay for such scientific rigor. Inevitably, the more a subject becomes rigorous, strict, academic and the less it is able to arouse interest in large swaths of the population and becomes the professional knowledge that it is, will inevitably be reserved for the few.

I turn to you today with the hope of finding some people with a cultural sensitivity still lit with the passion, the wish to comprehend and the will to improve the society in which we live. This is the reason I accepted to come here today. I am not part of any academy and my life today is a long way from school interests or from particular cultural trends that are fighting for hegemony.

Today I would like you to reflect on what contributions religious historians can make outside an academic context. I do it starting from my three key experiences: the foundation and management of a public library in a poor area of a southern Italian city [9], educational activity in high school and a “pastoral animation” at the Archdiocese of Palermo. Three very different experiences that allow you to directly deal with a wide range of the population and to make evaluations of sound foundations starting with “the daily life” of people today. 

With an eye fixed on the earth 

In 1995 Giovanni Reale published a volume of great interest: Saggezza antica. Terapia per i mali dell’uomo d’oggi [10], in which he supplied a list of evils that characterise our times: 

1)  The scientism and the scaling of man’s reasoning in a technological sense;

2)  The absolutised ideology and forgetting the ideals of truth;

3)  Praxis, with its elation of action for an action and the oblivion of the ideal of Contemplation;

4)  The declaration of material well being as a substitute for happiness;

5)  The spread of violence;

6)  The loss of a sense of form;

7) The loss of Eros to the physical dimension and forgetting the stages of platonic love (and true love);

8) The reduction of man to be one dimensional and individualism taken to the extremes;

9) The loss of the sense of the cosmos and the purpose of everything;

10)  Materialism in all its various forms and the associated oblivion of everything [11]. 

I would add to this list – and I believe all of us can make an addition based on our own sensitivities – that our time is also characterised by: 

11)  The proliferation of increasingly aggressive forms of dependence that make man more and more a totally consumed-consumer. 

All of these observations give us a hint of a widespread progressive and unrelenting devaluation of ideals, universal values, the latest questions and to think hard about the immediate questions of survival, of hoarding, and producing concrete needs.

The global pandemic has strengthened a deep feeling of isolation [12]. A feeling that a universal distrust is spreading and is capable of eroding entire communities and stripping them of their ability to provide guidance that is not only the pursuit of profit. The extraordinarily lucid observations of Jean Baudrillard in 1989 aimed at American society can also be used in our more petty everyday lives: 

«Not trying to look someone in the eye anymore, people end up not seeing each other anymore. People on the street pass each other without looking, which can seem like a sign of distinction and civility, but is also a mark of indifference […] Politics is liberated in this spectacle, in the effect of advertising at any cost, sexuality liberates itself in all the anomalies and perversions possible […] Man changes his ways, changes sex, habits according to what is fashionable and not according to morals, opinions are changed by public opinion rather than one’s own con science […] It’s always the same thing in the majority of films that come out: cars, phones, psychology, makeup […] Advertising does nothing else: A lifestyle is canonised through imagery, making it a real integrated circuit […] Everything has to be made public, your values, how much you earn, how you live – there’s no room to be subtle. Self publicity is the look for today’s society» [13]..

The American idea of an “achieved utopia” [14] has been steamrolled everywhere, spreading a cultural model that is capable of establishing the desires and needs, ways to behave, a mentality, the education system and lifestyles. There isn’t a strip of land left on this earth where the impressive spread of a cultural model based on the logic of technological efficiency, money and competition has not reached.

Even where this model seems opposed to and violently pushed back on, we are only talking about a rejection of some superficial aspects. In daily practices, this model is coveted and wanted as a symbol of the good life. A true “religion of development” [15] assumes a mental conversion has been carried out through brute force, something symbolic or both. But this dream of well-being to the bitter end has its consequences: 

«There is no respite in the economy to stop us consuming more, and endless consumption means changing an illusion to an accelerated pace that, little by little, dissolves the illusion of change. We find ourselves alone, unchanged, frozen in a torrent of gadgets […] Nothing more to be surprised about, here’s the drama! […] A freedom of apathy, a happiness of passivity […] An exchange that haunts all human relationships, all feelings and all thoughts. Wherever it dominates, it remains only in the presence of things; a world of man-object frozen in the organisational charts in a bid to reign; the world of reification» [16]. 

These times aren’t at all like 1984 by George Orwell [17] and much less like Brave New World by Huxley, [18]  but more like the America described by Jean Baudrillard: 

«The constraints have become less hidden, coarser, less efficient and more numerous. Docility doesn’t emanate anymore from clerical magic, but from a group of small hypnoses: information, culture, urbanism and advertising» [19]. 

Essentially, we live in a time in which interest in the sacred, the transcendent, the immaterial, the invisible and the not yet to be is continuing to wane. We live with a withdrawn gaze looking to the ground. Living in this way is exactly why the figure of the religious historian- outside of an academic context- assumes a very particular role: He reminds that, with his wisdom, a higher, more level and sacral dimension exists.

He is, first of all, a witness to a world of rituals, celebratory, magical and liturgical that deviate from everyday life and are reconnected to another narrative that is far more ancient with respect to logic than unrestrained consumerism. The interests, passions and attention that the religious historian addresses to certain aspects of reality are in themselves a strong alternative to the dominant narrative. 

Consumer Religion? 

In 1999, George Ritzer published the volume: Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption, where, starting with the catologue of thoughts by Max Weber, he tried to equate the new styles of consumerism to a religious model [20]: 

«The new means of consuption can be seen as “cathedrals of consumption” that is, they are structured, often successfully, to have an enchated, some times even sacred, religious character. To attract evere-larger numbers of consumers, such cathedrals of consumption need to offer, or at least appear to offer, increasingly magical, fantastic, and enchanted settings in which to consume. Sometimes this magic is produced quite intentionally, whereas in other case sit is a result of a series of largely unforeseen developments. A worker involved in the opening of McDonald’s in Mosccow spoke of it “as if it were the Cathedral in Chartres…a placet o experience ‘celestial joy’. A vist to Disney Word has been decipted ad “the middle-class hajj, the compulsory visit to the sunbaker city” and analogies have been draw between a trip to Disney Word and pilgrimage to religios sites such as Lourdes. Book superstores such Barnes e Noble an Border have been called “the cathedrals for printed word”»  [21]. 

As I see it today, this definition is wrong. Perhaps, around 2000 (when the book was published) we were still spellbound by consumerism, but today, the ways to consume have evolved and adapted to the new style of life. If they remain forms of extremism resembling a cult [22], for the majority of people it’s nothing more than a routine deprived of any aspect of “transcendence”. It’s obvious that religious beliefs influence the way we consume, but only because they influence every aspect of existence and not because consumption in itself becomes the centre of belief or the ultimate end.

Online shopping exploded during the pandemic [23] and sent the consumer to the same loneliness, stripping away even more the consumerist rituality from his pseudo-religious halo. Not only is today’s consumerism not a religion [24], but it’s above all a denial of every religious aspect in existence. Handing yourself over to an existence based solely on consumption means more and more reification, alienation and solitude. Although there are people who lose their lives trampled by the crowd trying to acquire the latest smartphone, nobody can honestly compare this lived experience to that of a martyr.

This doesn’t mean consumerism today hasn’t lost momentum [25]. In fact, it’s the opposite. But, today’s consumer is increasingly more materialistic and knows perfectly well that the new purchase is totally an internal, private and solitary satisfaction that has nothing to do with a transcendent dimension. The collective experience of consumption loses more and more momentum and evolves more into a self-referential consumerism, of an immediate realisation of their desires and which are predominately consumed in private. The key to today’s consumerism can be summed up in one word- customisation. The dream- by now no longer a secret- of “sales people” is to create individual sales programmes, capable of speaking to an individual and to generate in him calibrated desires that are perfectly suited to what he wants.

Thanks to the power of algorithms and the support of AI, what once seemed impossible is today a reality that everyone can see. It seems Jean Danielou was right when he wrote in 1972: 

«What risks damaging tomorrow’s world isn’t petroleum, atomic energy and technology, nor material goods that are supplied in abundance, but the sacred» [26]. 

Man today, abundantly supplied with every type of material goods, bored by a consumption as pervasive as it is personalised, prematurely disappointed and disillusioned, prey to widespread addiction, the sacred dimension seems to be increasingly eclipsed. And then, it’s apparently clear that the function of religious historians is no longer to offer new products in the publishing market, as excellent as they are. Instead, it’s about reacting in the direction of consciousness, to start an educational plan that is capable of arousing a new interest in the sacred. An interest that isn’t a regressive escape in esotericism or a sort of raving millenarianism. An interest that is profound, structured and culturally advanced. 

Observations in the Field 

I would now like to mention my experiences. The management of a popular library allows us to look at cultural tastes and trends. What place does religious history hold for people? I would almost say none. When a reader approaches the religious section, more times than not, they are looking for something regarding esotericism, magic or witchcraft. Themes that religious history extensively deals with, but here are questioned not as in-depth analysis of a broader process of the dynamics of the sacred, but as an interest in the occult, the forbidden and strange aspects of cultural references. If the history of religion was about vampires and such things, well, it would be a lot more successful, especially amongst younger readers. But, we know perfectly well that it’s about what is culturally fashionable and has very little to do with the serious study of religion.

Educational experience in schools allows me to check how much knowledge there is in religious phenomena and of religion in general. And this is only about basic knowledge. I haven’t found any scholastic programmes that go into depth in these subjects and everything seems trusted to goodwill and the cultural interests of individual students. I have often met young people who know how to correctly place a religion in a specific geographic area, but don’t have any knowledge about the contents of that religion. Where, instead, a certain religion was dedicated to more in-depth, I found a superficial knowledge that left little in the memories of the students.

The theme of religion – and the sacred –is felt to be far from daily life and of little interest to “navigate the future”. The young people I have met have a certain fear of religious indoctrination and see it as an attack on their freedom of thought and decision-making autonomy and, unfortunately, don’t have suitable skills to be able to clearly distinguish between the “normal” spreading of religious knowledge and effective manipulation for other purposes.

In the end, my business as a “pastoral worker” has allowed me to compare myself with other believers of different ages and various levels of religious knowledge I found a huge disinterest in the history of religion, for the understanding of the dynamics of the sacred and for themes of dialogue between religions.

The recent Synod – still in the development phase – has revealed a very limited interest in meeting other religions, for further information of ecumenical themes or to compare with other beliefs and doctrines. Therefore, in summary, if I exclude personal contact with experts of religious history, the environment where I live and work is foreign to this scope of knowledge.

I often wonder: Is it really so bad or can society do without worrying about these subjects?

We have a vision, of a series of solid values and a lifestyle that are capable of offering a relevant guide to the future of humanity, can definitely exclude the History of Religion from the baggage of necessary knowledge?

In a period marked by globalism, in which people from different social groups and religions can be in contact with each other more easily, is a lack of understanding of religious phenomena, that is the basis of belief and attitudes, really possible?

«To sum up, in the industrialised world, personal themes increasingly dominate, the political and hedonistic concerns shape social life, while science opens up new perspectives for personal self gratification. In poor parts of the world, the fight for survival and frustration characterise social existence and politics, while modern methods of communication raise the conscience of the masses to the existing disparity» [27]. 

The destruction of the environment is proceeding at an insane pace and the risk of a pandemic capable of blocking the entire megamachine has become concrete and current. From this perspective, the lack of knowledge of the History of Religion represents a step backwards towards the cultural desertification that is already in progress. Losing interest in the History of Religion means not being able to understand the stages of the cultural evolution of people anymore and to make the present indecifrabile.

If we look at Europe for a moment, it becomes evident that for a private citizen with historical-religious knowledge, it would become impossible to decipher the sense of the very dense network made of cathedrals, monasteries, abbeys, sanctuaries, hermitages and sacred places. But, if we pay close attention to the attitudes of the younger generation, this illegibility and strangeness is already in progress. Many assets tied to the “sacred” are inaccessible or in ruin [28] today, and huge sums of money have been used to create new centres of consumption. It doesn’t seem to be possible to find any interest or money for sacred buildings that represent- infact- the historical memory and cultural roots of the people.

It should be the duty of religious historians to exert a lot of pressure on decision makers and public officials to try and direct investment to the safeguarding of cultural heritage tied to the sacred and to ensure the world’s attention remains on these issues in public debate. It’s a matter of getting out of academia trying to earn a place in the world of communication and public opinion. 

The spread of sectarianism 

The context in which we are living – as we have tried to previously explain – while there is an increasing disinterest in the History of Religion, there also seems to be a proliferation in sectarianism [29]. Recently, a few kilometres from where we are holding our conference, a massacre took place that revealed a web of sectarianism, mental manipulation and homicidal violence [30]. Many wer amazed at the widespread presence of all the “crazy people” who create groups that are more and more aggressive and are able to recruit – using predominately new media – all this new followers.

The phenomena is better understood if it is read as a response of the sacred that the consumer society progressively annihilates. The observations of Oliver Roy are very important: 

«The return of religion can be considered a sort of optical illusion. In this regard, it would be more appropriate to talk of a “mutation” on the basis of which the religious is more visible but, at the same time, often in decline […] changing the relationship between religion and the public space, the return of religion takes place in the form of a performance by a “pure” religious person or restored traditions […] In all cases, however, the more spectacular growth have been the more “fundamentalist” and “charismatic” religious forms […]. Fundamentalism is thus the form of the religion that is more suitable to globalisation, as assuming its own deculturation, transforming it into an instrument to claim universality» [31]. 

Weare therefore faced with a “universal confusion” and “uprooting” without precedent that destroys identity, culture and the vocations of individual people, to unite them in a consumerist movement that massifies and depersonalises.

The sects respond to this confusion by offering a simplified vision of reality, where the terms of good and evil are easily assimilable and applicable to the letter of the facts. The sects offer simple and often incomprehensible answers to complex questions and this claim to the truth is transformed into conviction and is able to offer effective and intellectual answers to people’s problems. A great capacity of effective manipulation then offers an emotional basis that plants beliefs and creates a dependence that is difficult to overcome.

Baudrillard wondered why the sects in America were so «powerful and dynamic». His answer is that the sects keep alive moral obsessions, an immediate desire for beatification and the prevailing desire to create the Kingdom of God on Earth [32]. The sects propose a small alternative society to the dominant one that is able to give theb courage to exist to its members. «People need to escape from anonymity, to build an identity for themselves, to feel they are special, in one way or another, and not only a number or a member without a face amongst the crowd […] People feel restless regarding the future; often desperate, helpless and powerless. They look for signs of hope, a way to get out of it. Certain people have the desire, sometimes vague, to improve the world» [33].

Today’s sects are able to intercept these needs and offer their vision of the world. In this context, the tasks of religious historians offer tools of in-depth analysis and clarification that can help us to distinguish between intentions and a minimum foundation and omicida delirium. Only a complex vision is capable of counteracting dangerous simplifications that don’t take into account historical processes, cultural specificity and traditional ties. 

Sure Guides 

To conclude this appeal, I would like to be faithful to a warning by Primo Mazzolari: «Woe betide those who settle for tracking the toponymy of loss» [34].  I believe there is still room for manoeuvre for the religious historian who has the desire to dedicate time to the society in which he lives with the intent to make it better.

Is religious illiteracy a social problem? [35] We have wondered. The answer is, that compared to other forms of ignorance, religion is one of the great harbingers of social problems. It renders, in fact, the peaceful coexistence of people impossible, and where peace seems to reign, it renders the territory progressively indecifrable, contributing to strengthen the uprooting and sense of alienation.  Religious ignorance aims at the roots of the spirit of universal brotherhood, which the people can only develop if they know very well the differences and similarities in their religious beliefs.

A few days ago, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei posted a video of Israel’s air defences responding to Iran’s attack over the skies of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock, writing in Hebrew: “Jerusalem will be in the hands of the Muslims, and the Muslim world will celebrate the liberation of Palestine”.

It seems to me now impossible to understand the tensions of our time if we don’t have the minimal knowledge of the main religious beliefs that motivate and make acceptable the actions of world leaders in the eyes of their electorates (or subjects).  So I ask all of you here today to dedicate time and energy to long-term actions that allow us to create educational programmes dedicated to the spreading of the History of Religion in our society. The History of Religion should be a subject in all schools of order and degree. The History of Religion should move away from limited academic scope and earn a new place in the public arena, also using new forms of media.

In his 1922 book Die Liturgie als Mysterienfeier, the Benedictine monk Odo Casel, wrote that «those who want to cross the immense sea of mystery, must have with them a sure guide» [36].  For Casel, the sure guide was the Catholic church.

We can’t speculate – bringing to fruition our reasoning – that the function of guide can also be carried out today by a religious historian. A professional who besides being a scientist – taking on all the responsibility – can be a true master, a sure guide. 

Dialoghi Mediterranei, n. 68, luglio 2024 

[*] Abstract

Viviamo in un tempo in cui sempre meno forte è l’interesse per il sacro, il trascendente, l’immateriale, l’invisibile, il non-ancora. Viviamo con lo sguardo ripiegato sulla terra.  Ed è proprio perché viviamo in questo modo, che la figura dello storico delle religioni – fuori da un contesto accademico – assume un ruolo del tutto particolare: egli ci ricorda con il suo sapere che esiste una dimensione altra, orizzontale, sacrale. Egli è, innanzitutto, testimone di mondi rituali, celebrativi, magici, liturgici, che si discostano dal quotidiano e si riconnettano ad un’altra narrazione ben più antica e universale rispetto alla logica del consumo sfrenato. Gli interessi, le passioni, le attenzioni, che lo storico delle religioni rivolge a determinati aspetti della realtà, sono di per sé un’alternativa forte alla narrazione dominante. La sua funzione non può essere solo quella di offrire nuovi prodotti nel mercato editoriale, per quanto eccellenti. Si tratta, invece, di agire nella direzione della coscienza, di dare avvio a un’azione educativa che sia capace di suscitare un nuovo interesse per il sacro. Un interesse che non sia una fuga regressiva nell’esoterismo o una sorta di millenarismo farneticante. Un interesse profondo, strutturato, culturalmente avanzato. È compito degli storici delle religioni esercitare una forte pressione sui decision maker e sugli amministratori pubblici per cercare d’indirizzare investimenti per la salvaguardia del patrimonio culturale legato al sacro e per fare in modo che resti viva l’attenzione per questi temi nel dibattito pubblico. Si tratta, di fatto, di uscire dall’accademia e di cercare di guadagnarsi un posto nel mondo della comunicazione e dell’opinione pubblica per offrire strumenti di approfondimento e di chiarificazione che possano aiutare a distinguere tra intenzioni fondate e settarismo omicida. 

Note

[1] Original text in Italian translated into English by Christopher Leon with revision by the author.