The World’s Religions
It is the last Sunday of the month and so I am moving into my exploration of religion, making this weeks book The World’s Religions by Huston Smith. Now, I looked, and could not find a cocktail I was excited to try that matched this book. But as I was wandering around Total Wine, trying to luck into a case of Hulk Hogan’s All American Beer for my husband, I found, this American Amber Ale, Paperback Satan Wears Pajamas. And it made me laugh and just went...yep, that’ll do. So let’s do this.
In The World’s Religions, Smith looks at 7 very specific religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, with an additional chapter at the end that loosely addresses what he calls primal religions, i.e. the aboriginal tribes in Australia, the Native American tribes, and even, briefly Shintoism. Basically, religions that don’t necessarily have a written word.
And then he gives a fairly brief overview of each of the above religions, which was interesting for Hinduism and Buddhism, and for Taoism. Confucianism was just...confusing. It felt like a stretch, more like a philosophy than a religion. Even in the examples he gives, like in Hinduism, Buddhism, he draws parallels to things you might find in Christianity, but Confucianism he directly compares to Plato. And in the chapter on Confucianism he refers repeatedly to Japan, even though Confucius was Chinese. And so out of curiosity, I went to what is probably one of the most definitive sources of who worships what, The CIA World Fact Book.
Why do I say this is definitive? Because its reporting from those countries directly. And according to the CIA, Japan is 48.6 % Shinto, 46.4% Buddhist, 1.1% Christian, and 4% other as of 2021. They include a note that the percentage is more than 100% because some people claim more than one affiliation, which, based on these number is mostly Shinto/Buddhist. Now...what is missing? Confucianism. The CIA lists Confucianism under Traditional Beliefs...along with animism, shamanism, and Spiritualism. Smith considers Shamanism a form of primal religion.
Now this could easily be difference in opinion. And I don’t mean between CIA and Smith per se. but the CIA has no vested interest in this matter, other than how the religious affiliations of various populations might impact the national security of the United States, whereas Smith was a religious scholar...but decidedly not a political or economic scholar. What makes me bring this up? Well, back to Smith’s chapter on Confucianism...could you tell this is where it really went off the rails for me? So in his chapter on Confucianism, Smith says “Facing up to its population problem in the third quarter of this (20th century) century, China halved her birthrate in a single decade. And in the thirty years from 1949 to 1979, she put famine, flood, and epidemic disease behind a quarter of the worlds population, seemingly forever.”
Ummm….he ends the chapter by stating his belief that Confucius will outlive Chairman Mao. But those two sentences, within the context of what was written in the chapter as a whole and that particular paragraph as a whole, seems to indicate that Mao was influenced by Confucius, rather than the far more cynical and evil Karl Marx. And it was most decidedly NOT Confucius that put famine, flood, and epidemic disease behind a quarter of the worlds population. It was Marx. And not by innovatively finding ways to abolish those three things. Famine was put behind China by starving to death 45 million people in a four year span, as we learned when I read Mao’s Great Famine a few years ago. Real easy to put famine behind you, when there’s no one left to eat the food. Ditto for epidemic. Everyone was already dead from famine, so there was no one left to transmit the diseases. Those two sentences were so intellectually dishonest, in light of how he ends the chapter and his statement re: Mao vs Confucius, that I kind of lost a little respect for him.
And halved her birthrate!? Have you all heard of China’s single child policy? From 1979 to 2015, so for 36 years, China’s policy that each couple could only have one child. Except, Chinese culture had a definite preference for boy babies. So girls were either adopted out to other countries or killed outright at birth, in droves, as couples strove to have that boy baby. This policy was revoked in 2015 because they realized there were not enough girls to birth the next generation. I somehow doubt that the slow death of China by attrition was Confucius’s plan.
Now, I don’t know enough about India’s history to have an opinion on whether or not there were factual errors in his chapter’s on Hinduism and Buddhism. He did say that Buddhism is not practiced in India any more, mostly because those practitioners have been reabsorbed in to the mother religion of Hinduism. The CIA concurs that Buddhism is not practiced in India, reporting that the populations of India practice Hinduism at 79.8%, Islam at 14.2%, Christianity at 2.3%, Sikh at 1.7%, and other/unspecified at 2% as of 2011 estimated.
And while Taoism chapter did not do as off the rails as the chapter on Confucianism, by the time we got to Tao, my skepticism had popped up. Not in religion in general, but as to the general intellectual honesty of Mr. Smith.
So I was already salty going into the chapter on Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. In the very beginning of the book, he had said he was going to focus on the positive aspects of each of the religions, and stay away from the salacious. I kind of glossed over that, assuming it was to avoid discussing the Kama Sutra when it came to Hinduism. That thought went out the window when he mentioned Tantra during the chapter on Buddhism.
But, I quickly realized that disclaimer WAS his attempt at intellectual honesty. Because if he goes into the chapter on Islam discussing the shit show that is the Middle East, he would HAVE to discuss the blood soaked history of Christianity. So, comparatively, the chapters on Islam, Judaism, and Christianity were fairly dull. He explained the idealized versions of each of these faiths. I did find it interesting that in his chapter on Christianity, he said, not once but at least twice, something along the lines of ministers are needed to interpret the bible, because if people read it for themselves, this might lead to individuality. Direct quote from the book “The other danger is that Christians will derive different truths from the Bible. The nine-hundred odd denominations of Protestantism in the United States alone prove not only that this danger exists, but that it could conceivably slope toward complete individualism.”
He then clarifies that the vast majority of protestants, something like 85% of protestants, fall into only about 12 denominations. But damn those individualists for not pumping those numbers up over 90!
Having said all of that, I DID learn more about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism than I had known before. I learned what was considered Yoga...not just bending into nifty poses, there are actual individual thoughts that go with the four Yogas, the Way to God through Knowledge, the Way to God through Love, the Way to God through Work, and the Way to God through Psychophysical Exercises, aka nifty poses.
I learned about different types of Buddhism, not just Tantric, which is the tiniest part of it, but that there are the Four Noble Virtues: loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity, and joy in the happiness and well-being of other; and two major types, names Theravada and Mahayana. Theravada is self-responsibility. You are in charge of yourself and your own journey, wisdom is the key virtue. This requires constant commitment. Buddha is seen as a saint and teacher, but not a savior. Practice is focused on meditation. Mahayana seeks support from divine powers and focuses on compassion. This does focus on converting others if you will, seeking out boddhisattva, which means your the last man standing as you bring others to Nirvana. Buddhas is seen as a savior and there is a focus on metaphysics and prayer.
From Taoism I learned that Tao is the way of ultimate reality, the way of the universe, and the way of human life.
So this book was a mixed bag for me. Yes it covers the 7 religions mentioned, but leaves out some of the more foundational religions that are still in existence, and do not necessarily fall under his blanket of primal religion. Like...Zoroastrianism. Sikhism, which he briefly mentions in the chapter of Hinduism as an offshoot of that belief. Shinto is mentioned exactly once in the chapter of Primal religions, even though most of Japan identifies as Shinto. Jainism and Baha’i are not mentioned at all. And there was no real timeline of when various religions sprang up, other than to mention when various prophets were born and lived. I actually went through the CIA’s fact book to get an idea of what other religion were not deemed worthy of mention by the great scholar.
