Belonging to Multiple Religions? Or Owning Them?

[rug]

August 16, 2013
By Robert Hunt

On a recent trip I spent three days with my wife’s family. You know that drill. Awakening early (or staying quietly in your bedroom) to accommodate unfamiliar meal-times and meals. Engaging in conversations about topics you don’t know or care about. Generally adapting to life in a home that is and isn’t quite your own. It isn’t easy, because when you belong to a family you are more owned than owner.

That appears to be lost on the increasing number of Americans who profess to having “multiple religious belongings.” Americans who identify themselves as ”Buddhist-Catholics” or “Hindu-Buddhist-Kabbalists” or (in its common short form) “Bu-Jews.”

The problem with multiple religious belongings is that religion isn’t just a set of metaphysical ideas, ritual practices, theological beliefs, and ethical ideals from which individuals may choose. First and foremost a religion is a community of human beings. A person can belong to a religion, just as he or she can belong to a family. But a religion doesn’t belong to a person any more than a family can belong to a person. When I say “my family” I obviously mean something different from “my car” or “my boat.” A family name indicates to whom I belong more than what I own.

Some so-called multiple religious belonging is quite consistent with this social reality of religion. A member of a Catholic community or a Jew might practice Buddhist meditation. Or a Hindu might find that a variety of meditative practices and conceptualizations are useful to his or her religious quest. A Christian may find that some Islamic theological constructs help better conceptualize God’s nature – or that Jewish prayer rituals are deeply meaningful.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/roberthunt/2013/08/belonging-to-multiple-religions-or-owning-them/

[bananas]

1. Syncretism isn't a new thing. nt

[Silver Gaia]

2. True. But this sounds more like eclecticism.

Eclecticism in religious practice--picking and choosing from a number of faiths to come up with a personal practice--is a pretty new phenomenon.

Syncretism is more broad-based--like, for instance, when African Yoruba traditions brought by slaves combined with Catholic traditions to eventually create new religious traditions like Santeria, Voudou, and Candomble in the Caribbean and Brazil that are each shared by a community of believers.

This eclectic attitude toward religion is more inclined toward personal practice, so it isn't likely to end up creating whole new syncretized traditions practiced by many people, but simply a multitude of personal practices tailored to individuals.

I think that's what the article is getting at, too--that the people doing this are not becoming members of multiple religious communities, but are forging their own paths using practices from multiple faiths as their foundation. So, in a sense, projecting into the future, this trend could eventually change the nature of religion as a community of people with shared beliefs to something of a more solitary nature.

It makes me think of these words that we hear a lot these days: "I'm spiritual, but not religious."

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

3. I'm a practicing Catholic

But my mother is a Jew. I do observe a number of Jewish rituals. For example, I have a Seder every year to remind myself, my family and friends what the Lord has done for me (He has delivered me from Egypt, that house of slavery) and on Yom Kippur, I fast and pray. These are meaningful to me. But no one would call me a Jew in any real sense.