Ryan Schram

Mills 169 (A26)

ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

April 6, 2016

Available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2667/5

Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2004. “Metakinesis: How God Becomes Intimate in Contemporary U.S. Christianity.” American Anthropologist 106 (3): 518–28. doi:10.1525/aa.2004.106.3.518.

Deren, Maya, Cherel Ito, and Teiji Ito. ca. 1947–1954. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Documentary. http://youtu.be/2YIO_dxyJio?t=1m27s.

James, William. 1984. William James, The Essential Writings. Bruce Wilshire, ed. Albany: SUNY Press.

James, William. 1994 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Modern Library.

a) A potentially explosive issue. It almost sounds as though this is asking which religion is right.

b) More generally though I want to ask are there any grounds on which one can believe in something unseen and unproven.

c) We've ducked the issue.

Let's think about how we might define religion. Write your own working definition of religion.

• James is a philosopher interested in the nature of human experience. As such, he is (more or less) to psychology what Durkheim is to anthropology. It is interesting to note that they were active at about the same time.
• James is also a leading figure within the intellectual movement called Pragmatism. Pragmatism is an argument that every idea needs to be proven by evidence, and that real knowledge comes directly from evidence, facts and the sense.
• What do you suppose Pragmatists thought about religion?

A clip from the The Divine Horsemen: Living Gods of Haiti, a film by Maya Deren et al.

https://youtu.be/2YIO_dxyJio?t=6m59s

The beginning of ritual welcoming and honoring a lwa named Papa Legba. Pay attention to the man wearing a handkerchief around his head.

• Healthy-mindedness: You feel as though part of you is good, and through your own actions and behavior you can cultivate goodness in yourself and the world.
• The sick soul. You see the world as a war between Good and Evil. Everyone, including yourself, need to be saved from inherent evils.
• Conversion. You feel incomplete and imperfect, and so feel like you need to seek change.
• Mysticism. You feel like you have an intuitive knowledge about the world from experience. You have a wisdom which you feel, but cannot put into words.

“God is real because he produces real effects” (1985 [1902]: 517).

Reference

James, William. 1984. William James, The Essential Writings. Bruce Wilshire, ed. Albany: SUNY Press.

James, William. 1985 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.