MANY OF US value our own religion, but know little and care even less about other religions. To facilitate much needed religious literacy and mutual-understanding, this book succinctly examines the main features of all living religions-how they were formed and what they have become, how they are similar and how they differ, and what we can do to better appreciate and respect religions other than our own.

EACH CHAPTER IS short, informative, and easy-to-read. Together, these chapters provide a good understanding of the basic beliefs of all religions and their main sects. They also provide a valuable perspective on religious unity, diversity, and interaction, setting the stage for open-minded interfaith dialogue and respectful mutual acceptance of all religions.

APPRECIATING ALL RELIGIONS

Religious Literacy In Small BitesBy Paramjit Singh Sachdeva

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Paramjit Singh Sachdeva
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4567-2112-1

Contents

Acknowledgements.................................................................ixPreface..........................................................................xi1. In The Beginning..............................................................12. Zoroastrianism................................................................233. Judaism.......................................................................354. Hinduism......................................................................475. Jainism.......................................................................656. Buddhism......................................................................757. Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism...........................................898. Christianity..................................................................999. Islam.........................................................................11110. Sikhism......................................................................12511. The Mormon Church and The Baha'i Faith.......................................13512. Appreciating Religious Diversity.............................................14713. Celebrating Religious Unity..................................................16314. Embracing Interfaith Interaction.............................................173Annex 1: The Founders and Scriptures of Our Living Religions.....................187Select Bibliography..............................................................195Index............................................................................207

Chapter One

In the Beginning

God, the Creator, made the universe more than thirteen billion years ago. Humans came much later. Still, we have been in existence for perhaps a few million years, the last fifty thousand or so as modern humans. Regrettably, our archeological record goes back only about fifteen thousand years to the earliest human settlements, and our written history covers only the most recent five thousand years.

For the past five millennia and possibly longer, humans have been religious. We have had many gods and a variety of beliefs, many of which no longer exist. Now, most humans believe in one God—the all-powerful and loving Creator—and in one of a dozen or so living faiths.

The story of each religion is different, in terms of how it was created and how it evolved. The gods of the Greeks and Romans, of the Vedic Aryans, and of the Mayans and Aztecs left their mark on the gods that followed. So did the religions of antiquity in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, the Far East, Meso-America and elsewhere. In many instances, somewhat similar features emerged independently at different places and at different times, driven by God's grace and inspiration, and human needs and expectations.

Of the current religions with a global presence, only Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Hinduism can be traced back to the 2nd millennium BCE or earlier. Five religions—Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintoism—emerged from new founders or existing traditions during the next one thousand years. Two more major religions—Christianity and Islam, the two largest in the world today—were created during the 1st millennium CE by two new prophets who revealed new messages from God. And three more religions—Sikhism, the Mormon Church, and the Baha'i Faith—were revealed to their founders in the 2nd millennium of the Common Era (CE), with the latter two emerging as recently as less than two hundred years ago.

Our earliest living religions were inspired by various notions of the supernatural, and built on indigenous religious and cultural traditions that preceded them. As new religions emerged, they introduced new notions of the divine and how to reach Him, as revealed or inspired by God. Religious inspiration came also from fresh opportunities for interchange of peoples and ideas, as all religions interacted with those that existed by their side. Some ideas were incorporated with little change, others after considerable debate and re-interpretation over long periods of time. The various religions influenced each others' myths, beliefs, practices, and rituals—leading to many common features as well as differences.

Throughout these years, all religions continued to grow and evolve, to a greater or lesser extent, and became what they are today. Every living religion is thus the result of both continuity and change spanning hundreds of years and incorporating the revealed message of its founding prophet(s) and the inspired spiritual wisdom of many mystics, sages, saints, and seers. All religions have also been sustained by the unheralded contributions of numerous ordinary folk who enabled these religions to remain alive and oftentimes thrive, simply by being faithful followers through times good and bad.

How these thirteen religions were formed and subsequently evolved is the subject of Part One of this book. Only major milestones are mentioned and details are deliberately omitted, to enable the big picture and underlying patterns to present themselves. What these religions have in common and how they differ, and how we could take account of this unity and diversity are covered in Part Two.

Some similarities and differences can be pre-viewed in Part One too—for the unity and diversity of religions are the natural outcome of the many different paths these religions havetaken duringtheir complex and occasionally hard-to-discern processes of creation and evolution. The separation of some of these interlinked ideas into the various chapters of the book does, however, serve a purpose. The fascinating stories of our living religions can be outlined and the overall pattern comprehended more easily, and we can more-conveniently address an inherently-complicated subject by reducing its big pieces to bite size.

Indigenous Traditions

We do not know much about indigenous traditions of the ancient past, but from the religions of indigenous peoples who have survived into the modern era, we can infer that traditional beliefs were closely intertwined with the local society and culture and with man's understanding of himself, nature, the super-natural, and how these interacted. In pre-literate societies, religion found expression through art and architecture—through painting, music, dance, costumes, and sculpture. Some of these we can still see.

In Africa, the cradle of mankind, indigenous traditions naturally varied from place to place. They often included belief in a supreme reality, other gods, ancestor worship, and the practice of magic. The pygmies believed in a benevolent god of the forest, the east-Africans in a god of the open skies, and the west-Africans had a variety of cults of nature spirits and ancestors. Some pan-African beliefs were associated with "mother" earth and life-giving water and other natural phenomena. All these attested to the connection between man, nature, and the gods and spirits that took care of the living and the dead. There were many kinds of rituals, initiation ceremonies, magical objects and superstitions, and medicine men with material and spiritual powers. Intricate masks, carvings, and sculpture represented the powers of ancestors and spirits over the living members of the tribe or community.

On the Indian sub-continent in Asia, nomadic bands of hunters and gatherers had both survival and the supernatural in mind as they roamed the forests and plains. As in Africa, theirs was a holistic view of the world of humans, nature and gods—with the gods affecting human fate as part of the natural order. Deities were of various kinds: general and local, male and female, approachable and remote. Benevolent female deities were associated with food and fertility, male deities with the powerful forces of nature. Ancestor spirits and cultish clan-deities catered to local needs, and some could be approached directly while others required priests as intermediaries. The spirit outlived the human body, and joined other spirits. Religion was multi-faceted, with a mix of myths and ceremonies, priests and seers, sacrifices and offerings, and sacred rituals, sounds, objects, times, and places.

In East Asia too, the rites and rituals were diverse, as were the modes of sacrifice and worship. The means for communicating with the spirits and the supernatural also varied. The deities were many and served specific functions, such as reproduction and overcoming disease. The ancestral spirits mattered, and priests and shamans guided practices both mundane and sacred. When people lived in small hamlets near lakes, ponds and trees—and guarded turf and tribe with everything they had, including their special gods—indigenous religions were local. But the general idea was the same: the gods cared about what happened to you, and could be propitiated with the right rites, priests and prayers, shamans and séances, and sacrifices and gifts of various kinds.

In Central Asia, pastoral tribes developed their own pantheon of gods and ways of reaching them. In some cases, their mythology spoke of a good celestial being who reigned supreme in the highest sky, and of a mythical evil spirit that dwelled in the depths of the underworld. The celestial creator was all-powerful, all-wise, creative, caring, and benevolent. Subordinate to him were lesser gods and sons and messengers who resided in the lower heavens, watching over and helping humans on earth. The supreme deity was confronted with the forces of evil, but ultimately prevailed.

In Australia, indigenous beliefs of the aborigines made no sharp distinction between the sacred and the secular. As in the mythical past or eternal dreamtime, the supernatural was natural. There was a variety of beliefs: supernatural beings emerged from their sleep to take physical shape but retained the powers of the spirits; life persisted in different forms, and death was merely a transition; well-being in the afterlife was not influenced by the quality of life that had preceded it; and rituals associated with death ensured that the spirits of ancestors had safe passage and did not return to trouble the living. Underlying all this, man and nature were one.

In the Americas, religions displayed resemblances, as well as variety. In all known religions, cosmic phenomena were interrelated, and religious and social aspects of society were interwoven. The Aztecs and the Mayans distinguished between the ancient and the more recent gods. The Aztec goddess of the earth was the "mother" of the gods, and there were gods and goddesses of rain, wind, fire, sky, sun, sexuality, fertility, war, maize, and hunting, among others. Some gods were associated with particular occupational groups, such as merchants or mosaic workers. Different social classes and groups—nobility, military, priests, merchants, craftsmen, commoners, servants, and slaves—worshiped or gave prominence to different gods, and celebrated a variety of religious festivals. Human and animal sacrifice was performed to please the gods who had created humans and retained an interest in their welfare.

Mayan gods included the creator couple and gods of the sun, earth, wind, water, and fertility, as well as of maize, music, hearth, flower, drink, medicine, and many others. In contrast, the creator god of the Andean people was indivisible and supreme, and the other deities were his sons and daughters and their descendents. Some of these gods were good, and others were evil powers, including the gods of death and destruction. There was belief in an afterlife, mummification, and sun worship.

In Europe too, the religious beliefs of indigenous groups were similar in many ways to those elsewhere, yet different in other ways. In some communities, the sky-god controlled the sun and lightning, and there were other major deities and lesser gods and goddesses. There were gods for war, earth, sea, storm, fertility, sexual love, magic and divination, arts and crafts, and healing, to mention just a few. The supernatural and human constantly interacted in myths, magic, portents, and cult practices, and some animals had supernatural significance.

In many religions, priests and cult leaders preserved and transmitted myths, legends, tribal history and law; and they also organized sacrifices, interpreted omens, and conducted magical rites and elaborate rituals. Some cults practiced magic, others offered men and horses and other animals as sacrifice, and some others believed in the afterlife, including a belief that the soul passes to another body. In some cults, the dead were believed to live on in their graves with the goods buried with them, and ancestors bestowed prosperity and wisdom on the living.

Examples of indigenous religions can thus be found in far-off places on every continent around the globe. Some general observations can be cautiously made about these religions despite the understandable paucity of hard evidence.

Overall, mankind's inner search for meaning and for a connection with some form of a Supreme Reality (God) as well as with other gods were common to many cults, tribes, and larger social groups. Ideas about the mundane and the sacred were reflected in myths, symbols, and beliefs about the gods and how we could reach them. The gods were interested in man's welfare, and responded to his offerings, rituals, and prayers. The sacred was within reach, and could be grasped by the holy.

Some beliefs and practices of particular indigenous communities resembled, to varying extent, the traditional religious beliefs on other continents, even though they had developed independently. Noticeable differences existed too. Despite their variety, all religious beliefs and practices were believed to find favor with the spirits and the supernatural, and presumably served their respective communities equally well.

Mankind's indigenous religions were thus, in a sense, "separate but equal." Such is the marvel of human nature, especially when it relates to the gods. This was before the advent of civilization on a large scale, and the further evolution of these religions.

Religions of Antiquity

Initially, indigenous communities were small and isolated, scattered but numerous. Each had its own distinctive religious traditions. As they grew and began to interact with other communities through social, economic and political ties, reciprocal sharing and mutual influence were inevitable. The pattern that emerged varied from place to place. Though the available archeological record of these exchanges is spotty and incomplete, it does provide evidence of human development that was significant, continuous, and widespread, especially around the large river systems where settled agriculture could be practiced and large populations could be sustained.

As major centers of civilization arose around the rivers Nile, Euphrates, and the Indus, for example, so did more complex systems of religious belief and practice. These religions served both as a binding force for the community and as an expression of their creative aspirations and increasingly sophisticated speculations about the unknown. As a result, the previous religious traditions changed, some dramatically and others incrementally and cumulatively. By the time the major civilizations that we have now unearthed reached their peaks and then declined, the earlier indigenous traditions had been lost forever, leaving behind only the archeological record of what they had once been.

Some of these civilizations existed about five thousand years ago. They provide the starting point for a deeper appreciation of what we now call religions of antiquity—for even these "new" religions were subsequently transformed into or displaced by the thirteen still-newer major faiths that exist today.

The selected aspects briefly outlined below are meant only to be illustrative of the kinds of beliefs and practices that existed just a few millennia ago.

The Mesopotamian Civilization. Mesopotamia, in the ancient Near East along the banks of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, was a mixing bowl of races and cultures, home to the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and others. The ordered components of the universe—sky, earth, heaven, spirits, among others—revealed the divine mind and shaped life on earth. The excavated remains of deities, shrines, sacred figurines, and places and customs of burial and sacrifice show an awareness of the natural and supernatural forces on which existence depended.

The gods were immortal, but lived as humans did—they ate, drank, married, had children, and resided in dwellings with their possessions. They had specialized functions too, for example, Anu, the heaven god, originally ruled supreme over a pantheon of gods; Enlil was lord of the atmosphere, sun, moon, and vegetation; and Enki was the god of wisdom who made humans aware of divine plans. His son Marduk later headed the Babylonian pantheon. Enlil, the offspring of the first divine pair, Enki and Ninki, possessed tablets by which human fate was determined.

With the passage of time, the gods changed; and they changed places with each other as well. In heaven, as on earth. By the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, the god Enlil was replaced by Marduk in Babylonia and Ashur in Assyria. Marduk was later greeted as Bel (or Baal), the supreme god. Enlil's consort Ninlil was identified with the Sumerian goddess Innin and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who gradually absorbed the functions of earlier female deities. As the goddess of love and fertility, Ishar was known to Syrians as Anat, to Arabs as Atar, to Greeks as Astarte, and to Egyptians as Isis.

(Continues...)

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