The most popular class at Harding has been, since before I was a student, Monte Cox’s Living World Religions. The course, taught by the dean of the College of Bible who also served many years as a missionary in rural Kenya, has to be taught at 8:00 AM to pare down student enrollment, and yet it still fills up almost immediately when registration opens. It surveys, as the title suggests, the dominant religions and faith traditions of the world and culminates with a field trip (to Chicago, Dallas, or St. Louis depending on the semester) in which the 70-odd students visit various worship centers. And this last weekend, I was privileged to accompany this semester’s Living World Religions class on their trip.
Much could be said about the different world religions or Christianity’s relation to them. There’s probably a blog post to be written purely on the study of other religions, how Christians explicitly and implicitly position themselves relative to these faiths in classes like this. But for now, I want to just share a handful of observations regarding the seven religious communities we visited during our time in St. Louis. I’ll go in order of the trip.
We began Friday morning by visiting a Hindu temple. Both the outside and the inside of the temple, like many of the places we would visit, was beautiful, but whereas the outside was defined primarily by a towering spire with intricate carvings, the inside was simpler in order to not distract from the idols arranged around that interior space. Golden statues for various gods, framed in colorful boxes or small homes (I’m sure there’s a technical name for these), were spaced around the edge of the room like an art gallery, with a plaque above and often a candle beneath or some flowers draped around their neck. While my eye was immediately drawn to the design and the posing of these idols, to appreciate them like I would a white marble statue in a museum, this instinct was frustrated but the bright and vibrant colors of their stage and the flowers as well as the gaudy clothes some of them were dressed in. Many of the statues were worn by human touch and even looked disheveled under the layers of stuff placed on top of them. My reaction to it was not unlike my appreciation for the tacky I’ve described before, and what was clear—both by these idols as well as the worshippers we saw in the temple—is just how tactile and lived the Hindu faith is. More than any other of the major world religions, Hinduism is a culture, a way of living and going about the world, indistinguishable from the people who practice it.
In addition to browsing the temple space, we also received a lecture from one of the community leaders. He tried to explain his religion and make it accessible to the Christian students there listening. In Christianity, a distinction is often made between the God of the philosophers—a god defined by simplicity and eternity and difference from us—and the God of the Bible—a god known by his will and compassion and intimacy with us. While both of these get at something true, Christians traditionally like to emphasize the latter, that our God is personal and intimate. Conversely, in practice, especially within Protestantism, our lived religion can be much more philosophical, that is, interested in right belief and abstract doctrinal commitments rather than ritual and lived practice. So, what was interesting about that man’s articulation of God or the divine in Hinduism was how it was, in many ways, the opposite of the Christian God and how their religion was the opposite of Protestant religion. Their God was like the god of the philosophers, eternal as the source of being, but their religion is less interested in doctrine than in the rhythms of daily life.
After this, we returned to our hotel where we heard from representatives of Nichiren Buddhism. It was a stark contrast with what we had just experienced—everyone in the Hindu temple had been Indian, and everything about that space had felt Hindu; but there, in the sterile hotel conference room, we heard from a group of all different ages and races. This is, in part, because Nichiren Buddhism is one of the more evangelistic groups we visited with. They are unlike more mainstreams versions of Buddhism, ones most of us are familiar with from TV and movies. They had no images of the Buddha, no robes (and in fact were dressed more casually than the students); they did not talk about Nirvana or the eightfold path but rather focused on the distinctive aspect of their Buddhist sect: chanting “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.” For those who, like me, were unfamiliar, the bulk of Nichiren Buddhism seems to be chanting at home this Japanese mantra as a tool for meditation and prayer.
I must confess I was fairly skeptical of this group. In many ways, possibly because several of the folks we spoke with had been converted from the Church earlier in life, their teaching could sound like secularized Christianity. Or maybe worse, they could come off as a sort of spiritualized self-help, with an emphasis on personal happiness and not judging others. I specifically remember one of them answering a student’s question by remarking, “We believe religion is for people, not the other way around.” But just as my cynicism was beginning to flare up at such a soft, noncommittal answer, I suddenly remembered Jesus saying something similar about the Sabbath—and my Pharisaical pride receded for a moment.
We next went to visit a Mosque. Before we would see the prayer hall, they had us file into a room with small chairs and tables, a scattering of toys, and rows of shelves with elegant editions of the Quran and children’s books meant to teach about Allah. It felt welcoming and almost familiar, like a bookstore in a wealthy suburban church. The man who spoke to us there was very charming, and the articulation of Islam he offered was certainly more liberal or friendly toward Christians than one might expect. Yet even so, he was the only person we saw all weekend who unashamedly said, There is disagreement between our religion and yours and we think ours is right. (It was brought up multiple times by students over the next couple days that it was refreshing to have someone unwilling to pander.) He also had no embarrassment telling us that how one fares in the afterlife is dependent on the moral merit or debit one accrues over the course of their life.
Two points from his talk I particularly enjoyed was his discussion of usury and his story about Mohammad’s ascension and how his encounter with Moses led to Muslims praying five times a day. For the latter story, I’ll encourage you to go look it up, but I’ll summarize the point on usury here: a prohibition on usury had long been a part of both Jewish and Christian traditions but faded in the modern world. Our teacher was proud to say, however, that Muslims never abandoned that teaching, that they maintain that money, by itself, should not generate a risk-free return simply by being lent, and that they’ve built up another method by which Muslims can receive loans. While the solution he described sounded a lot like interest-bearing loans by a different name, its intention is that risk is shared in a more direct way—and even more important, I appreciate the commitment to decorum, to at least giving lip service to moral standards rather than acquiescing.
We ended the day by attending an evening service at the Jewish synagogue. Built by the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Mississippi, their worship space was lovely, fairly minimalist, with beautiful stained-glass windows and an ornate Aron Kodesh at the front. (As an aside, it’s nice to see that even for a wealthy, modernized place of worship, they don’t feel the need to clutter the front of their auditorium with projector screens and miscellaneous cables.) This was a Reformed synagogue which means they were a relatively progressive group—their lead rabbi was a woman and, in fact, the reason we attended the Friday night service instead of the Saturday morning as the class has historically done was because the synagogue was having their Community Action day the next morning where they go out and serve people in need. This organized work on the Sabbath bothered many of the students and, at first, myself as well—it feels like they aren’t taking their own religious commitments seriously. But again, recognition of the irony helped curb my cynicism—that I was frustrated with them on account of something that, not only have I done, I celebrate as more keeping with the spirit of God’s law. I think there’s a parable about that.
The next day we started with a trip to the Sikh temple. I think it is fair to say that this was a favorite for many of the students, in part because of how familiar it all felt. The Sikhs we encountered seemed to fall into a narrow goldilocks zone, where their religion is not so similar that we become hyperaware of any differences (as with the Jews and Muslims) but it does not feel entirely foreign. In contrast with the dramatic iconography of the Hindu and Buddhist temples or the distinctiveness of the Muslim prayer hall, the Sikh building felt not too dissimilar from a medium-sized church built in the 70s. The people we met were friendly, not proselytizing but clearly sincere, and when they spoke about their faith it seemed like an ordinary part of life. (The two men we spoke most with wore turbans and small symbolic daggers—but also gingham shirts tucked into jeans.) Their doctrine as they explained it was surely different from Christianity but not too foreign (likely due to the Muslim influence), and they, like the Abrahamic religions, put great emphasis on their sacred book, the Guru Granth Sahib—though their treatment of it can be jarring for Christians.
Still, perhaps I’m overthinking why everyone liked the Sikhs, because almost certainly what won us over was the food. In addition to a sweet halva that was shared with us when we listened to the reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, we were fed a meal just afterward. And while it was a little early in the day for a full Indian meal, when the meal is both free and delicious, no one complains.
Later in the day we went to a Fo Guang Shan Buddhist temple. Again, this is not the most common form of Buddhism, but the trappings are similar enough to what you expect (there was a big Buddha statue in the main room) and we met a monk with orange robes and a shaved head. The interior of the building was really lovely, with lots of red and gold and the smell of incense. The temple had clearly been a church building in the past, but they had done such a good job in adapting the space that one could be forgiven for second guessing. The lady who greeted us explained that the Baptist Church that had owned the building had shaped the ceiling to resemble the bottom of Noah’s Ark (I looked up—sure enough, a sort of curved triangle), but that when the Buddhists bought the building they found its resemblance to a lotus leaf to be equally auspicious.
We unfortunately didn’t learn much about this particular branch of Buddhism during our visit. They frequently host grade school students, and so they did the same sort of activities with us that they might do with those kids—namely meditative practices. When we did ask one of the monks questions about her religion, it was hard to decipher her answers on account of the language barrier (she spoke Mandarin, the translator Cantonese). What did come across is that Fo Guang Shan Buddhism is on the humanist side of Buddhism, making it the only religious group we encountered that weekend that doesn’t have much to say about God.
The last religious group we spoke to (that wasn’t a Church of Christ) were the Baháʼí. Unfortunately, because we were not in Chicago, we didn’t get to see one of their lovely Houses of Worship, but we did enjoy our time at the local Baháʼí center (they also provided some snacks). As with the Nichiren Buddhists, you encounter a lot more racial diversity among the Baháʼí; very few of them are born into the religion. When I’m being particularly cynical, I’m tempted to think that these religions attract people who are otherwise unmoored—spiritual vagabonds of a sort. But again, when I’m being a little more charitable, I recognize that the sort of diversity I see there is what I want in my own religious community. While all the religions we encountered over the weekend (with the exception of Islam) were very inclusive of other faiths, Baháʼí makes more of a point of it. Their whole thing is the oneness of all people and all religions. Funnily enough, it’s that syncretistic message that garnered the most skepticism and antagonist questioning from our students. Our they also may have just been tired from a long weekend.
This is a long post and I don’t have much in way of a conclusion except for one broader observation. It became apparent to me listening to the Baháʼí folks pitch their religion that the different traditions we visited can be categorized as those with a simple message and those with a complex worldview. Without a doubt, all of these religions have a complex worldview, but a few of them (Nichiren Buddhism, Baháʼí, and maybe Fo Guang Shan Buddhism) wanted to boil down their faith to a simple idea or principle. For the others, however, that would never cross their mind. Hinduism infiltrates all aspects of life. Islam rests on countless historical and mythological stories. Judaism is not just one commandment but hundreds of teachings that are crucial to their own identity. And Christianity offers a massive framework for understanding life and creation and the divine. Yes, we have a greatest commandment and a golden rule, but I guess I’m glad we have all the rest as well.
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