path_of_one
Embracing the Mystery
Aw, thanks.
Far more. I am a sincerely seeking, faithful person. I am faithful God, and that I couldn't give up, but I am very open-minded about what God could be. This was first a personal journey I had in mind, and would continue to be so, which is why I would not go after grant money for it unless it was Nat Geo or something that would respect my entire personal plan and reasoning. I wouldn't go after grants as a scientist because then I'd be bound to do it as an academic enterprise, and that's not what it's about at all.
That said, I do expect that I will find out some things in terms of methodology and theory that I can contribute later to the academic study of religion. My long-time suspicion is that an academic study of religion, without sincere personal seeking after transformation, is rather empty and is missing much of what religion is really about. So I'll be curious to compare my 12 years of relatively academic study of other religions to my however-many-years of personal study.
I also figured if I was going to do this project, I might as well "do it right" and be sure to abide by the ethics and standards of my discipline. As I already explained, this training allows me to foresee problems with leaping in and out of communities and therefore ensure that there is minimal disruption and fostering of ongoing relationships after each year.
Exactly.
I am interested in this as well. I do not know if I can reconcile them. I am not doing this to build my own interfaith religion, but rather to deeply experience each religion one at a time, then see what happens to me. To be honest, I have limitations. There is no way I can build a religion out of all these different religions, and I don't intend to try. But what I can do is approach each one very openly, one at a time, in an effort to understand as much as I possibly can the worldview, the faith, the experience of that one religion. And at the end, I can compare my experience and feeling in each and see what comes out of it.
Even if I experience all of them as speaking to one underlying truth, that does not mean they are. It would mean that it is how they interact in me. This is why that part of the project is inherently personal and cannot be academic, except to point out that religion interacts differently with every human being, because we are all different.
Oh, you will have a permanent belief. It may not concur exactly to a particular faith system, but it will be your's. You will still have a path of one.
Well, I have beliefs, but they're not permanent. I see them as "best guesses" that change given my circumstances and experiences. Which is one of the reasons why a journey like this will be interesting. I suspect that an underlying facet of my personality is an inherent tendency to see life in potentiality rather than solidity... this will be difficult to overcome in any religion that demands solidity, but on the other hand comes in handy in a project like this, because I really can put aside beliefs I have and see if experiences give me new ones.
I am thinking about it and I haven't decided yet. One idea I had is this one you offer here. The other idea I had was to do the time-related thing, but split into Eastern and Western religions, so that the progression of religions was ordered in terms of X came from Y.
For example, Hinduism then Buddhism. Then switch and go to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Bahai (if I did the last two). Paganism is a hard one to place because modern Paganism isn't the same as animism, and traditional animism is not accessible without a fairly large bit of funding.
Wicca and Druidry are syncretic modern religions that were influenced by Christianity combined with interpretations of traditional Celtic religion. Traditional animism as you find in hunter-gatherer groups, is exceedingly hard to find in the States in a form that has not been impacted a lot by Christianity. Furthermore, they are Native American traditions and often not accessible by the public. The closest ones I know of that are nearly intact in their original form are in remote areas of Canada and I'd have to take a year off from life to do the work, which I can't afford to do and also misses the point somewhat, as I'm trying to look at religion as a personal journey that is feasible to carry on after the project ends.
Perhaps I can find a Shinto temple to join up with in Southern CA? I'll have to look to see if they have one, but that might be the best option I can find for animism and would round out the Eastern religions.
I am still unclear if I would be tackling: Taoism, Bahai, and Sikhism. I may think of more.
There are hundreds of religions in the world, so I do have to be selective, but I'm trying to be sure to hit all the major ones (at least one big representative of each religious system).
This part of it is really tricky and I'm hoping to gain some insight from people here as well as religious studies and anthropology advisors I have contacted. Though I am not so sure it is any different from the problem of Theravada vs Mahayana vs Zen Buddhism or Sunni vs. Shi'ite Muslims. Again, I have to be somewhat selective so I don't go nuts and spend my entire life bouncing around. I really don't want to do more than a decade of this- even I have my limits and would want to synthesize at some point.
My concerns with Christianity and how to pick are:
1. Liturgical vs. Non-Liturgical: I've experienced both for several years (I had at least several years of experience in Lutheran, Baptist, Calvary Chapel, and Episcopalian). The two are really very different balls of wax in terms of experience.
2. That said, non-liturgical churches, from my experience, don't have much going on in terms of religious structure outside of church. There is no "daily office" as we have in the liturgical churches that would structure a devout member's daily life. So the non-liturgical churches tend to be pretty common in terms of American life- you go to church on Sunday and then try to be a good person all week. Which isn't any different than my usual life. I've long been a devout person in terms of my spiritual journey, but I have never been a devout religious adherant to any religion. My questions are primarily about how devotion to a religious community in daily life impacts sense of self, identity, faith, belief, and so forth. So I'm looking to maximize my experience of religion, and I'm skeptical that non-liturgical churches (most of them, such as Baptist or CC) would offer enough structure to do that. And if I'm coming up with my own structure, while it fits well with American individualism ideals, it would end up looking somewhat like DIY religion- that is, not any different from what I already do.
3. So... there are non-liturgical Christian churches that are highly demanding in terms of practice, like Orthodox Quakers or Amish, but these may or may not be accessible and they are considered somewhat "fringe" (that is, very small groups) in Christianity, so they are not very representative.
4. Liturgical Catholic vs. Liturgical Protestant. Are these really very different or just differently run organizations? That is, Catholicism looks an awful like Anglicanism and Lutheranism in experience. So if I do Catholicism and Anglican, for example, will that be a lot like doing two years in a single religion? Furthermore, what to do with the issue that I can't take sacraments in Catholicism, but can as an Anglican?
5. I can't not do Catholicism. It is the oldest denomination, it is humongous in membership, it is global.
6. What about Orthodox? I don't even KNOW anything about Orthodox! But I've heard it is much more attentive to mysticism as part of the religious experience. So maybe Orthodoxy is a go? But what to do with the fact that it is highly tied to ethnicity in most areas, so I may end up attending a church that is in Russian or something? I guess I could learn Russian the year before in anticipation, which isn't an impossibility or anything... It's normal in anthro. to do language preparation, but it adds one more thing to my schedule in the year before.
7. What about the charismatics? They're growing in the US, but how common are they globally and are their numbers significant given the huge-ness of Catholicism and Orthodoxy? Can I even "do" charismatic given my personality type? I'm honest about my limitations, and charismatic/pentecostal stuff just tends to shut my brain down. I'm too introverted and sensitive to emotion, so it's like going to a church like that overloads the circuits and fries my brain. I just end up numb and kind of ill feeling (literally, I get sick to my stomach) every time I've tried it. Would it get normal in a year? I dunno. The chaos and emotion of Calvary Chapel didn't get normal, and I stayed for two years hoping it would.
8. I also have to be careful about my own biases. At both Baptist and CC churches, I couldn't stand the number of groups of people that were said to be going to hell. It grated on me in a very wearing and depressing way. Even if I can force belief in hell, I cannot force belief in intolerance and ignorance about other people's belief systems and lives. I am willing to embrace beliefs about God, the world (ie, creation and so forth), my life and how I should live it... but I am not willing to try out hating other people, endorse taking away people's rights, or acting ignorant of the complexity I know already is in other religions. That is, while I can be devout, I cannot be intolerant and I do believe there is a difference in every religion. There are a number of churches in the US who seem to focus more on assigning groups of people to hell than in daily life practices, and I want to steer clear of this. I think it's within my rights to do so, because this is a personal journey. I want it to be representative of each religion, but not representative of the extreme or hating part of each religion. First, there have been plenty of studies on that already. And second, this journey is primarily for me- for my personal curiosity and path- and fundamentally, I am about love and compassion.
9. So what the heck do I do with Protestantism? Go with the numbers (pick one of the largest groups) as a representation? I could theoretically do one year Catholic, another Orthodox, and a final one Protestant... but Protestantism is like a crazy bush that just keeps sprouting new and very different branches. There is little in common between Quakers, Anglicans, Pentecostalists, and Methodists. They differ in every way- their interpretations of scripture, their beliefs, their practices. You could spend a whole lifetime just bouncing around within Protestantism, and unlike the endless variety in Buddhism, there are few core teachings to unify them and many Protestants think that your denomination matters in terms of salvation (whereas the Buddhists believe in upaya- expedient means).
Catholicism is an easy one to do because it is unified, more or less. Orthodox is less accessible, but I still suspect is not too difficult to pick a denomination that will work and go with it. But Protestantism is like a giant crazy garden and I'm looking at honeysuckle, roses, daffodils, tulips- this endless variety and wondering which to pick, knowing each is very different given my previous foray into four denominations.
