Conreligions Checklist Part I: Questions, Answers, Membership, Functionaries

I previously compiled a list of topics for consideration for anyone trying to come up with a grammar. This attempts to be a similar list for religions. However, I think there's a point in having some elucidating texts for many of these points, so it will be wordier than the corresponding linguistics list. This is the first part, and I have no idea how many parts it will swell out to become.

Many of the examples will be taken from real-world religions.

• Primary concern of a religion

In western culture, it's easy to live under the impression that the primary concern of religion is some set of specific beliefs, which the member is expected to hold true. This is not necessarily true for all religions, and even Christianity and Islam - the main examples of this trope in the real world - hold certain other aspects as important as well. Among these other important things we find:

• Social Order and Cohesion
• How is social life regulated and why?
  
• Behaviors and rituals
• What are their intended effects?
• Appease god(s) or spirits?
• Maintain natural order?
• Maintain social order?
• Inspire practitioners?
• Remind practitioners or something?
• What are their unintended effects?
• Social effects
• Economic effects

A ritual that requires some particular objects might lead to price gouging.

• What concepts govern them?
  
• Community
• What role does the community have in the religion?
  
• How is the community structured?  
• How is the community's boundary to other communities delineated?
  
• Natural order 
• What things are even considered natural orders?
  

• Questions

It's easy to conceive of religions as a set of claims; however, this is not always the best way of conceiving of what a religion is. Sometimes, the questions may be more interesting than the answers. A religion may very well have few clear answers, but a set of questions that unite the members. And of course, the questions need not be defining aspect either.

One sort of famous example of a question-centered religion is Judaism, which almost seems like a question-generator at times. One could probably make a typology of questions in Judaism, and all manner of analyses of their function in the community. Some people who have read the Zohar mean that at its heart lies the question "why does God want the Jews to adhere to the commandments in the Torah".

Conversely, Buddhism and Shinto concern themselves with very different questions from one another, and this, in part, is the reason they have gotten along fairly well in Japan - basically, their concerns are different enough that it's fairly possible to integrate both of them into both personal and communal life.

The order in which questions emerge in the community might affect how the answers develop.

• Answers 

The existence of questions hints at the existence of answers. Naturally, some answers may become entrenched and 'mandatory' in a religion. These answers need not be of the type 'this is what you should believe', but may well be of the type 'this is what you should do', or 'this question is nonsensical' (even though it might well be a sensible question), or even 'we don't know (and can't know)' or 'we won't know until so-and-so occurs'.

•  Membership

In the usual modern western view of what religions are, a "member" is generally seen to be a believer and vice versa - a believer is a member. This does get a bit complex, though, even in the case of Christianity: some Christians would not consider a non-baptized Christian a proper believer, and some Christians would consider a non-believing, baptized Christian a Christian. However, in e.g. USA, a significant portion of Christians are not baptized - which to me, a former believer in Lutheranism, seems very weird.

Clearly, belief and membership are, for at least some religions, distinct categories. This goes even deeper once you start looking at religions outside of Islam and Christianity.

Oftentimes, membership of a religion is the same thing as membership of a community; this membership might also be further complicated by confounding factors like inheritance of membership going by paternal, maternal or mandatorily both or optionally either line. Conversion may take more than just a declaration or simple ritual - in Judaism it's a process of at least a year, with classes and participation in the community.

• 'Ranks'
• Castes?
• Dynasties?
• Outsiders?

Some religions do not perceive themselves as being in opposition with non-members, but rather may consider non-members to be outsiders. Other have a more antagonistic view of outsiders, others have a view whereby outsiders need to be made politically subordinate.

There are some interesting examples from history where religions have cooperated in ways that seem weird today: when the Chinese emperor wanted to impose a very harsh tax on the Jews of Kaifeng, the local muslim population rioted in favour of the Jews and in opposition to the emperor.

Religions form networks of relations that can be fairly complicated and not necessarily antagonistic. There may well be antagonistic relationships within a religion, and these need not necessarily be the result of politics (but will necessarily result in politics).

• Quasi-members?

Strictly speaking, a sikh is a person who has taken the sikh vows. Not all believers in sikhism do take those vows, but do align with and identify with sikhism. These could be considered two types of members of sikhism, where there clearly is some kind of a difference in "how" the membership is expressed. (Not trying to be offensive here, but "quasi-member" seems to fit the unvowed members?)

In the Druze religion, the 'uqqal are initiated members who know the holy books, juhhal are ignorant members who have not been initiated - and most will not be initiated.

• Gender?
• Conversion?
• Is it relevant?

Some very praxis-oriented (and some very belief-oriented) religions might not even really put a lot of stock in the notion of a community. If there is no community - just people who do (or believe) the rituals (or doctrines), conversion might be an entirely irrelevant idea.

It would seem that for shintoism, conversion is not generally "relevant". One just ... practices it.

• Is it possible?

Not all religions permit conversion.

The Druze believe themselves to be a community that is continuously reincarnated within their community, and letting anyone else in would just not work out. The Zoroastrians in India do not accept converts - but this seems to be the result of an agreement the community signed when moving to India.

 

Syrian Jews do not accept converts, and this seems to be strict - they do not consider converts to other Jewish communities real Jews.

Karaite Judaism has not accepted converts for centuries - but has recently started accepting them. It seems the lack of "proper infrastructure" for dealing with converts was the cause (and also, potentially, the risk of repercussions from Christian and Muslim rulers).

 

The Yazidi and the Mandaeans do not accept converts.

 

• Is it an objective of the religion?

Some religions that do accept converts, do not strive to acquire them particularly eagerly; Judaism and Sikhism both accept converts, but they won't go out of their way to gain them.

 

Orthodox Judaism teaches that the rest of mankind have fewer commandments to obey, and that it's better to be a righteous gentile obeying all those commandments (about 100), than to be a Jew who obeys 95% of the more than 600 commandments of Judaism. I.e. every single violation done by a Jew is by their view something to avoid, and thus accepting an insincere convert would be causing problems.

 

For those Zoroastrians that do accept converts, and in part for Jews, external historical pressure from other religions is also one cause for the reluctance. This may also explain e.g. the Mandaean, Yazidi, etc bans on conversion. 

• What is the "unit" of conversion?

Some religions accept anyone as a convert - conversion thus being individual. Others will not convert e.g. half a married couple, but require both to convert. I imagine a religion could even permit only for married couples to convert, and thus never accept singles. 

Sometimes, Christianity has accepted for conversion a whole tribe or 'nation' (the concept of 'nation' is probably more recent than any such conversion, so 'tribe' might be a better term.) Islam probably also has accepted such conversions at times?

For some religions, it would make sense for 'the village' to be the unit of conversion.

As protestantism gained steam, it seems the agreement between Catholicism and Lutheranism was basically that 'principalities' determined which to side with, i.e. conversion to Lutheranism was not individual, but "statelet"-level.

• What's the status of a convert?

Converts in orthodox Judaism may not marry levites and cohanites, thus giving them some restrictions that other Jews do not have. This restriction is no longer enforced in conservative and more liberal forms of Judaism.

In medieval Christianity, Jewish converts to Christianity were likewise often prohibited from marrying "real" Christians and had severe restrictions put on them (and were required to preach christianity to their former co-religionists regularly, but were otherwise forbidden to interact with the Jewish community; this ban was mutual, b.t.w., i.e. enforced both by Christian and Jewish communities.). This continued into early protestantism, but it seems some Lutheran priests of the time did give their own children in marriage to Jewish converts in order to facilitate assimilation into the Christian community. Yes, those were weird times. 

Up to fairly recently, the Lutheran churches in Scandinavia have had two separate liturgies for the adult baptism of a non-Christian: one for the Jew, one for gentiles. The version for the Jewish convert contained some "beef" with Judaism.

Some Anglican movements permit converts that are in polygamous relationships to continue in those polygamous relationships. Other movements of Christianity require divorcing all but one of the wives.

How a wife with a 'shared husband' who converts is dealt with is unclear.

• Privileges of membership?

In Judaism, a Jew can do certain jobs that non-Jews can't, e.g. the works of being a kosher butcher, a scribe, and a variety of other Jewish communal works. The Bible also forbids Jews from lending at interest to other Jews. However, N.B.: this doesn't mean that the lender is at an advantage w.r.t. non-Jews, but rather that the lender has a weakened profitability in his own community. It's only when Islam and Christianity banned interest that the Jewish lender suddenly was given an advantage in European and Muslim countries. Students at Jewish religious schools - yeshivas - are generally funded by charity from other Jews, and charity among Jews is a fairly common phenomenon. However, charity from among Jews to outsiders is not unknown either.

In Islam, muslims have certain advantages both in the eyes of the muslim state and in the eyes of the sharia courts. However, e.g. a halal butcher can be a Christian or a Jew as well.

Only observant Jews can be witnesses in orthodox beit din courts.

 In Christian Europe, e.g. Sweden only accepted non-Christians to work as officials of state as late as the 1950s!

• Responsibilities of membership?
• Ways of dealing with failure to observe the responsibilities?

• Religious functionaries
• Clergy

The function of clergy can vary; in some religions, clergy mainly perform ritual duties, in other religions, they are responsible for ritual duties as well as teaching the laity. Let's compare the function of the rabbi and the Lutheran priest:

The rabbi has very few specific ritual functions (although local Jewish tradition may have some small ritual observances like 'the rabbi should never turn his back on the congregation'). Any adult, bar mitzvah Jew can perform (nearly) any of the rituals that are part of modern Judaism. The rabbi, however, is of course expected to know the ins and outs and thus, by default might often end up performing these rituals.

In the form of lutheranism I grew up in, only the priest is permitted to perform several rituals; a communion must be presided over by a priest. Weddings must be presided over by a priest. If communion is to be had in a room, this room must at some point have been 'dedicated' by a bishop (and bishops are basically a rank of priest). Baptism can be performed by any member if there is reason to believe an unbaptized person is about to die, but if a regular member of the laity baptized someone without good reason, it would be frowned upon. I am not sure it would even be accepted.

Judaism has remnants of the old Levite/Cohanite priesthood, however. This was a hereditary priesthood that served in the temple, and to this day they have a few specific ritual privileges in orthodox Judaism, e.g. certain turns for Torah-readings are reserved for a levite in case one is present. Back when the Jewish temple in Jerusalem still stood, levites and cohanites carried out ritual functions there, including the various sacrifices.

In Zoroastrianism, clergy primarily performs a ritual function - regular members do not participate in rituals frequently. The clergy, however, need to be very meticulous about ritual hygiene. These ritual rules involve how to dispose of bodily waste, and makes it impossible for a Zoroastrian priest to travel any considerable distances by train or by air.

• Monks and nuns
• Scholars
• Other possible religious functions
• Examples:
• Scribes

A scribe might well write other things than just the holy books. In Judaism, several ritual objects have small slips of biblical verses in them, and the Jewish marriage contract (ketubah) is usually written by a scribe.

Before the printing press was invented, monks did a lot of scribal work, and probably still do.

• Butchers

In islam and judaism, halal and kosher meat are important concepts; this has lead to the emergence of specialized butchers who know the religious rules of slaughter.

• Cantors

In catholic and some protestant traditions, cantors are musicians who accompany the service, i.e. playing organs or some other suitable instrument, and often also leading the hymns. However, in other traditions, the musicians of a service may not even have an actual title, and may be much less formalized.

Cantors also often lead choirs and other music workshops and such in the religious context.

In traditional Judaism, the cantor is the leader of the service - basically leading the reading of prayers and singing of songs. This is a separate title from rabbi.

• Criers

To what extent publicly crying at funerals in exchange for pay ever has been a full-time job I have no idea, but at least some people have been tasked with crying at funerals.

• Sextons

In Scandinavia, the sexton was not only a supervisor of church property, but also a supervisor of village morals.

• "Shadchan" 

In Judaism, the schadchan - the matchmaker - can be seen as a type of religious functionary. Of course, this is also a bit complicated, as they're also well basically just communal or social functionaries ... but this would be a failure to appreciate just how communal a concept of religion Judaism has.

• Producers and custodians of ritual objects
• Prophets

In  popular media franchises and media, and even in some ~sorta okay sources, the concept of a prophet is simplified to 'someone who predicts the future'. In serious religious studies, however, a prophet is "merely" someone who conveys a message from God (or similar). This need not pertain to the future (although e.g. future punishments for transgressions aren't exactly very uncommon in parts of the Bible).

Some religions seem to think prophecy is finished, e.g. Judaism generally teaches that prophecy is currently not available; Islam considers Muhammad the seal of the prophets; some movements of Christianity hold that no prophecy currently is given (and at the very least no prophecy of global interest). Other forms of Christianity have prophecy as an active phenomenon.

Active prophets are problematic in one sense, since it can be kind of hard to determine whether a prophet really is the real deal. (Personally, I hold that no such thing exists; however, given a religious tradition, a prophet may either be compatible with the tradition, disruptive, revolutionary, innovative, etc. Thus, having active prophecy can cause instability.)

'Holy fools' in Russian Orthodoxy fulfill a similar role.

• 'Surgical' functionaries

Besides e.g. circumcision, there are religious traditions that involve tattoos, tooth chiseling, scarring, and arguably finger amputation in some movements could be seen as a near-religious action. Functionaries that carry out these body modifications may well be seen as religious functionaries.