Jonathan Z.

Smith
1) The four features that J. Z. Smith identifies in Eden and Cieza’s use of the
term religion

 Eden and Cieza – discovered proto people/semi people (natives of Canary

Islands and north Andean indigenous people) who had no knowledge of God //
word, ‘religion’ used to highlight a lack of religious knowledge & civilization
(Eden) “without shame, religion or knowledge of God” + a lack of religious
practice (Cieza) “observing no religion…nor is there any house of worship”
 both of these uses of the term ‘religion’ were factually incorrect, at the same time,
there was a major expansion in the use and understanding of the term ‘religion’
beginning in the 16th c.
 smith identifies 4 main issues raised by the expansion:
(1) “Religion” is NOT a native category.
- It is not a first person term of self-characterization
- It is a category imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture.
- It is the ‘other’, in these instances colonialists, who are solely responsible for
the content of the term.
- Meaning, that the colonizers introduced the concept of ‘religion’, they are the
ones giving content and shape to religion
(2) Even in these early formulations, there is an implicit universality. "Religion" is
thought to be a ubiquitous human phenomenon; therefore, both Eden and
Cieza find its alleged absence noteworthy.
- Meaning, that religion is thought of as a universal phenomenon
(3) In constructing the second-order, generic category "religion," its
characteristics are those that appear natural to the ‘other’. In these quotations
this familiarity is signaled by the phrases "knowledge of God" and "religion ...
as we understand it."
- Religion as second order= etic/ natural, comfortable
- If it’s a member of a species, it should have religion
- Religion is not floating somewhere in the world to be discovered, it is a
category deployed from the outside.
(4) "Religion" is an anthropological not a theological category. (Perhaps the only
exception is the distinctive American nineteenth-century coinages, "to get
religion" or "to experience religion.")
- It describes human thought and action, most frequently in terms of belief and
norms of behavior.
- Eden understands the content of "religion" largely in the former sense
("without ... religion or knowledge of God"), whereas Cieza articulates it in the
latter ("no religion ... nor ... any house of worship").
 - When using the term, ‘religion’, we are (or should be) referring to behavior,
thoughts and actions of people they were observing rather than on the
theological concept.

2) The shifts in the term religion that occur from its “Catholic understanding”
in the 18th century to its identification with “spirituality” and “faith” – see
examples such as the entry on religion in the first edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica [p. 271]. Also consult your class notes on this
issue.

 In the 18th c, the essentially catholic understanding of ‘religion’ in close proximity

to ritual (organization of life in a certain way; non identically repeated behavior)
been decisively altered.
 In the ‘Dictionary of English Language’, Samuel Johnson defines religion as
“virtue, as founded upon reverence of God, and expectations of future rewards
and punishments."
 The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1771) titled its entry "Religion, or
Theology," defining the topic in the opening paragraph: "To know God, and to
render him a reasonable service, are the two principal objects of religion .... Man
appears to be formed to adore, but not to comprehend, the Supreme Being."
 Terms such as "reverence," "service," "adore," and "worship" in these sorts of
definitions have been all but evacuated of ritual connotation, and seem more to
denote a state of mind, a transition begun by Reformation figures such as Zwingli
and Calvin who understood "religion" primarily as "piety."
 So, J.Z smith is tracing shifts in the way the category of religion has been used
over time, early 1600s= the word, ‘belief system’ was used, the idea being that
there has been a shift from the location of religion in the careful performance of
religious activities to its location in internal beliefs / In the 18 th c, the defining
characteristic of religion was belief rather than the careful performance of rituals
or beliefs.
 Location of religion not only in church/Christ but in the heart/internally // the
‘heartisation’ of religion i.e. heart shaped by reading religious scriptures = arose
in the protestant reformation

3) Pay attention to the persistent tendency J. Z. Smith notes in the way that
the term religion is used dualistically [p. 276]. Examples that illustrate this
tendency (e.g. Matthew Tindal [pp. 272-273] and Petrus Tiele [pp. 278-280].
What three features of the way scholars like Tindal and Tiele classify
different religious traditions did we note down in class (see you class
notes)
 The most common form of classifying religions, found both in native categories
and in scholarly literature, is dualistic and can be reduced, regardless of what
ditferentium is employed, to "theirs" and "ours."
 By the time of the 14th c, Christian Latin apologists, a strong dual vocabulary was
well in place and could be deployed interchangeably regardless of the individual
histories of the terms: "our religion/their religion," with the latter often expressed
through generic terms such as "heathenism," "paganism," or "idolatry"; "true
religion/false religion"; "spiritual (or "internal") religion/"material (or "external")
religion"; "monotheism"/ polytheism "; "religion'/"superstition"; "religion'/"magic."
 People writing in the 1700s/1800s were discovering religion among primitives,
according to them, their yardstick will be applied (criteria set as to what accounts
for authentic religion / presents a degradation scheme of higher and lower
religion) to them too.
 As a result of colonial expansion, religious scholars started building a
proliferation of ‘classification schemes’, apart from that, hierarchy of religion also
created (some members measured ‘up’, some ‘down). These colonizers also
have a sense of what an ideal religion looks like, is trying to model them, e.g.
Indians classifying various Pakistanis (Punjabis, sindhis etc.)
 Tindal – argues that there is only 1 true religion while all the rest are variations of
it, for e.g. says: “If God, then, from the Beginning gave Men a Religion ... he must
have given them likewise .... sufficient Means of knowing it .... If God never
intended Mankind shou' d at any Time be without Religion, or have false
Religions; and there be but One True Religion, which ALL have been ever hound
to believe, and profess.”
- While he acknowledges some relativity, “I do not mean by this that All shou'd
have equal Knowledge; but that All shou'd have what is sufficient for the
Circumstances they are in”
- Monotheistic religions are ‘higher’ and polytheistic ones are ‘lower’ as they
are variations or derivations of monotheistic religion.
- Key thing: where the inquirer stands is ideal // if inquirer is non-religious
(higher), religion (or being religious) will be lower
- His presumption of the unity of truth i.e. the idea that natural religion differs
“not from Reveal’d but in the manner of its being communicated” - One is the
internal while the other is the external revelation, in this way, he signaled the
start of the process of transposing “religion” from a supernatural to natural
history, from theological to anthropological category, which allowed for the
distinctions b/w questions of truth and questions of origin to be established
 Tiele – invention of the taxon, ‘world’ religion or ‘universal’ religions – division that
appeared to recognize both history and geography / term introduced and placed
in a classificatory scheme that synthesized previous taxonomic divisions in
‘outline of the history of religion to the spread of universal religions’(1 st classic in
the science of religion) and ‘religions’(9 th edition of encyclopedia Britannica) / his
‘morphological’ classification which schematizes the “stage of development” each
 religion has “attained” has at its fundamental principle of division ‘natural’ and
‘ethical’ religion (as correlated with Whitney’s distinction b/w ‘race religion’ and
‘founded religion’)
- Smith argued that the category “religion” found its salience through two
historical events: The European exploration of the New World and the
Reformation. These two events created an “explosion of data” as Christianity
diversified within Europe and Europeans encountered people around the
globe. The need to organize this data of religions around the world led to
various taxonomies that culminated in the “world religions” of the late
nineteenth century. Europeans used religion and various taxonomies of
religion to make sense of human difference. Religion, then, is a second-order
term for organizing difference
- ‘world religions’= those 3 religions that have found their way to different races
(globally) with the aim to conquer the world from such comm. That are limited
to a single race/nation and where they have extended further, have done so
in connection with a superior civilization / says there can be no more than 1
UNIVERSAL RELIGION – matter of belief that lies beyond the limits of
scientific classification / modern history of religions= the history of world
religions (3) and of their wrestling with the ancient faiths and primitive modes
of worship which slowly fade away before their encroachment and which
where they still survive in some parts of the world and don’t reform
themselves after the model of the superior civilization, draw nearer to
extinction
- World religion= is a religion like ‘ours’ and that it is above all, a tradition that
has achieved sufficient power and numbers to enter our history to form it,
interact with it or thwart it / we recognize both the unity within and diversity
among world religions s they correspond to imp geopolitical entities with
which we must deal / all ‘primitives’ maybe lumped together as the minor
religions since they don’t confront our history in any direct fashion, from the
point of view of power, they are invisible
 4 features of the way scholars classify different religious traditions:
(1) Attempt to provide a ‘total’ picture or present a ‘total’ theory
(2) Give a sense of what true/ripe/full/mature class(religion) looks like, assemble
all features of a class
(3) Create a hierarchy/classification = becomes a pedestal on which other
religions are judged = classifies members of class by mentioning it against full
or right members of class
- The “higher” one (where the inquirer stands) will be used as a yardstick
- E.g. how the GPA scale is used to judge all students, applies as a yardstick,
comparing their intellectual capabilities/capacities
(4) Major religions = those where conquest or victory or control over a particular
people has not been short term, but a protracted affair
 - What is counted as major world religions names some time and place where
colonial powers have to struggle themselves
- Those religions where you’ve faced conflict, more likely to include features of
‘ripe’, ‘mature’ etc.
- In ‘local’/’minor’ religions, no struggle, doesn’t shape you.

4) J. Z. Smith’s “classic statement” on how academics should employ the

concept of religion (right at the end of the article)

 Widely believed among students that “the effort clearly to define religion in short
compass is a hopeless task”
 However, it is not that religion cannot be defined but that it can be defined, with
greater/lesser success, more than 50 ways. If religion is a second order category
for organizing difference, and if these taxonomies have changed over time from
the fifteenth century to today, then the definition of “religion” is up for constant
refabrication.
 Besides, can classify and evaluate the list of definitions
 “religion’ = not a native term, is a term created by scholars for their intellectual
purposes and therefore is theirs to define // is a 2 nd order, generic concept that
plays the same role in establishing a horizon that a concept such as “language”
plays in linguistics or “culture” plays in anthropology// so can be no disciplined
study of religion without such a horizon
 For e.g. are multiple notions of power depending on what our interests and
questions are, JZ Smith says that it happens in every discipline
- Power as a concept, has different definitions
- Can be no discipline of study without such a definitional pursuit