11AR16-26

( - previous issue - )

Apologia Report 16:26 (1,076)

July 28, 2011

Subject: Why did Christianity spread West more than East?

In this issue:

PARTICLE PHYSICS - the scientific world acknowledges religious overtones

SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION - the growth of world religions and "the response to outside religions, especially to Christianity"

YOGA - a good summary of the Take Back Yoga campaign and its backlash

----

PARTICLE PHYSICS

"Quantum mechanics has weathered in its short history more crises, controversies, interpretations, ... factional implosions, and general philosophical breast-beating than any other science. ... Perhaps arguments about the nature of reality are to be expected; quantum physics, so uncannily successful in practice, deals in theory with the foundations of all things, and its own foundations are continually being rebuilt. Even so, the ferment sometimes seems more religious than scientific. ...

"Go to any meeting, and it is like being in a holy city in great tumult. You will find all the religions with all their priests pitted in holy war - the Bohmians, the Consistent Historians, the Transactionalists, the Spontaneous Collapseans, the Enselectionists, the Contextual Objectivists, the outright Everettics, and many more beyond that. They all declare to see the light, the ultimate light. Each tells us that if we will accept their solution as our savior, then we too will see the light." The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick [1], pp355-356.

---

SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

The Spread of Religions: A Social Scientific Theory Based on the Spread of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, by Robert L. Montgomery [2] -- reviewer William H. Swatos, Jr. (Baylor University), explains that "the underlying thesis of this book is that only Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam are truly 'world' or 'global' religions." More than that, Swatos thinks this book is quite special because it "represents much of what [the Religious Research Association] is all about. [H]ere we have over two thousand years of comparative-historical analysis done as sociology and then evidence as to how it can be practically applied."

Montgomery examines the growth of these three religions on a global scale and "provides a similar kind of analysis of why irreligion has grown in late modernity." Swatos observes: "I don't think I have ever encountered as compact [and] explicit a sociology-of-religion analysis of irreligion as religion as occurs here." (Got that?)

Swatos' biggest complaint: "A professional copy editor could have made this a great book. The content is sufficiently valuable that it is worth reading regardless." Review of Religious Research, 52:4 - 2011, pp457-458.

More recently, Montgomery published The Lopsided Spread of Christianity: Toward an Understanding of the Diffusion of Religions [3]. The publisher's description reads: "Comparing the spread of Christianity to the East to its more successful spread to the West, Montgomery illustrates the uneven diffusion of one of the world's most influential and successful religions. Through his sociological analysis, the author examines the causes for Christianity's success to the West and its relative failings in major societies to the east of Jerusalem, including India, Persia, and China. Applying five variables, including Christianity's missionary orientation, geography, intersocietal relations, sociocultural structures, and individual perceptions, Montgomery provides a theory of the diffusion of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular.

"Beginning by laying out the variables he will apply to the study, Montgomery carefully explains his approach, introducing the reader to this unique field of study. He then moves on to examine Christianity's earliest spread to areas east of Jerusalem. An examination of the rise of Islam in the East precedes a comparative analysis of the success of Christianity in its spread to the West to its relative failure to spread to the East. He concludes with a discussion of religious pluralism."

In his preface Montgomery writes that "the response to mission efforts [has been] the core issue in missions that generally has been neglected in mission studies. That is, scholars and people in general have given more attention to the efforts made to spread religions than to the response to those efforts. ...

"I am looking specifically at the great contrast that developed from the beginning of the spread of Christianity in how it spread westward and eastward and how this contrast is related to present conditions in the world. [T]hroughout my study and use of the social sciences, I was continually thinking theologically about the question of response to outside religions, especially to Christianity."

For background on Montgomery, visit <www.sompsite.com>.

---

YOGA

"Is Yoga Religious?" by John N. Sheveland -- cover story with a contrasting coverline teaser: "Yoga practice, Christian practice?"Ultimately, Sheveland never answers the questions, but instead encourages ongoing interfaith dialog. He begins: "Who owns yoga? That unexpected question arose last year when the Hindu American Foundation identified what it views as two serious misconceptions about yoga that are widespread in the West.

"The first misconception is that yoga is only about physical exercise. ...

"The second misconception is that yoga can be dissociated from Hinduism. ...

"The campaign that HAF initiated, called Take Back Yoga [www.bit.ly/clAp4R], sparked two curious responses. One was from the difficult-to-categorize New Age author Deepak Chopra [www.huff.to/enYeoN]. He pushed back at HAF, saying it exaggerated the Hindu dimensions of yoga and seemed to express a naive and ahistorical view of that tradition. In a blog exchange with HAF cofounder Aseem Shukla, Chopra said yoga is linked to a philosophical system such as Advaita or the Sanatana Dharma that existed prior to classical Hinduism.

"The exchange revealed an internal conflict among diaspora Indians over the markers of religious identity. Chopra's own religious interests are more in the realm of "consciousness" or "spirituality" than in Hindu practice. He suggested that "the rise of Hinduism as a religion came centuries after the foundation of yoga in consciousness and consciousness alone. Religious rites and the worship of gods has always been seen as being in service to a higher cause, knowing the self." Indeed, for Chopra, the very term Hinduism seems to conjure up narrowness of communal identity and a tribal deity, both of which he finds inconsistent with the pluralistic intellectual traditions of India, which loosely coalesce under the umbrella of Sanatana Dharma. "Shukla, for his part, somewhat anachronistically conflates Hindu practice with Sanatana Dharma - a move that is certainly possible in the life of faith but inconsistent with the historical record. In any case, Shukla insisted that any who popularize, benefit from or practice yoga need to acknowledge its place in Hinduism. Chopra viewed this concern as the reflex urge of those wishing to consolidate a beleaguered Hindu identity, one that too quickly passes over the spiritual or mystical insight that is at the center of whatever counts as Hindu.

"The other curious response came from a Christian theologian. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, condemned yoga and 'Eastern meditation' [www.bit.ly/naDXim] in a way that echoed the uninformed condemnations of Indian religions - especially Hinduism - that were typical among evangelical missionaries to India in the 19th century. ...

"Furthermore, Mohler seems to be working with a 'container' theory of religious identity: one either fits religiously into this container or that - either Hindu or Christian, either biblically based or meditation-based. He thinks that any dabbling in another container must represent a contradiction.

"Such an approach would shut down religious dialogue before it begins. It would be more promising to allow the dialogue between traditions to take place. As it happens, Mohler offered no evidence to support his principle of contradiction, and many Christians attest to how yoga practices have deepened their Christian faith. ...

"A further question confronts those who wish to comment on Christian participation in yoga without participating themselves or becoming conversant with the broader philosophical and religious terrain on which yoga rests. Understanding is the fruit of concrete and open encounter. Moral speech about the other is best when we speak and act in the presence of the other, having heard the other and shared space with the other, and found shared causes if not compatible practices as well." Christian Century, Jun 14 '11, pp22-25. <www.bit.ly/nz1k6C>

-------

SOURCES: Monographs

1 - The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick (Pantheon, 2011, hardcover, 544 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/3j2m9s6>

2 - The Spread of Religions: A Social Scientific Theory Based on the Spread of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, by Robert L. Montgomery (Long Dash, 2007, paperback, 351 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/3benmmq>

3 - The Lopsided Spread of Christianity: Toward an Understanding of the Diffusion of Religions, by Robert L. Montgomery (Praeger, 2001, hardcover, 208 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/4x2shjj> also see <www.tinyurl.com/3plk7rz>

----

( - next issue - )