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From Ninian Smart. The World's Religions. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1992. Pgs. 9 - 21

Understanding the worlds religions and ideologies is important in three ways. First, they
are a vital ingredient in the varied story of humankinds various experiments in living. The
religions and ideas of ancient Greece or of the Maya are worth our recapturing, so far as
we can, as part of the great heritage of human civilization. Second, and of more
immediate importance, is the fact that in order to grasp the meanings and values of the
plural cultures of todays world, we need to know something of the worldviews which
underlie them. To understand the Middle East you need to know something about Islam,
not to mention Christianity and Judaism; and to understand Japan you need some insight
into Buddhism, Shinto, and the Confucian heritage. Third, we may as individuals be trying
to form our own coherent and emotionally satisfying picture of reality, and it is always
relevant to see the great ideas and practices of various important cultures and
civilizations. To make judgments about philosophies and ways of life we need a
comparative perspectiveto know something of the quest of the Christian mystic and the
Hindu yogin, and of the spirituality of the Hasidic Jew and the Mahayana Buddhist. In a
number of ways, the individual cultures of the world contribute to human civilization, and
the religions and ideologies permeating those cultures are not to be neglected.

In undertaking a voyage into the worlds religions we should not define religion too
narrowly. It is important for us to recognize secular ideologies as part of the story of
human worldviews. It is artificial to divide them too sharply from religions, partly because
they sometimes function in society like religions, and partly because the distinction
between religious and secular beliefs and practices is a modern Western one and does not
represent the way in which other cultures categorize human values. Essentially, this book
is a history of ideas and practices which have moved human beings.

To understand religious and secular worldviews and their practical meaning we have to
use imagination. We have to enter into the lives of those for whom such ideas and actions
are important. As the Native American proverb says, "Never judge a person until you
have walked a mile in his moccasins." Much of this book will be in a broad way
informative; but it will also, I hope, convey something of the spirit of the human quest for
cross cultural communication.

Once a Christian theologian complained to me in a public discussion because I had dealt

among other themes with Buddhist attitudes to creation: "What need do we have to
consider Buddhism, since it is incompatible with the Gospel, and the Christian Gospel is all
the truth we need?" It seems to me inappropriate to be so defensive, and a limitation on
this mans knowledge of the forces animating different parts of humanity. Anyway, I
craftily replied: "You must indeed have read a lot, to know that Buddhism is incompatible
with the Christian Gospel."

The voyage into other folks beliefs and practices may turn out to be a journey into your
neighborhood. It is common today for varieties of people to live together in the great
cities. In London, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Singapore, Frankfurt, and Paris, most
of the great religions and ideologies are present. This pluralism is the richer because each
of the traditions includes many forms: Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Baptists; Shia and
Sunni Muslims, and Muslims from Morocco, Indonesia, and Egypt; Buddhists from Sri
Lanka, Vietnam, and Korea, as well as Anglo converts; and so on. It often happens, then,
that cities are microcosms of the whole world. This is an added reason why it is important
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to know something of others, so that mutual understanding, though maybe not

agreement, may animate community relations.

Inevitably the Vietnamese migrant to Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Indian villager
listening to a radio are affected to some degree by modernity and in a measure by
Western values. The tremendous impact of the West has helped to shape the old religions
in their voyage into the contemporary world. They have cherished their roots, but they
have also adapted. The Hinduism of today bears deeply the imprint of its struggle against
the imperial mentality, and the same is true, much more clearly, of the way smaller-scale
cultures have bent to the winds of Western-dictated change. Consequently in this book
the period of Western navigation, exploration, exploitation and imperial rule marks a
watershed in the story. Before, there is the narrative of the rise and fall of religious
cultures in differing parts of the globe; afterwards, we see patterns of interaction, and
eventually the emergence of a global civilization, in which inevitably religious and secular
worldviews have to learn to adapt to one another.

The Nature of a Religion

In thinking about religion, it is easy to be confused about what it is. is there some essence
which is common to all religions? And cannot a person be religious without belonging to
any of the religions? The search for an essence ends up in vagueness for instance in
the statement that a religion- is some system of worship or other practice recognizing a
transcendent Being or goal. Our problems break out again in trying to define the key term
"transcendent." And in answer to the second question, why yes: there are plenty of
people with deep spiritual concerns who do not ally themselves to any formal religious
movement, and who may not themselves recognize anything as transcendent. They may
see ultimate spiritual meaning in unity with nature or in relationships to other persons.

It is more practical to come to terms first of all not with what religion is in general but
with what a religion is. Can we find some scheme of ideas which will help us to think
about and to appreciate the nature of the religions?

Before I describe such a scheme, let me first point to something which we need to bear in
mind in looking at religious traditions such as Christianity, Buddhism or Islam. Though we
use the singular label "Christianity," in fact there is a great number of varieties of
Christianity, and there are some movements about which we may have doubts as to
whether they count as Christian. The same is true of all traditions: they manifest
themselves as a loosely held-together family of subtraditions. Consider: a Baptist chapel
in Georgia is a very different structure from an Eastern Orthodox church in Romania, with
its blazing candles and rich ikons; and the two house very diverse services the one
plain, with hymns and Biblereading, prayers and impassioned preaching; the other
much more ritually anchored, with processions and chanting, and mysterious ceremonies
in the light behind the screen where the ikons hang, concealing most of the priestly
activities. Ask either of the religious specialists, the Baptist preacher or the Orthodox
priest, and he will tell you that his own form of faith corresponds to original Christianity.
To list some of the denominations of Christianity is to show something of its diverse
practiceOrthodox, Catholic, Coptic, Nestorian, Armenian, Mar Thoma, Lutheran,
Calvinist, Methodist; Baptist, Unitarian, Mennonite, Congregationalist, Disciples of Christ
and we have not reached some of the newer, more problematic. forms: LatterDay
Saints, Christian Scientists, Unificationists, Zulu Zionists, and so forth.
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Moreover, each faith is found in many countries, and takes color from each region.
German Lutheranism differs from American; Ukrainian Catholicism from Irish; Greek
Orthodoxy from Russian. Every religion has permeated and been permeated by a variety
of diverse cultures. This adds to the richness of human experience, but it makes our tasks
of thinking and feeling about the variety of faiths more complicated than we might at first
suppose. We are dealing with not just traditions but many subtraditions.

It may happen, by the way, that a person within one family of subtraditions may be
drawn closer to some subtradition of another family than to one or two subtraditions in
her own family (as with human families; this is how marriage occurs). I happen to have
had a lot to do with Buddhists in Sri Lanka and in some ways feel much closer to them
than I do to some groups within my own family of Christianity.

The fact of pluralism inside religious traditions is enhanced by what goes on between
them. The meeting of different cultures and traditions often produces new religious
movements, such as the many black independent churches in Africa, combining classical
African motifs and Christianities. All around us in Western countries are to be seen new
movements and combinations.

Despite all this, it is possible to make sense of the variety and to discern some patterns in
the luxurious vegetation of the worlds religions and subtraditions. One approach is to look
at the different aspects or dimensions of religion.

There are seven dimensions that Smart uses to define the characteristics of a religion:

I. The Practical / Ritual Dimension

II. The Experiential / Emotional Dimension
III. The Narrative / Mythic Dimension
IV. The Doctrinal / Philosophical Dimension
V. The Ethical / Legal Dimension
VI. The Social / Institutional Dimension
VII. The Material Dimension

The first five of these can be considered abstract, the last two practical.

For memory purposes, these make a really nifty mnemonic: P.E.N.D.E.S.M. -->
"Pretty Eternities Necessitate Doubly Expansive Secular Mentalities". Isn't that just
classic?

I. The Practical and Ritual Dimension

Every tradition has some practices to which it adheresfor instance regular worship,
preaching, prayers, and so on. They are often known as rituals (though they may well be
more informal than this word implies). This practical and ritual dimension is especially
important with faiths of a strongly sacramental kind, such as Eastern Orthodox
Christianity with its long and elaborate service known as the Liturgy. The ancient Jewish
tradition of the Temple, before it was destroyed in 70 C.E., was preoccupied with the
rituals of sacrifice, and thereafter with the study of such rites seen itself as equivalent to
their performance, so that study itself becomes almost a ritual activity. Again, sacrificial
rituals are important among Brahmin forms of the Hindu tradition.
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Also important are other patterns of behavior which, while they may not strictly count as
rituals, fulfill a function in developing spiritual awareness or ethical insight: practices such
as yoga in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, methods of stilling the self in Eastern
Orthodox mysticism, meditations which can help to increase compassion and love, and so
on. Such practices can be combined with rituals of worship, where meditation is directed
towards union with God. They can count as a form of prayer. In such ways they overlap
with the more formal or explicit rites of religion.

II. The Experiential and Emotional Dimension

We only have to glance at religious history to see the enormous vitality and significance of
experience in the formation and development of religious traditions. Consider the visions
of the Prophet Muhammad, the conversion of Paul, the enlightenment of the Buddha.
These were seminal events in human history. And it is obvious that the emotions and
experiences of men and women are -the food on which the other dimensions of religion
feed: ritual without feeling is cold, doctrines without awe or compassion are dry, and
myths which do not move hearers are feeble. So it is important in understanding a
tradition to try to enter into the feelings which it generates to feel the sacred awe, the
calm peace, the rousing inner dynamism, the perception of a brilliant emptiness within,
the outpouring of love, the sensations of hope, the gratitude for favors which have been
received. One of the main reasons why music is so potent in religion is that it has
mysterious powers to express and engender emotions.

Writers on religion have singled out differing experiences as being central. For instance,
Rudolf Otto (18691937) coined the word "numinous." For the ancient Romans there
were numina or spirits all around them, present in brooks and streams, and in mysterious
copses, in mountains and in dwelling-places; they were to be treated with awe and a kind
of fear. From the word, Otto built up his adjective, to refer to the feeling aroused by a
mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a mysterious something which draws you to it but at
the same time brings an awepermeated fear. It is a good characterization of many
religious experiences and visions of God as Other. It captures the impact of the prophetic
experiences of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the theophany through which God appeared to Job,
the conversion of Paul, the overwhelming vision given to Arjuna in the Hindu Song of the
Lord (Bhagavadgita). At a gentler level it delineates too the spirit of loving devotion, in
that the devotee sees God as merciful and loving, yet Other, and to be worshiped and
adored.

But the numinous is rather different in character from those other experiences which are
often called "mystical." Mysticism is the inner or contemplative quest for what lies within
variously thought of as the Divine Being within, or the eternal soul, or the Cloud of
Unknowing, emptiness, a dazzling darkness. There are those, such as Aldous Huxley
(18941963), who have thought that the imageless, insight-giving inner mystical
experience lies at the heart of all the major religions.

There are other related experiences, such as the dramas of conversion, being "born
again," turning around from worldly to otherworldly existence. There is also the
shamanistic type of experience, where a person goes upon a vision quest and acquires
powers to heal, often through suffering himself and vividly traveling to the netherworld to
rescue the dying and bring them to life again. Shamans are common to many small-scale
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societies and peoples that make their living by hunting, but many of the marks of the
shamanistic quest have been left upon larger religions.

III. The Narrative or Mythic Dimension

Often experience is channeled and expressed not only by ritual but also by sacred
narrative or myth. This is the third dimension the mythic or narrative. It is the story
side of religion. It is typical of all faiths to hand down vital stories: some historical; some
about that mysterious primordial time when the world was in its timeless dawn; some
about things to come at the end of time; some about great heroes and saints; some about
great founders, such as Moses, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad; some about assaults
by the Evil One; some parables and edifying tales; some about the adventures of the
gods; and so on. These stories often are called myths. The term may be a bit misleading,
for in the context of the modern study of religion there is no implication that a myth is
false.

The seminal stories of a religion may be rooted in history or they may not.

Stories of creation are before history, as are myths which indicate how death and
suffering came into the world. Others are about historical events for instance the life of
the Prophet Muhammad, or the execution of Jesus, and the enlightenment of the Buddha.
Historians have sometimes cast doubt on some aspects of these historical stories, but
from the standpoint of the student of religion this question is secondary to the meaning
and function of the myth; and to the believer, very often, these narratives are history.

This belief is strengthened by the fact that many faiths look upon certain documents,
originally maybe based upon long oral traditions, as true scriptures. They are canonical or
recognized by the relevant body of the faithful (the Church, the community, Brahmins and
others in India, the Buddhist Sangha or Order). They are often treated as inspired directly
by God or as records of the very words of the Founder. They have authority, and they
contain many stories and myths which are taken to be divinely or otherwise guaranteed.
But other documents and oral traditions may also be importantthe lives of the saints,
the chronicles of Ceylon as a Buddhist nation, the stories of famous holy men of Eastern
Europe in the Hasidic tradition, traditions concerning the life of the Prophet (hadith), and
so forth. These stories may have lesser authority but they can still be inspiring to the
followers.

Stories in religion are often tightly integrated into the ritual dimension. The Christian Mass
or communion service, for instance, commemorates and presents the story of the Last
Supper, when Jesus celebrated with his disciples his forthcoming fate, by which (according
to Christians) he saved humankind. and brought us back into harmony with the Divine
Being. The Jewish Passover ceremonies commemorate and make real to us the events of
the Exodus from Egypt, the sufferings of the people, and their relationship to the Lord
who led them out of servitude in ancient Egypt. As Jews share the meal, so they retrace
the story. Ritual and story are bound together.

IV. The Doctrinal and Philosophical Dimension

Underpinning the narrative dimension is the doctrinal dimension. Thus, in the Christian
tradition, the story of Jesus life and the ritual of the communion service led to attempts
to provide an analysis of the nature of the Divine Being which would preserve both the
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idea of the Incarnation (Jesus as God) and the belief in one God. The result was the
doctrine of the Trinity, which sees God as three persons in one substance. Similarly, with
the meeting between early Christianity and the great Graeco-Roman philosophical and
intellectual heritage it became necessary to face questions about the ultimate meaning of
creation, the inner nature of God, the notion of grace, the analysis of how Christ could be
both God and human being, and so on. These concerns led to the elaboration of Christian
doctrine. In the case of Buddhism, to take another example, doctrinal ideas were more
crucial right from the start, for the Buddha himself presented a philosophical vision of the
world which itself was an aid to salvation.

In any event, doctrines come to play a significant part in all the major religions, partly
because sooner or later a faith has to adapt to social reality and so to the fact that much
of the leadership is well educated and seeks some kind of intellectual statement of the
basis of the faith.

It happens that histories of religion have tended to exaggerate the importance of

scriptures and doctrines; and this is not too surprising since so much of our knowledge of
past religions must come from the documents which have been passed on by the scholarly
elite. Also, and especially in the case of Christianity, doctrinal disputes have often been
the overt expression of splits within the fabric of the community at large, so that
frequently histories of a faith concentrate upon these hot issues. This is clearly
unbalanced; but I would not want us to go to the other extreme. There are scholars today
who have been much impressed with the symbolic and psychological force of myth, and
have tended to neglect the essential intellectual component of religion.

V. The Ethical and Legal Dimension

Both narrative and doctrine affect the values of a tradition by laying out the shape of a
worldview and addressing the question of ultimate liberation or salvation. The law which a
tradition or subtradition incorporates into its fabric can be called the ethical dimension of
religion. In Buddhism for instance there are certain universally binding precepts, known as
the five precepts or virtues, together with a set of further regulations controlling the lives
of monks and nuns and monastic communities. In Judaism we have not merely the ten
commandments but a complex of over six hundred rules imposed upon the community by
the Divine Being. All this Law or Torah is a framework for living for the Orthodox Jew. It
also is part of the ritual dimension, because, for instance, the injunction to keep the
Sabbath as a day of rest is also the injunction to perform certain sacred practices and
rituals, such as attending the synagogue and maintaining purity.

Similarly, Islamic life has traditionally been controlled by the Law or Sharia, which shapes
society both as a religious and a political society, as well as the moral life of the individual
prescribing that he should pray daily, give alms to the poor, and so on, and that society
should have various institutions, such as marriage, modes of banking, etc.

Other traditions can be less tied to a system of law, but still display an ethic which is
influenced and indeed controlled by the myth and doctrine of the faith. For instance, the
central ethical attitude in the Christian faith is love. This springs not just from Jesus
injunction to his followers to love God and their neighbors: it also flows- from the story of
Christ himself who gave his life out of love for his fellow human beings. It also is rooted in
the very idea of the Trinity, for God from all eternity is a society of three persons, Father,
Son and Holy Spirit, kept together by the bond of love. The Christian joins a community
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which reflects, it is hoped at any rate, the life of the Divine Being, both as Trinity and as
suffering servant of the human race and indeed of all creation.

VI. The Social and Institutional Dimension

The dimensions outlined so farthe experiential, the ritual, the mythic, the doctrinal, and
the ethical can be considered in abstract terms, without being embodied in external
form. The last two dimensions have to do with the incarnation of religion. First, every
religious movement is embodied in a group of people, and that is very often rather
formally organized as Church, or Sangha, or umma. The sixth dimension therefore is
what may be called the social or institutional aspect of religion. To understand a faith we
need to see how it works among people. This is one reason why such an important tool of
the investigator of religion is that subdiscipline which is known as the sociology of religion.
Sometimes the social aspect of a worldview is simply identical with society itself, as in
smallscale groups such as tribes. But there is a variety of relations between organized
religions and society at large: a faith may be the official religion, or it may be just one
denomination among many, or it may be somewhat cut off from social life, as a sect.
Within the organization of one religion, moreover, there are many models from the
relative democratic governance of a radical Protestant congregation to the hierarchical
and monarchical system of the Church of Rome.

It is not however the formal officials of a religion who may in the long run turn out to be
the most important persons in a tradition. For there are charismatic or sacred personages,
whose spiritual power glows through their demeanor and actions, and who vivify the faith
of more ordinary folksaintly people, gurus, mystics and prophets, whose words and
example stir up the spiritual enthusiasm of the masses, and who lend depth and meaning
to the rituals and values of a tradition. They can also be revolutionaries and set religion
on new courses. They can, like John Wesley, become leaders of a new denomination,
almost against their will; or they can be founders of new groups which may in due course
emerge as separate religions an example is Joseph Smith II, Prophet of the new faith of
Mormonism. In short, the social dimension of religion includes not only the mass of
persons but also the outstanding individuals through whose features glimmer old and new
thoughts of the heaven towards which they aspire.

VII. The Material Dimension

This social or institutional dimension of religion almost inevitably becomes incarnate in a

different way, in material form, as buildings, works of art, and other creations. Some
movementssuch as Calvinist Christianity, especially in the time before the present
centuryeschew external symbols as being potentially idolatrous; their buildings are
often beautiful in their simplicity, but their intention is to be without artistic or other
images which might seduce people from the thought that God is a spirit who transcends
all representations. However, the material expressions of religion are more often
elaborate, moving, and highly important for believers in their approach to the divine. How
indeed could we understand Eastern Orthodox Christianity without seeing what ikons are
like and knowing that they are regarded as windows onto heaven? How could we get
inside the feel of Hinduism without attending to the varied statues of God and the gods?

Also important material expressions of a religion are those natural features of the world
which are singled out as being of special sacredness and meaningthe river Ganges, the
Jordan, the sacred mountains of China, Mount Fuji in Japan, Eyres Rock in Australia, the
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Mount of Olives, Mount Sinai, and so forth. Sometimes of course these sacred landmarks
combine with more direct human creations, such as the holy city of Jerusalem, the sacred
shrines of Banaras, or the temple at Bodh Gaya which commemorates the Buddhas
Enlightenment.

Uses of the Seven Dimensions

To sum up: we have surveyed briefly the seven dimensions of religion which help to
characterize religions as they exist in the world. The point of the list is so that we can give
a balanced description of the movements which have animated the human spirit and
taken a place in the shaping of society, without neglecting either ideas or practices.