OpenLearn: LearningSpace

A103: An Introduction to Humanities

Reading A5

Ninian Smart, ‘The nature of a religion and the nature of secular worldviews’

Reading A5 is taken from The World’s Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations and is reproduced
by kind permission of Cambridge University Press.

[A] 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 Bible-reading, 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 practice – Orthodox, 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: Latter-Day Saints, Christian Scientists, Unificationists, Zulu Zionists, and
so forth.
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

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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 world’s religions and subtraditions. One approach is to look at the
different aspects or dimensions of religion.

The practical and ritual dimension

Every tradition has some practices to which it adheres – for 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 CE,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.
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.

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 (1869–1937) 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

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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 awe-permeated 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 worshipped 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 (1894–1963), 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 travelling to the netherworld to rescue the dying and bring them to life again.
Shamans are common to many small-scale societies and peoples that make their living by
hunting, but many of the marks of the shamanistic quest have been left upon larger religions.

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 important – the 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.

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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.

The doctrinal and philosophical dimension

Underpinnnng 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 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.

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 Shari’a, 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.

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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 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.

The social and institutional dimension

The dimensions outlined so far – the 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 small-scale 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 folk
– saintly 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.

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 movements – such as
Calvinist Christianity, especially in the time before the present century – eschew 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?

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Also important material expressions of a religion are those natural features of the world which
are singled out as being of special sacredness and meaning – the river Ganges, the Jordan,
the sacred mountains of China, Mount Fuji in Japan, Eyre’s [sic] Rock in Australia, the 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 Buddha’s 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.
Naturally, there are religious movements or manifestations where one or other of the dimensions
is so weak as to be virtually absent: nonliterate small-scale societies do not have much means of
expressing the doctrinal dimension; Buddhist modernists, concentrating on meditation, ethics and
philosophy, pay scant regard to the narrative dimension of Buddhism; some newly formed groups
may not have evolved anything much in the way of the material dimension. Also there are so many
people who are not formally part of any social religious grouping, but have their own particular
worldviews and practices, that we can observe in society atoms of religion which do not possess
any well-formed social dimension. But of course in forming a phenomenon within society they
reflect certain trends which in a sense form a shadow of the social dimension (just as those who
have not yet got themselves a material dimension are nevertheless implicitly storing one up, for
with success come buildings and with rituals ikons, most likely).
If our seven-dimensional portrait of religions is adequate, then we do not need to worry greatly
about further definition of religion. In any case, I shall now turn to a most vital question in
understanding the way the world works, namely to the relation between more or less overtly
religious systems and those which are commonly called secular: ideologies or worldviews such
as scientific humanism, Marxism, Existentialism, nationalism, and so on. In examining these
worldviews we shall take on some of the discussion about what count as religious questions and
themes. It is useful to begin by thinking out whether our seven-dimensional analysis can apply
successfully to such secular worldviews.

[B] The nature of secular worldviews

Nationalism
Although nationalism is not strictly speaking a single worldview or even in itself a complete
worldview, it is convenient to begin with it. One reason is that it has been such a powerful force in
human affairs. Virtually all the land surface of the globe, together with parts of the world’s water
surface, is now carved up between sovereign states. Nationalism has given shape decisively
to the modern world, because its popularity in part stems from the way in which assembling
peoples into states has helped with the processes of industrialization and modern bureaucratic
organization. Countries such as Britain, France, the United States, Germany, and Italy pioneered
the industrial revolution, and the system of national governments spread from Western to Eastern
Europe after World War I and from Europe to Asia, Africa, and elsewhere after World War II. Ethnic
identity was sometimes demarcated by language and therefore cultural heritage, sometimes by
religion, sometimes both, and sometimes simply by shared history. Examples of each of these
categories can be seen in the cases of Germany (shared language), the two parts of Ireland
(distinctive religion), Poland (both distinctive language and religion), and Singapore (shared history

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of Chinese, Malay, and other linguistic groups). Colonialism often helped to spread nationalism
by reaction: the British conquest of India fostered an Indian nationalism, and there are signs of
national awakening in parts of the Soviet Union, once colonized by Tsarist Russia, and in Tibet,
conquere by China.
The nation-state has many of the appurtenances of a religion. First of all (to use the order in
which we expounded the dimensions of religion in the previous section), there are the rituals of
nationhood: speaking the language itself; the national anthem; the flying and perhaps saluting of
the flag; republic and memorial days, and other such festivals and holidays; the appearance of the
Head of State at solemn occasions; military march-pasts; and so on. It is usual for citizens to make
secular pilgrimages to the nation’s capital and other significant spots – Washington (the Lincoln
Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the White House, and so on); Plymouth Rock; Mount Rushmore;
natural beauties exhibiting ‘America the Beautiful’. Memorials to the nation’s dead are of special
significance, and often religious language is used about the sacrifices of the young on the altar of
national duty.
The experiential or emotional side of nationalism is indeed powerful – for the sentiments of
patriotism, pride in the nation, love of its beauties and powers, and dedication to national goals,
can be very strong. Especially in times of national crisis, such as war, such sentiments rise to the
surface. But they are reinforced all the time by such practices as singing the national anthem and
other patriotic songs.
The narrative dimension of nationalism is easily seen, for it lies in the history of the nation, which is
taught in the schools of the country, and which in some degree celebrates the values of the great
men and women of the nation – for Italians, such great forebears as Julius Caesar (Giulio Cesare),
Dante, Galileo, Leonardo, Garibaldi, Cavour, Verdi, Leopardi, Alcide de Gasperi and others.
History is the narrative that helps to create in the young and in citizens at large a sense of identity,
of belonging, of group solidarity.
Of doctrines nationalism is somewhat bereft, unless you count the doctrine of self-determination.
But often, too, nations appeal to principles animating the modern state, such as the need for
democracy and the rights of the individual in a freedom-loving nation, etc.; or a nation may appeal
to the doctrine of a full-blown secular ideology, such as Marxism. Or it may hark back to the
teachings of its ancestral religion, and so represent itself as guarding the truths and values of
Christianity, or of Buddhism, or of a revived and revolutionary Islam.
The ethical dimension of nationalism consists in those values which are inculcated into citizens.
Young people are expected to be loyal people, taxpayers, willing to fight if necessary for the
country, law-abiding, and hopefully good family people (supplying thus the nation with its
population). There is of course a blend between ethical values in general and the particular
obligations to one’s own kith and kin, one’s fellow-nationals.
The social and institutional aspect of the nation-state is of course easily discerned. It culminates
in a head of state who has extensive ceremonial functions – especially with monarchy, as in
Britain, where the Queen is an important ritual object – and on whom sentiments of patriotism also
focus. The state has its military services which also perform ceremonial as well as fighting tasks.
There are the public schools, with the teachers imparting the treasured knowledge and rules of
the nation. Even games come to play an institutional role; loyalty is expressed through Olympics
and various other contests, and the ethos of the athlete comes to be blended with that of the ideal
citizen. In some countries loyalty to religion or to a secular ideology blends with loyalty to one’s
nation, and those who do not subscribe to it are treated as disloyal. State occasions are shown on
television, which itself comes to have a role in transmitting and focusing the values of the nation.

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Finally, there is of course much material embodiment of the nation in its great buildings and
memorials, its flag, its great art, its sacred land, its powerful military hardware.
In all these ways, then, the nation today is like a religion. If you have a relative who has died for a
cause, it is not like the old days when he might have died for his religion, maybe at the stake; now
he is most likely to have died for his country.
It is, then, reasonable to treat modern nationalism in the same terms as religion. It represents
a set of values often allied with a kind of modernism, which is natural to the thinking of many of
our contemporaries, and which stresses certain essentially modern concerns: the importance of
economic development; the merits of technology; the wonders of science; the importance of either
socialism or capitalism, or some mixture, in the process of modernization; the need for the state to
look after the welfare of its citizens; the importance of universal education; and so on.
There are some growing limitations on nationalism: the fact that in many countries which were
once reasonably homogeneous there are now increasing ethnic mixes, the growth of transnational
corporations, the developing economic interdependence of nations, the impossibility of older
ways of conceiving sovereignty in the context of modern warfare, and so on. But nevertheless,
nationalism remains a very strong and alluring ingredient in the world, and many of the trouble
spots are so because of unfulfilled ethnic expectations and ethnic rivalries – in Cyprus, Northern
Ireland, Israel and Palestine, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

The dimensions of Marxism

It is because Marxism has itself become more than a movement of ideas but has become
embodied in many states that its analysis too needs to follow the general outlines I have sketched.
It has a coherent set of doctrines, modified variously by leaders such as Stalin, Mao, Hoxha and
Ceausescu; it has a mythic dimension in the analysis of historical events in accordance with
the principles of the dialectic (so that then the history of the Russian Revolution or the German
Democratic Republic gets fitted into a more general salvation-history of the human race). Its
rituals combine with those of nationalism but have their own symbolisms, such as the widespread
use of the colour red, the adoption of festivals such as May Day and the anniversary of the
October Revolution, the adulation of the Party leader, etc. The emotions it encourages are those
of patriotism, internationalism, and revolutionary commitment; its ethics those of solidarity; its
institutions those of the Party; and its artistic style is that of socialist realism, which glorifies the
ideals of the Party, state, and country, with more than a hint of that pietism which can characterize
religious painting. Its music is heroic and rousing. State Marxism, then, has a distinctly religious-
type function, and moves men by theory, symbols, rituals, and Party energy. Like many religions it
may not ultimately prove to be successful, for the people may not be inwardly and deeply moved
by the embodied values of Marxism as an ideology: indeed much evidence shows the hollowness
of Marxism in a number of Eastern European countries, and even in the Soviet Union. It is always
faced with the struggle against local patriotisms, against religions, against the humanist desire for
freedom of enquiry, and so on.
Some other secular worldviews are less clearly like traditional religions in so far as they tend not
to wield the symbols of power: for instance, scientific humanism, which is influential in one form
or another among many intellectuals in the West, and which in rather inarticulate form expresses
something of the worldview of ordinary folk in secularized circumstances. It holds to human and
democratic values, and it stresses science as the source of knowledge. It repudiates the doctrines
of religion, especially of Jewish and Christian theism. It sees human individuals as of ultimate
value. But it does not, as I have said, embody itself in a rich way as a religious-type system. Its
rituals are slight, beyond those which reinforce other aspects of modernity. Perhaps the modern
passion for games and sports is one sign of a kind of persistence of interest in activities pursued

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according to ritual rules. Its myths are not extensive, beyond a feel for the clash between science
and religion during the modern period from Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) onwards. Its doctrines
can be complex, especially in the formulations of contemporary humanistic (analytical and
linguistic) philosophy. Its profoundest experiences are maybe those of culture, such as music
and the arts. Its ethics are generally speaking those of utilitarianism, which sees morality as
maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering. Its institutions are found in secular education.
Its material symbols are perhaps the skyscraper and the stadium. But it is hard to disentangle its
manifestations from many other aspects of modern living.
Though to a greater or lesser extent our seven-dimensional model may apply to secular
worldviews, it is not really appropriate to try to call them religions, or even ‘quasi-religions’ (which
by implication demotes them below the status of ‘real’ religions). For the adherents of Marxism
and humanism wish to be demarcated strictly from those who espouse religions – they conceive
of themselves, on the whole, as antireligious. However, we have seen enough of the seven-
dimensional character of the secular worldviews (especially nationalism and state Marxism)
to emphasize that the various systems of ideas and practices, whether religious or not, are
competitors and mutual blenders, and can thus be said to play in the same league. They all help to
express the various ways in which human beings conceive of themselves, and act in the world.

From N. Smart (1989) The World’s Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations,
Cambridge University Press, pp. 10–25.

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