Huston Smith on Why the World Needs Religion
The child of Methodist missionaries to China, Smith still identifies himself as a Christian. Given his career in exploring and articulating the truth of other religious traditions, some may find this hard to believe. Smith speaks of what he learned in his "happy childhood": "What came through to me was, ‘We’re in good hands, and in gratitude for that fact, why, it would be good if we should share one another’s burdens.’ With all my gallivanting around the globe studying the other religions, I’ve never encountered a brief formula more valid than that, and so I have remained with my tradition while delving as deeply as I could, not only conceptually but experientially in the other seven that I deal with" [Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and ‘primal religions.’] Smith has integrated Arabic prayers, yoga, and forms of meditation into his personal spiritual practice, all on the foundation of his deep Christian faith. Smith’s classic introductory text, now titled The World’s Religions, as well as his successful films on various religious traditions, exemplify his approach of "imaginative empathy" toward religions other than his own. This approach has earned him the nickname of "spiritual surfer," an epithet he finds flattering and humorous, but somewhat superficial. He prefers other analogies for his relationship as a Christian to other traditions: "Christianity has been all the way through for me my main meal, but I’m a strong believer in vitamin supplements, and I have drawn these supplements richly from the other seven traditions." And alternately, "Like a basketball player’s, my left foot has always been planted in the faith I was born into, but the right foot, as in pivoting, has come down in these seven other places." Though his students have almost never objected to his stance as an "insider" to religious faith, Smith has had to respond to challenges from colleagues in the secular and scientific academic environments where he has spent his career. He is unapologetic for loving religion: "I have taught from the very start from the inside, from conviction ... honoring the generic phenomenon of religion ... I think the underlying themes of the religious worldview are not only defensible, but they are true." From his extensive studies, he feels justified to conclude "that the most important things within [religious traditions] they share in common. And the differences ... are like variations on a common theme." To those who have accused him of having an "optical defect" ("he sees unity everywhere"), he points out that he has in fact written more about the differences than the similarities. But now Smith is returning to the "common theme" of traditional religious worldviews and issuing an urgent call to recover a sensibility almost lost in our present context. The need is new, but the message is not. "We need to be reminded in our time, more than at any other time in history, because since the 17th century, it [the modern West] has increasingly displaced the basic religious worldview." Smith claims that this displacement is both illegitimate and costly. It is illegitimate "because science has not found one single fact that counts against the religious worldview in its generic essence." It is costly, because "the very least one can say about the religious worldview is that over the experience of the centuries and the millennia, ... it is the view that best accords with human sensibilities when those are recognized in their fullness and their range." Smith’s beef is not so much with science as with scientism, the belief that science and only science may make claims of truth. "Science is a near-perfect probe for understanding the physical universe and needs to be honored for that." But science is necessarily limited. Smith uses the analogy of being in a hot air balloon with a flashlight, which represents the scientific method. "They can shine that flashlight on anything that’s inside the balloon, but there’s no way they can get the scientific method outside the balloon to see where it is situated in space, or even whether there is any space outside it. Foundational to the unanimity of religions is that there is space outside this materialistic world, the world of physical nature. How can science disprove that, when its way of knowing only works within the physical world?" Religion, in Smith’s opinion, has survived the test of time for a reason. It serves an important function in every society known, past and present. "Religion matters always. It is an in-built part of our humanity and comes down basically to the in-built urge within us all for something more than the everyday world — even the everyday world augmented by science — can offer us." Despite its shortcomings, Smith feels that "it would not have survived if it were not doing more right than it is doing wrong." So is Smith advocating a return to forms of society and knowledge that are shaped solely by traditional religious worldviews? Certainly not. He recognizes the glory of science for knowing the physical world, and he credits postmodernism with bringing fairness and justice in social relationships into focus. Smith suggests that we need today to rehabilitate a traditional worldview "only in one respect, and that is its vision of ultimate reality. ... I think that the traditional religious culture [has] this one strong point that has not been equaled in either modernity or postmodernity. But with regard to the other two points, understanding of nature and social relationships, the past needs to learn from the present." Smith’s book charts a course for the complementary sibling relationship of science and religion in particular for a more human future. So why does Smith continue to use the loaded term "religion" rather than the more vogue term "spirituality"? Noting that religion is simply organized spirituality, and as such it takes on all the burdens of institutions, he criticizes the easy rejection of institutional religion today: "I am concerned about the way in which spirituality is nosing out religion in the esteem of our general culture ... The sins of religion are very real, and our times know them by heart, and we all ought to face up to them ... I profoundly believe that no institution can get by with totally flying colors, because ... the shadow side of people comes to the fore when they work together." The view that "spirituality" is a viable alternative, in Smith’s opinion, "does not understand that ... institutionalization, with all the burdens, is the only way that ideas get traction in history in the long run. That’s a little overstatement, but basically, if Christ had not been followed by St. Paul, who founded the Christian church, the Sermon on the Mount would have evaporated in a couple of generations. And the same with the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, and the bodhisattva vow of Buddhism, if [Buddha] had not instituted the Sangha, the organization of monks, which by the way is not only one of the three refuges — ‘I take refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma, and in the Sangha’ — but it’s also the most long-lived institution on the face of this planet: 2500 years!" Religious institutions provide ways to pool resources to meet needs, and Smith used recent earthquake relief efforts as an example. While religious organizations responded, "spirituality" could not. "There’s a privatism about [the spirituality movement], and the downside of it is it’s also narcissistic. Not necessarily, but it can be. We go down the salad bar and we take what we like, without delving too much into nutrition, just bypassing the issue of whether or not what we like is what we need." He sets up a contrast with his analogy of eating a main meal and taking vitamin supplements here. Regarding the issue of narcissism in some forms of personal spiritual development, Smith quips: "If anyone thinks that they are drawing closer to God and are not concomitantly drawing closer to their fellow human beings, they are simply deceiving themselves." One must nevertheless discern one’s nature and vocation, as both monastics and activists have a role to play in today’s materialistic society. Smith tends to see the present time as a moment of crisis, and he warns of the potential loss of the worldview that keeps the most basic human sensibilities alive. At the same time, other featured writers in The New Times bear witness to the "emergence of the universal human" or the "evolution of human consciousness." Why the difference? Smith responds, "Ken Wilber and I argue about that all the time, and he’s only just one of the foremost spokespersons who believes that ... we’re on the brink of a mutation of consciousness. Well, I say, ‘I’m not against it, but show me the evidence.’ " He continues, "My view is that this world has never been an easy place to develop, and it never will be. That’s not the purpose of this world, which is more like a jungle gym for you to develop muscles on. Ram Dass put it very vividly when someone asked him this question, and his answer was, ‘The third grade is always the third grade, and individuals escalate into the fourth grade, but the fourth grade does not replace the third grade.’ " Smith derives his conception from this more Hindu Vedanta perspective. "I think those New Age people who are looking for a mutation in consciousness misunderstand what this world is for. It’s not to replace paradise, but it’s to give us the opportunity to develop our character to the point where we can deserve paradise." With his classic generosity of spirit, however, Smith concedes that some may derive energy from such visions of evolution. It seems to me that he would urge them to delve more deeply into dialogue with the religious traditions that have wrestled with the basic questions of human life, consciousness, and action for millennia. Huston Smith will speak at the Prophets Conference being held in Victoria, B.C. August 17-19, where the vision is about the creation of a genuinely workable and bright future based upon depths of authenticity, clarity, spirituality, inquiry, and evolved being. For more details on the Conference, cosponsored by The New Times, visit <http://www.greatmystery.org/>. Lance Laird, Th.D., teaches comparative religion at The Evergreen State College. E-mail: <lairdl@evergreen.edu>. |
Huston Smith has made a career of teaching and writing about the religious traditions of the world, not just as curiosities of archaic cultures, but as carriers of a timeless truth that is as relevant today as it was in ancient India and Mesopotamia. In his most recent book, Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), Smith seeks to "rehabilitate" a "traditional worldview" as a necessary ground for the human spirit in an age that suspects all claims to truth and yet trusts science as a bastion of verifiable knowledge.