I saw the above tweet yesterday, which prompted me to mull over why we generally think that the role of religion is such a complicated thing to study. It occurred to me that it is complicated (i) if you fail to recognize that there’s been trained scholars of religion out there for well over 100 years who have lots to say on these matters but also (ii) if we buy local accounts of it being some ethereal thing that mysteriously informs the practical aspects of people’s lives.
But if we instead assume it’s no less practical than any other sphere — and, what’s more, if we assume that privileging some features of life by calling them religious is also mundane and highly practical — well, we’d likely approach these topics rather differently.
So a series of tweets resulted.
Much of the media doesn’t get that religion is central to many Americans’ daily lives. Part of why many people feel ignored by MSM. https://t.co/xQamrcf6bb
— Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) December 9, 2016
@Greg_Carey @sarahmccammon @skestenbaum @deanbaquet @splate1 @ctschroeder I actually think it’s surprisingly simple and easy to understand.
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon Saying its complicated satisfies vested interests; saying rel’s an authorizing rhetoric is simple & alienates those interests
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon That we even think a part of the social is somehow identified as religious is the interesting move here. Cont.
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon There’s much actors gain, of course, from portraying part of the social as somehow unique, set apart, more significant. Cont.
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon The rhetoric of “it’s complicated” is, for me, the result of this portrayal–now we study how the parts all interact. Cont
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon Things are simpler if we see the claim of separateness as itself the interesting thing–study how social zones are made. Cont
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon Now we study how groups arm wrestle for priority, doing so in their representations of the world, their classifications. Cont
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon So it’s not that we don’t know enough about rel but that we don’t know enough about how interests/classifications work. Cont
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
@sarahmccammon Esp. those that conflict. So saying it’s all about rel might miss the point. Maybe it’s all about what counts as religion.
— Russell McCutcheon (@McCutcheonSays) December 9, 2016
But flipping things around in this way calls much of how we navigate daily life into question (hence the lack of retweets or comments, perhaps) and so my bet is that there’s too much at stake to take classification seriously. Instead, we’ll likely just keep scratching our heads over how to better understand, say, the religious motivations for how people vote or shop, confident that there’s a pure realm of belief and experience that, as William James once told us, gets complicated in the messy give and take of social life.
But if some reporters are game to do this sort of rethinking, then I bet there’s plenty of trained specialists who would enjoy having a chat — not a soundbite chat but something a little more meaty. For it’s not always easy to understand the simple things, since we usually overlook them since they are, well…, just so simple.