Within the discipline of anthropology, the subfield of humanism focuses on reason, logic, and scientific explanations for human existence, being skeptical of purely religious interpretation. Proponents of this approach, such as T. Willliam Hall, in the text Religion, state, “This interpretation of human existence dispenses with belief in the supernatural, considers the good of humanity on earth the supreme ethical goal, and applies the methods of reason and science to solve human problems.” Following this same logic, Miles Richardson, in the Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, adds that humanism “emphasiz(es) scholarly reading, as opposed to divine revelation, as the path to knowledge.” Religion is then a construct of the human mind, not an unknowable fact.
It is a construct capable of scientific exploration, hypothesis testing, and theory verification.
Anthropologists who study religion from a humanistic perspective would include such notables as Raymond Firth, Edmund Leach, Joseph Needham, Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, and Ernest Gillner. They apply a rationalist approach to the study of religious values, actions, and beliefs. Their approach to religion is as a cultural system that exists and can be rationally explored and understood. Religious systems are a part of a society’s total tapestry, a social reality that is constructed and explained, using the same methods and theories as the culturally constructed systems of politics, economic, kinship, subsistence, and art. When anthropologist Clifford Geertz writes in The Interpretation of Cultures that “religion is humanity,” this statement can also be stated in the reverse: “Humanity is religion.”
A religious humanistic approach to anthropological cross-cultural research can be described as being anthropocentric (human as center of existence). Existence external to the individual or group is viewed as not being constructed and maintained according to a divine supernatural plan, with rewards and punishments for various thoughts and deeds, coupled with the perpetuation or violation of specific culturally predetermined, etiquette-established guidelines. Religion, as a necessary human cultural construct, is open to logical realistic explanation, using guidelines that judiciously explain fundamental shared human dilemmas, associated with basic everyday existence. Searching for answers to what cannot be explained by contemporary science in times of fright or confusion reinforces the need for religious beliefs. Religious explanations are provided to offer answers to the basic questions of life that science currently cannot. What is existence? Why do I exist? What is the universe? Why do things beyond our control happen? Why do we have to suffer? Why death? What is the relationship of humans to other species? The humanists would acknowledge that these cannot be answered but that the search for concrete rational explanations is a more worthwhile and potentially gratifying endeavor than the passive acceptance of religious dogma. They believe that it is possible to eventually discover reasonable and logical explanations for phenomena or at the very least believe that exploration remains open-ended and tentative to allow for additions of new factual conceptualizations. Religious practices and scientific explorations are believed to be complementary.
Religion from a culturally based, humanistic perspective has a strong cultural relativist approach. Each society constructs its own unique approach to religion, depending on its own unique and dynamic physical and social environment. There is a continuing desire to maintain existing functional cultural order and also to attempt to restore equilibrium in the inevitable times of chaos. Anthropologists search for the unique social qualities and attempt simultaneously to tease out the individual social threads from the larger tapestry of life. Each thread represents a different but complementary component of religious life: belief systems, functions and structures of myths and legends, use of symbolic objects and language, rituals including offerings, prayers, sacrifice, feasts, and causes and motivations for change. The expectation would be that morally based religious factors would necessarily vary across time and space in a dynamic world and that solid, well-guided research could uncover motivations and explanations for community-specific similarities and variations in religious practices.
When studying religious beliefs, the focus is on configurations relating to the form of the belief and the content of the beliefs. Research that concentrates on the outward manifestations of beliefs, as well as on the linguistic and other symbolic forms of expression, is conducive to productive analysis in the social sciences. Raymond Firth maintains that beliefs not only are always culturally defined, but also have a core or nucleus that could be discernable in written and/or spoken creeds and dogmas.
Study of the concept of faith, according to Firth, involves a two-way process, with one path extending from the human to the supernatural and a second from the supernatural back to the individual. A reciprocal relationship is required for the continuation of a faith. In Catholicism, the believer offers prayers and sacrifices to a specific Saint, with the expectation of a return of some kind. The prayer, ritual, or sacrifice is provided with the expectation that an answer in some form will be forthcoming. If not, why perform the ritual? Why have faith that an answer will be forthcoming? There is an expectation of unification, a possibility of a connection between the giving and the expectation of a return.
What is also implicit in the act of exchange or sacrifice, according to Firth, is an “asymmetrical status relationship,” whereby the person making the offering is assigned an inferior position, while the recipient occupies a superior position. A hierarchy is in existence. A religious humanist researcher would question why a religious exchange is deemed necessary, contrasting and comparing various explanations for the participants. The focus is on what has occurred before the act, what is expected to happen during the act, and what the perceived outcome will be. The religious humanist believes that there is a discernable human logic underlying the values, beliefs, and behavior involved. A community ritual performance can be rationally interpreted as being performed because it allows for group social cohesiveness, providing a sense of belonging and reinforcement of specific moral values. The congregation provides unification of thoughts and actions for those with similar beliefs to coalesce and strengthen group unity, and it becomes a place for the individual to freely choose to belong and participate or to be coerced into choosing to belong and participate. The individual may belong because of political and/or economic costs or benefits or for fear of punishment via gossip networks and the potential for exclusion from the community.
Rituals, performance, prayer, dance, and music are possible paths for communication with the supernatural. Public over private rituals demonstrate community acceptance of specific patterns of behavior, and as demonstrated by acceptable community standards serve the function of showing support for group unification. Roy Rappaport demonstrates in Pigs for the Ancestors how participation in a religious ritual dance among the Tsembaga Maring of New Guinea also affirms the dancers’ commitment to being part of the group in the event of war.
Secular humanism provides an alternative to metaphysical practices. The Council for Secular Humanism’s Web site states, “Secular humanists accept a worldview or philosophy called naturalism, in which the physical laws of the universe are not superseded by non-material or supernatural entities such as demons, gods, or other ‘spiritual’ beings outside the realm of the natural universe.” The website provides a list of guiding principles for participants. The first principle states, “A conviction of dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.” This would tend to reinforce the interpretation that religion, like other social systems, should be open to empirical scrutiny, methodology, and, when deemed appropriate, capable of change.
- Firth, R. (1996). Religion: A humanist interpretation. London: Routledge.
- Hall, T. W., & Pilgrim, R. (Eds.). (1985). Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
- Levinson, D., & Melvin, E. (Eds.). (1996). Encyclopedia of cultural anthropology. New York: Henry Holt.
- Wilk, S. (1991). Humanistic anthropology. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.