Folk Religions

1
Folk Religions
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Formal

• Formal, High, Universal Religion
• Universal cosmic truth
• Describe the nature of reality
• Concern for the purpose and destiny of the
  universe, society and the self
• Institutionalized
• Authoritative written texts

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Formal

• Formal, High, Universal Religion (cont)
• Defined theologies, and philosophies
• Prescribed rites, rules and regulations
• Trained, often professional, specialists
• A celebrated great tradition
• May take folk expression

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Folk

• Folk Religion
• Religion of common people
• Closed systems versus universal
• Very diverse
• Particularistic each clan or tribe has its own
  gods, spirits, ancestors, practices, beliefs
• An animated world of spirits

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Folk

• Folk Religion
• Concern for the meaning of this life and the
  problem of death
• The pursuit of well-being and success, and the
  avoidance of misfortunes
• The pursuit of a knowledge of the unknown to aid
  ones life in the present
• Employ a wide variety of manipulative strategies
  shamans, rituals, amulets, charms, offerings,
  medicines, magic, etc.

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Terms

• Other terms
• Primal
• Prior to the universal or formal religions
• Contains the basic features found in all
  religions
• Assumes an evolutionary account of the origin of
  religion
• Preliterate
• No literary tradition
• No suggestion of evolutionary development from a
  previous or earlier religion

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A Perspective

• Oglala Sioux Indian, John Lame Deer through
  biographer Richard Erdoes
• What do you see here, my friend?  Just an
  ordinary old cooking pot, black with soot and
  full of dents. It is standing on the fire on top
  of that old word stove, and the water bubbles and
  moves the lid as the white steam rises to the
  ceiling.  inside the pot is boiling water, chunks
  of meat with bone and fat, plenty of potatoes.
• It doesn't seem to have a message, that old pot,
  and I guess you don't give it a thought... But
  I'm an Indian.  I think about ordinary, common
  things like this pot.  The bubbling water comes
  from the rain cloud.  It represents the sky.  The
  fire comes from the sun which warms us all - men,
  animals, trees.  The meat stands for the
  four-legged creatures, our animal brothers, who
  gave of themselves so that we should live.  The
  steam is living breath.  It was water now it
  goes up to the sky, becomes a cloud again.
• These things are sacred.  Looking at that pot
  full of good soup, I am thinking how, in this
  simple manner, Wakan Tanka takes care of me.  We
  Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday
  things, which in our mind are mixed up with the
  spiritual... We Indians live in a world of
  symbols and images where the spiritual and the
  commonplace are one... We try to understand them
  not with the head but with the heart, and we need
  no more than a hint to give us the meaning.

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Folk Religions

• What characterizes the religion and worldview of
  John Lame Deer?

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Definition

• Folk religions are localized spiritual
  expressions of a pre-scientific and
  pre-technological milieu with a deep link with
  nature and oral tradition.
• The religion of the common people.

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The Formal and the Folk

• Folk Islam
• Chinese folk religions
• Japanese folk religions
• Christian folk religions

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Characteristics

• Localized
• Are smaller in scale and self-contained
• Tied to a particular geography
• Develop in close connection and dependence with
  particular land and/or water.
• The land shapes the people.

12
Characteristics

• Holism
• Unity of experience lacking the fragmentation of
  modern cultures into secular and sacred. The
  sacred or spiritual is pervasive. 
• The whole of existence is sacred.
• Interrelationships, cause/effect between
  gods/spirits humans and nature.

13
Characteristics

• Orality
• No literary tradition, yet may have well
  developed narrative tradition.
• Common in pre-scientific and pre-technological
  cultures.
• Mythological
• Stories which attempt to express ultimate divine
  reality, basic truths, or inner meaning of life
  for believers.
• The power of words and sounds

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Characteristics

• Ritualistic
• Rehearsals or performances of myths such as the
  original creative act. Reenactments.
• Prescribed celebrations for great moments of
  life, such as birth, puberty, marriage, sickness,
  planting, war, and death rites of passage
• Fertility rites

15
Characteristics

• Shamanism
• The key spiritual figure is usually the shaman
  who is the tribal healer and who has traveled the
  "geography" of the spiritual realm and of death
  and has returned to guide the people. 

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Characteristics

• Timelessness
• Time not thought of in terms of linear distance
  and inaccessibility.
• A present backdrop in which the gods and
  ancestors simply are and are accessible by people
  and people accessible to them.

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Characteristics

• Animism the natural world is alive with
  spirits,
• Fetishism protection is sought by the power of
  special objects,
• Taboos prohibitions of certain behaviors for
  fear of dangerous contact with spiritual powers.
• Totemism - a tribal or personal association with
  an animal or plant as a source of identity and
  spiritual power.

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What Happens?

• What happens to primal religion when they
  encounter universal religions?
• They die out
• Affirmed in some modified form
• Appropriated to the primal religion
• Filipinos actively appropriated Western
  Catholicism according to their cultural-religious
  way of feeling, thinking and behaving.  What
  happened here is a local example of the truth of
  the dictum, quidquid recipitur secundum modum
  recipientis recipitur (Whatever is perceived is
  perceived according to the mode of perception of
  the perceiver.). In this way Christianity became
  part, no matter how unsystematically, of Filipino
  reality. Popular religiosity confirms in its own
  way the real acceptance of Christianity by the
  people. But there is today a continuing
  discussion as to whether Filipinos had been truly
  Christianized, or whatever Christianity had
  simply been Filipinized.
• (José M. de Mesa, http//eapi.admu.edu.ph/eapr00/M
  esa.htm)

• God has the characteristics of Bathala, the
  primal deity.
• Saints are spirits that control nature.
• Priests are regarded as shamans.

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What Happens?

• Folk religion and Christian mission
• Roman Catholic
• High religion and low religion
• Protestant
• Secularization

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Evangelistic Approaches

• Establish relational bridge.
• Credibility - cultural
• Friendship
• Respect
• Establish a conceptual bridge.
• Build on existing ideas
• Bring the truth across.
• Be biblical
• Be aware of your own cultural framework for
  understanding Christianity.

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Evangelistic Approaches

• Ask questions regarding the Supreme Being.
• What is the supreme God like?
• Was there a time when He was close to humanity?
• What caused this separation?
• Why does God seem distant now?
• How do we offend Him?

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Evangelistic Approaches

• Ask questions regarding the Supreme Being
• What are the consequences of offending him?
• Is there any way we can divert these?

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Worldview Assessment

• Contrasting elements
• Primal religions have a multiple gods.
• Christianity has only one God.
• Primal religions believe that gods and humans
  belong to one cosmic system, depending on each
  other.
• Christianity believes that God is unique and not
  dependent upon anything.

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Worldview Assessment

• Primal religions believe in efficacy through
  sacrifice and ritual.
• In Christianity
• God does not depend on our sacrifices because He
  provided for us the once and for all sacrifice
  of his Son.
• He is not moved or manipulated by charms and
  rituals.
• Gods power is not localized in any fetish object
  nor does he identify himself or peoples with
  special totemic symbols.

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Worldview Assessment

• Primal religions believe in mixing religion and
  magic.
• Christianity views magic as incompatible with
  belief in the one true God.
• Primal religions have no revelation through
  history.
• Christianity is historical in that it points to
  important events in which God has acted in
  history.

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Evangelistic Approaches

• Teach the Bible storyline
• A sovereign transcendent Personal God exists and
  created the heavens and the earth.
• Man was created in some ways like God, the
  creation centerpiece and therefore having
  intrinsic worth.
• Man rebelled against God and corruption and
  perversion are the result.
• God has taken the initiative to save humanity
  through his Son.
• History is nearing Gods appointed conclusion