True Glue
By Stephen Carter on May 6, 2008
As far as I can tell, religion’s function, up until about Christianity, was basically to hold a culture together with a unified narrative. In other words, it gave meaning to workings of a group of people. No one thought to question it. That would be like questioning air. The people’s belief in the religion (or mythology if you would prefer) simply went along with being part of the group, just like the color of your skin or what you did to the tender parts of your male infants. So, just as everyone in the group shared the same air, they also shared the same religion.
In other words, religion was glue that kept people together, and that was it.
But then along comes Christianity with a completely different idea of what religion is. Religion in Christianity’s definition is something that is true. As opposed to false. And suddenly religion, which once worked invisibly in the wings, is thrust out into the spotlight and made to defend itself. It can’t get away with just being social glue anymore. Now it has to be true glue.
Religion is now something completely different. It’s something that people argue about. It travels around gathering adherents, creating a motley following of people from all kinds of backgrounds, races, and classes. A religion is now the one thing that an otherwise disparate group of people have in common, rather than being an innate part of a unified culture. I guess Karl Marx would say that at this point religion has become alienable.
Instead of being religion, it becomes a religion. And it finds itself competing in a marketplace of religions.
However, despite this completely new approach, religion manages to lure its adherents back to its original form. Roman Catholicism comes to dominate Europe. The Pope has as much power as a king. Everyone is Catholic. Religion breathes a sigh of relief and recedes to the wings. It can just be glue again.
But then along come Protestantism and the whole thing starts over; the glue has to be true. But soon enough the Lutheran Church is adopted by Sweden, or an English king institutes Anglicanism, and it’s back to glue.
This cycle interests me because it seems to have been occurring more and more frequently as the centuries pass. Religion seems to have been, for the most part, ousted from its place in the wings and forced into the marketplace.
I certainly see this conception of religion expressed often in church where we set aside one Sunday a month to remind each other that, of all the options available, this religion is the best buy, the truest of the glues.
But is that how religion is supposed to work? I mean, for millions of years, religion was simply glue. It has only been for about the past 500 years that we’ve been experimenting intensely with this new view of religion.
Have we stripped away some of religion’s main benefits by insisting that it compete? Or is this new view of religion part of what we so lovingly call progress? Or, as with so many other innovations, is it both? In which case, what have we lost and what have we gained?
Perhaps a great deal of this contrast is the Christian paradigm of salvation–that there is an inherent dualism in the cosmos. It’s certainly played into philosophy since Descartes very profoundly, although we’re still afflicted with widely-varying definitions of truth.
What are the wellsprings of this search for truth in Christian thought? I don’t recall any particulars from the New Testament, although it’s definitely a strong strain of Augustinian thought.
Furthermore, what do we see as we read back latter-day revelation (Abraham, Moses) into Hebraic religion? It seems that particularly Abraham was concerned with truth, and that that’s always been a major feature of true religion. Maybe it’s kind of like the authority question, and the closer one is to the right answer, the more emphasis one puts on that aspect of doctrine.
In any case, I note (as many others have) that we’ve shifted from a common cultural mythological narrative to more of a personal mythology. This would seem to me to allow religion to have greater power over the soul, but at the same time diluting it for those who don’t choose to operate within that schema.
Neal Davis | May 6, 2008 | Reply
Do you think the monthly truth-fest is designed to persuade? I think it serves to act as glue. So many of the social things that (I’ve heard) cemented the church in the intermountain west 40-50 years ago simply aren’t done any more - so the monthly witness becomes the only glue the culture has left.
Just thinking out loud here…
Ann | May 6, 2008 | Reply
I think you’re right, Ann. Testimony meetings act as glue. The thing I think is interesting is how much testimony meetings focus on the truth of the church. I mean, it’s pretty much the main topic. I see this focus as a result of how much religion has been turned into a commodity.
Stephen Carter | May 7, 2008 | Reply
Good points, Neal.
It’s very possible that Abraham was interested in truth. But even if he was, it seems to me that he approached truth (religion) completely differently than we do these days.
As far as I remember, he never tried to convert anyone else to his religion. The only way he seemed to think his religion would grow would be through a growing family.
So as I was saying in the original post, religion, or truth, was more a function of where and to whom you were born. It wasn’t something that you could pick up and set down.
Which seems completely different from the way we perceive religion today.
Stephen Carter | May 7, 2008 | Reply
I think we frequently oversell the benefits of being a member of the true church, to the point that many people expect all their problems to be solved by the church, and are disenchanted when a problem arises that the church can’t or won’t solve, or when a problem arises from the church itself. It would make sense to ascribe this to the pressures of the marketplace of religion; telling people that suffering is inevitable and/or increased by church membership does not make for a great sales pitch.
Nate Housley | May 8, 2008 | Reply
I don’t know if I think of my religion as ‘glue’ any longer. What’s it gluing together? I think of my religion as some kind of acetone glue remover. I want to become ‘unglued’ from the monotony of stereotypical (if there ever was a stereotype LDS member) membership. I am seeking for messages between the lines, and not to perpetuate the continuous mundane rhetoric of what is considered ‘worship’ or ‘bearing testimony.’ But try an find that kind of community in a ‘typical’ LDS ward.
Paul | May 12, 2008 | Reply