The History of Religion

I said I’d probably be writing more about that “God is Red” book I was reading and guess what?  I was right. 

Vine Deloria puts forward some very interesting points about Christianity versus tribal religions in this book.  Without placing blame or making one worse than the other, he points out a number of very fundamental differences and surprising similarities.

Most interesting theory he puts forward is that religions are born when something occurs that “is out of the ordinary and makes a significant impression on people.”  In the case of the Old Testament, Deloria references a man named Immanuel Velikovsky who, back in the 1950s, proposed that Venus used to be part of Jupiter and when it was ejected as a comet it wreaked havoc on Earth and Mar’s orbits, creating many amazing and seemingly supernatural events across the planet.

These events can account for occurences like “manna from heaven,” pillars of fire and smoke, prolonged nights and days, water turning into “blood,” and plagues.  Even the parting of the Red Sea may have been a result of the gravity from Venus passing too close to Earth.  Many of the conditions that would be required for this to have occured have already been proven, and though this book was published in 1973, Deloria makes a very powerful case for these events to have been the reason behind “divine” acts.

Native American tribes recorded major events in a similar way: by telling stories about them.  Few tribes kept records of their histories, and those who did basically did so by recording whatever was most memorable in that year.  “Memorable” wasn’t even defined as we would see it, since on several occasions important treaties and major battles were left completely out of the records of tribes that were directly affected. 

Nevertheless, if something was memoriable, they did remember it.  Many tribes can trace their whole history of migrations through the stories that were told and passed down from generation to generation.  While these stories certainly have religion and supernatural forces at their center, many are also surprisingly accurate to what we believed would have occurred. 

Sometimes the tribes did a better job of recording events then the Christians.  For example, when astronomers were looking for evidence that a massive supernova that occurred centuries ago had been viewed from Earth, they found it among cave drawings in Arizona and New Mexico in far more abundance than they found it in the Western world. 

Perhaps the reson for this can be found in a major difference between tribal religion and Christianity. 

Tribes, when talking about their spirituality, based their beliefs on places, like the Black Hills or other sacred spots where they worshipped and where they believed certain events had happened.  The importance, however, wasn’t the event itself, which was usually regarded as a moral or cautionary tale, but the place and the individual’s experience in that place.

In Christianity, the emphasis is on events that happened, like the story of Adam and Eve or Moses.  In Christianity, the importance isn’t the place, but the event itself and that event is inevitably analyzed and analyzed until someone or other comes up with the “definitive” answer of what it means.  Deloria elaborates, “Almost always the temporal consideration revolves around the problem of good and evil, and the inconsistencies that arise as this basic relationship is defined almost always turns religious beliefs into ineffectual systems of ethics.” 

The best example of this is the story of the “fall” of Adam and Eve.  Essentially, many Christian scholars have interpreted this to mean that because Adam and Eve sinned, people are now inherently flawed.  As such, the entirety of creation is now flawed because we no longer reside in the perfect paradise of Eden.  In tribal religion, creation is inherently good, which means that all its parts worked together in order to sustain it.  This is also in large contrast to the Christian idea that God made man the “ruler” of nature and therefore, for tribes, ”Equality is…not simply a human attribute but a recognition of hte creatureness of all creation.”

Perhaps what I’m enjoying the most about this book is that it takes a critical look at the origins of religion without completely discarding the whole institution as ridiculous.  It does have a purpose in Deloria’s mind: to connect the people with the land, their history, and their own spirituality.  Though Native Americans have perhaps preserved these connection better than Christians, Christianity itself was created as a link between the past and the present as well as between the land and the people living on it.  They’re records of things that happened meant as a warning to the future, for all that they’re couched in religious terms. 

Christianity has lost this, I believe, by emphasizing the past as the perfect representation of what should be, and by reading so much into the stories that any meaning they might have had gleaned from the simple stories gets lost in rhetoric and supposition.  According to Deloria, “we should find what religious ideas can credibly encompass the broadest field of both our thoughts and actions.  We must show that religious ideas are at least not tied to any particular view of man, nature, or the relationsips of man and nature that is clearly in conflict with what we know.”

Even more important is to emphasize personal experiences and beliefs rather than a rigid interpretation of basic principles that then go on to define the rest of the religious experience for everyone.  How can someone find any higher power or meaning by reading a book?  Personally, I’ve never felt closer to any higher power than when I’m standing in a forest or on a beach and just breathing.

I also strongly believe in respect for others’ beliefs, which is shown in different accounts of tribe to tribe interaction.  Unlike in Christendom or Rome, when a tribe came under the power of one of the big confederacies, there were no attempts to force those tribes to believe all the stories that the ruling tribe believed.  In the course of a diplomatic meeting, it was customary for each tribe to tell some of their sacred stories and customary for the listeners to believe them out of respect.  When Native Americans met with missionaries for the first time, they were confused and offended when, after having listened to the missionaries’ stories about Jesus and the resurrection, they were called heathens for sharing their own stories. 

Before I get too off tangent, though, back to the book itself.  Probably the most compelling and sad thing I have read so far, though, isn’t from Vine Deloria himself, but is actually from Chief Seattle at the signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty and I’ll leave you with it:

It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days.  They will not be many.  A few more moons; a few more winters – and not one of hte descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours.  But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people?  Tribe follows tribe, nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea.  It is the order of nature, and regret is useless.  Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend with friend, cannot be exempted from the common destiny.  We may be brothers after all.  We shall see.

** all quotes are from “God is Red” by Vine Deloria, Grosset and Dunlap Publishers, New York 1973