p40 Great Transformation

Transformations Great and Most Great

By John Taylor; 2008 May 26, 10 `Azamat, 165 BE

 

Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006)

 

I am auditing Karen Ferguson's "Great Transformation" about the fundamental advance in our spiritual and moral understanding made during the Axial Age when the likes of Ezekiel, the Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster and Socrates brought religion from a mindset based on war, ritual and blood sacrifice to a deeper understanding of justice, spirit and compassion. This is from the publisher's official summary of the book,

 

"In one astonishing, short period--the ninth century BCE--the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day: Confucianism and Taoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel; and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Historians call this the Axial Age because of its central importance to humanity's spiritual development. (This is) a chronicle of one of the most important intellectual revolutions in world history and its relevance to our own time."

 

Ferguson is a popularizer of discoveries made by scholars in the Religious Studies program in our friendly neighbourhood universities. Unlike science, what these researchers do is not backed up by years of careful study in our youth, from primary to high school levels, at least not those of us who are products of the curriculum in public schools. Even parochial schools are unlikely to cover more than one faith in detail. Here is a rare comparative overview of all world religions at once, or at least those born on the Eurasian continent. Ferguson covers them in a clear, refreshing, holistic style that is rare among her jargon ridden, mealy-mouthed colleagues in secular religious studies.

 

Our general ignorance of her area of expertise lets her cover the subject more freely and broadly than a science writer might. At the same time I get the feeling that as the only non-sectarian popularizer out there she is taking certain liberties with her sources (if you want to know what I mean by that, check out my discussion of her History of God a few years ago on the Badi' blog -- I found her dismissal of the Babis not just unfair but openly insulting to the memory of our martyrs). An example in this book is her use of the term "axial age," a term that has been common fodder for decades in religious studies faculty rooms but which a naive reader might assume was her own invention. How much of this book is original, and what is common knowledge? A non-expert would never know just by reading it. Anyway, more from the official mini-review, which concentrates on the good,

 

"Armstrong makes clear that despite some differences of emphasis, there was remarkable consensus among these religions and philosophies: each insisted on the primacy of compassion over hatred and violence. She illuminates what this `family' resemblance reveals about the religious impulse and quest of humankind. And she goes beyond spiritual archaeology, delving into the ways in which these Axial Age beliefs can present an instructive and thought-provoking challenge to the ways we think about and practice religion today. A revelation of humankind's early shared imperatives, yearnings and inspired solutions -- as salutary as it is fascinating."

 

The Great Transformation should be covered in primary school history classes; better still, there should be religious studies classes in which this essential material could be made into common knowledge. Unfortunately the teaching profession has cravenly allowed dogmatists and fundamentalists to browbeat them into not touching religion at all in public schools, leaving a vacuum which, in the long run, will only worsen the crisis of fanaticism. In spite of my reservations about Ferguson, I think she should be read carefully by every Baha'i Sunday Class teacher. Let the Sabeans and other archaic scholarship be banished from our pedagogy and replaced with the fruits of authentic investigations into the early religions using the tools of modern scientific investigation.

 

Here is a quote from The Great Transformation that demonstrates its potential value in changing our view of our common religious heritage,

 

"In our global world, we can no longer afford a parochial or exclusive vision. We must learn to live and behave as though people in remote parts of the globe were as important as ourselves. The sages of the Axial Age did not create their compassionate ethic in idyllic circumstances. Each tradition developed in societies like our own that were torn apart by violence and warfare as never before; indeed, the first catalyst of religious change was usually a visceral rejection of the aggression that the sages witnessed all around them.... All the great traditions that were created at this time are in agreement about the supreme importance of charity and benevolence, and this tells us something important about our humanity."

 

For a Baha'i of course the insight that there are common features to all faiths is hardly front page news. It is just sew grade two. But listening to her description of the background of primitive beliefs from which the Axial geniuses made their innovations, I did learn something new and important. I had not realized what a strong consensus there was among all of the primitive religions -- from China to the Middle East, including present day aboriginals --that the human moral condition is directly tied to outer events like climate, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and so forth. When I say this is a primitive belief, I mean really early. It was ancient long before the oldest of the surviving religions were born, that is, Chinese Traditional Religion, Judaism and Hinduism.

 

Listening to Armstrong's description (she reads the audio book versions of all her books personally, and reads them very well) of this almost visceral tie that humans make between our moral and our outer condition, I was struck by how modern it is. What is past is prologue. Is not this exactly what the Panel on Climate Change is trying to persuade the world is the case? Humans do have a direct influence on our planet, for better or worse. Believe it. But deep down, we cannot believe it.

 

As Jesus put it, the Kingdom of God is within. It really is within. If we corrupt our morals the direct result is to pollute our environment, then the environment turns around and pollutes us, and we lash out at one another. This was confirmed by a recent study of climate in relation to the history of ancient China over thousands of years. This found that the outbreak of war was always directly the result of some climate disaster. There were droughts, which caused famine, and that caused leaders to decide to go to war. The three horsemen of war, famine and pestilence ride together -- reading the story of Comenius I have seen how the Black Death, the so-called "little ice age," and the wars of religion all worked together to decimate the population of Europe in the 16th Century. The religious tensions of the Reformation were both a cause and an effect of crises in the outer world.

 

This is no theoretical curiosity. As global climate destabilizes worse every day, who can doubt that rioting, wars, terror and other forms of violence will increase right along with it?

 

But beyond that, I think the fact that this belief that the moral atmosphere and outer conditions is so primitive is the key to the problem. It flies against logic. This is one reason why climate deniers are having such an easy time stalling the process of decarbonization. The idea that bad thoughts cause bad weather just seems impossible to the modern scientific mindset. It flies against one of its most precious dogma. Religious people have no problem believing it, but to the atheist and humanist this is just incredible. How can such an outmoded idea turn out to be true after all these millennia? This hesitation goes right down the line. Without the wholehearted support of the entire scientific community, corporations and business are unwilling to invest in renewables. After all, is not primitive religiosity mere superstition? Is not acting on faith, on what you are not sure of and what cannot be calculated – is that nothing better than a mad leap into the beyond? But Ferguson has a good point that religion trains the human mind for just such leaps of faith in uncertain, dangerous times,

 

"If religion is not about believing things then what is it about? What I found across the board is that religion is about behaving differently. Instead of deciding whether or not you believe in God first you do something, you behave in a committed way and then you begin to understand the truths of religion."

 

That training alone is an unassailable reason to teach religion along with science and mathematics from kindergarten on to grade twelve, in every school in the world. Faith is a tested methodology for surviving in uncertain conditions. It can help ready the world for the Most Great Transformation, saving an entire planet.