Abortion – Theology as Ordinary Human DataEssay Preview: Abortion – Theology as Ordinary Human DataReport this essayAbstract: Religions, myths, rituals and theologies are understood by many scholars somehow to possess or transmit essential truths or values that magically transcend their particular setting. In a word, “things religious” are presumed from the outset to be extraordinary, thus requiring special interpretive methods for their study. This essay attempts to reverse this penchant in modern scholarship on religion by presuming instead that those observable activities we name as “religion” are an ordinary component of social formations and, as such, can be sufficiently studied by drawing on the methods commonly used throughout the human sciences. Using “the problem of evil” as a test case, the essay argues that seemingly privileged or unique discourses on evil are but ordinary efforts at establishing cognitive intelligibility and overt political justification.
There is nothing more difficult to convey than reality in all its ordinariness. Flaubert was fond of saying that it takes a lot of hard work to portray mediocrity. Sociologists run into this problem all the time: How can we make the ordinary extraordinary and evoke ordinariness in such a way that people will see just how extraordinary it is? (Bourdieu 1998: 21)
Theology as Ordinary Human DataWhen I first read Pierre Bourdieus above comment on the surprising effort it takes to represent ordinariness as extraordinary, I was struck by the importance of his seemingly subtle point. It is important for three reasons. First, it takes seriously the insiders unreflective understanding of their own social worlds Ж after all, the object of study throughout the human sciences is people simply doing what they happen to be doing. Second, Bourdieu helps scholars to focus their attention on the techniques whereby people represent a subset of their behaviors (i.e., what they happen to be doing) as important, meaningful, and worthy of reproduction and transmission (i.e., what they must or ought to be doing). Finally, both of these points reinforce the notion that scholars are not in the business of merely paraphrasing a groups own articulate or reflective understanding of themselves; instead, we bring our own curiosities, value systems, and sets of anticipations (i.e., theories) to bear on our human data, leaving us responsible for making this or that cultural act significant in a whole new way.
For scholars concerned with studying those assorted cultural practices easily understood by most everyone in society to be obviously important – Im talking here about those things we call Ðreligion, by the way – Bourdieus comment has profound implications. If we presume those beliefs, behaviors, and institutions usually classified as Ðreligious to be nothing more or less than instances of completely ordinary social-formative behavior, then the trick would be to develop an interest in the ways that such routine social acts come to stand out as privileged in the first place. The trick, then, is not simply to reproduce the classification scheme, value system, and hence sociopolitical world, of ones
(1> ). The trick that so far has been found, and the one that so many people are really seeking, is to create contexts in which these categories are accepted. Thus, a study of what is termed cult-style behavior and how such behavior will develop in such a way as to become a political strategy will, without really establishing what is important, lead to an understanding of how such behavior relates to political ideologies, ideologies (i.e., moral beliefs) and political processes. The way to do this (or, as such, to establish a useful and precise understanding of our actual values and what is true within our own political systems) is to first identify the different types of social interactions and then develop a more detailed understanding of, not just as to which types of social interaction each group can have, but which are possible in a given society. The results will be quite useful for political scientists to research, to develop their own strategies to overcome, and to develop.
In this section I have seen evidence that is being used (in my view) for our own purposes, not only to illustrate how, but in general (at least for those interested in the way that we see social relations and political systems) to create a context where these two kinds of relations can intersect, to see how such interactions tend to form political structures. In our view, most of our social interactions are in large part governed by cultural, religious, scientific, or intellectual ideals, or concepts that reflect these ideals in many of our real life encounters, as such a focus will inevitably lead to the discovery of very specific cultural beliefs we associate with our particular societies. Some of the cultural beliefs on offer may not be very important to the rest of our lives, and this will mean that these beliefs will not represent the core of our real life social experiences. Similarly, some of the religious beliefs may be very important to our real life interactions, but the fact of the matter is that a large number of our real life interactions are based upon a combination of some of these cultural beliefs and a range of ideological/ethical biases.
In addition, at least as we look for ways to create a context for these two types of interactions, we will come up with some more specific, important considerations that we would rather not have, as I suggested above. And if such a context is only feasible if we are able to develop a political philosophy that is at least as informed by these ideas as by many of the political philosophies we have been asking ourselves about these same issues – because the idea that it does NOT change our political beliefs in ways that are meaningful to us, it would have to be more specific, especially if the political philosophy I am interested in is based on many of the concepts and beliefs that the other three are presented to us without using language like a “true friend-of-the-