INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

MODULE 1
I.RELIGION IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT
1. Religion and the Social Science

LESSON OVERVIEW

Religion pervades many aspects of our everyday lives. Many of us were born into a
specific religion such as Christianity or Islam. Thus, participating in religious activities or
subscribing to a particular view of God has become unquestioned habits. The religion has
become part of one’s identity imbues it with a character that is at once sacred and personal.
Laying the foundation for the rest of this book, this chapter will present a different way of
approaching religion as a social phenomenon. While religious beliefs and virtues may be deeply
personal, they are socially constructed. This new mindset opens up the space for critical
question about religion.
In the succeeding pages of this module, learners will encounter not only the official
beliefs but also the controversial issues and events that have lasting consequences on a
religion, its people, and the society large. These case studies, some of which are familiar
because of their local relevance, invite you to articulate and justify your own assessments and
opinions.

MOST ESSENTIAL LEARNING COMPETENCY

1) Differentiate the concept, elements and characteristics of belief system, world view,
religion, and spirituality

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of the lesson, you will be able:
1. identify personality between religious or not religious
2. differentiate religion from spirituality

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FIRST THINGS FIRST

The following are different photos of personalities, events, or activities that may or may
not be associated with religion. In the space provided, explain briefly why you consider them
religious or not.

This photo is religious / not

religious because

This photo is religious / not

religious because

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This photo is religious / not

religious because

This photo is religious / not

religious because

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Religion and the Social Sciences
In many religion classes you may have attended before, religious ideas and practices
were taught as doctrines, creeds and rituals. Believers of a particular faith such as Roman
Catholicism are expected to abide by its teachings. This is why, for many, any discussion on
religion is a personal matter and therefore could be very emotional. Can you think of any
instance when you witnessed a person become emotional because of religion? This can be
either positive or negative.
We need to be clear from the very start. This class is for neither catechism nor religious
instruction. Our basic assumption is that religion is a social phenomenon. This instruction will
explain what we mean by this. Throughout this book, you will notice that the approach is social
scientific. We want to understand how religious beliefs and practices are shaped by the wider
environment in which they are embedded. The environment could be social, political, historical,
and even physical. In other words, religion is socially constructed institution with specific
historical contexts. Clearly, this view goes against many religious people’s assumption that what
they believe or do is revealed by God. Instead, we proposed that people themselves are
involved in creating, developing and transmitting what they consider as acceptable and
unacceptable beliefs and practices. This is why practices differ around the world even for the
same religion. For example, whereas Muslim women in Indonesia and Malaysia prescribe the
wearing of hijab (head covering), their counterparts in Saudi Arabia are expected to wear abaya,
which leaves only the hands and the face uncovered. In other words, inasmuch as there are
official beliefs about Allah and the prophet Muhammad, we should also consider the fact that
Islam has been interpreted in the different ways in different contexts. This book helps us unravel
the complexity of religious traditions.
By adopting a social scientific standpoint, we are also willing to confront the other
dimension of religion’s complexity. The beliefs and practices of a religion have consequences
for its followers and wider society that it is part of. At one level, the belief of a religion can
compel an individual to adopt certain values as in the case of a religious person showing
compassion for the sick. But these values are not merely individualistic. Values and beliefs can
inform a religious group’s behavior in the public sphere. The administration of Iglesia ni Cristo
(INC), for example, supports specific candidates during elections. Voting members of the INC
are expected to follow suit. Dissatisfied with current political conditions, other religious groups
have fielded their own leaders and members to run for office. Taken to a certain extreme,
having religious beliefs can also mean that people who do not belong to a group are seen as
heretics and enemies. This explains religious violence in many parts of the world today.
Fundamentalism is a major characteristic of religious extremism, a point to be revisited in
Chapters 10 and 11 of this book.
We reiterate that a social scientific approach understands religion as a socially
constructed reality. This means that the shape of religion as an institution with beliefs, moral
codes, practices, texts, hierarchy, and personalities is contingent upon the interaction of its
human agents with one another and their socio-historical contexts. To put it simply, people are
involved in constructing religion. Religious belief and practices are collectively constructed
throughout history by different individuals who may be leaders, followers, activist, innovators,
and even heretics. In this light, what we believe and how we practice what we believe are not a
result of divine revelation. Whether God exist or the Bible is divinely inspired cannot be
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answered by the social scientific approach. In other words, the fundamental characteristic of any
social scientific approach to the study of religion is methodological atheism or the suspension of
belief in the divine (Berger 1967). This statement, however, does not mean that we deny the
existence of God and transcendental beings like spirits and angels. Others disciplines like
theology and metaphysics can help us in this regard.
To sum up, we now have two basics ideas about religion. First, religion is a search for the
order of things. Taken critically, religion is about the ordering of events, people, and the material
world into a coherent whole that sometimes takes for granted that there are tensions or conflicts
that take place within it. It is a powerful framework to organize everything we are engaged in
such as education, morality, diet, politics, and family life. At the same time, religion is also a
search for personal meaning. We realize that inasmuch as religion is a socially constructed
reality, it has psychological consequences on an individual. We realize that as a worldview,
religion helps a person find meaning in an otherwise chaotic world. Thus, in this work text, we
also surface the deeply personal aspects of one’s faith. Most of the time, the founders of
religious traditions such as Gautama Buddha Abraham, Jesus Christ, and Prophet Muhammad
had moving encounters with the Divine, which changed their lives forever. From these lives are
priceless lessons that speak to our humanity’s joys and fears, and hope and despair.
Ninian Smart (6 May 1927-9 January 2001)

Ninian Smart, a popular professor of religious

studies at UC Santa Barbara and England’s Lancaster
University and a prolific author on comparative religions,
has died at the age of 73. Smart died Monday in
Lancaster Royal Infirmary in Lancaster, England, after
suffering a stroke Sunday night. He had recently moved
to Lancaster after retiring from UC Santa Barbara, where
he taught for 25 years and was J.F. Rowny Professor of
Comparative Religions. Internationally respected, Smart
was president of the American Assn. of Religion, the
primary professional association for scholars of religious
studies, theology and ministerial training. Revered for his
teaching, Smart was better known to the public for about
three dozen highly readable books on religions around
the world. Smart described himself as “a Westerner, a
Scot, a male, an Episcopalian, albeit with Buddhist
leanings” but studied, compared and wrote about all
religions with equal and unabashed gusto. Huston Horn,
an Episcopal priest in Pasadena who reviewed Smart’s 1979 book “In Search of Christianity” for
The Times, wrote: “From catacombs to SatCom II, Ninian Smart knows his subject in such
global detail and nuance as to cause me to marvel. “He neither defends Christianity nor attacks
it but he does set it before us with a charm and originality rarely encountered [sad to say] in
books on religion, books familiar more for cautious piety than pungent phrase. Where, pray, has
one encountered an analogy of biblical infallibility to a bet on Diablo Canyon in the Kentucky
Derby?” Loyola Marymount philosophy professor Richard J. Morris attempted to match Smart’s
colorful phrasing in his Times review of the author’s 1981 “Beyond Ideology”: “All right; so the

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man’s a miracle,” he said of Smart. “He not only knows what it’s like to be a Catholic, or a
Buddhist, or a Chinese Communist for that matter; he can describe how it feels. Exactly. He
takes me up on Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka, and I see my own Christian beliefs through the eyes
of a Buddhist monk. He has me peer into my own soul and paradoxically see the meaning of
nibbana. He even has me take a few, uncertain steps along the route of the Long March. It fair
shakes a body to find himself in someone else’s head.” The book, Morris added, “throbs with
passion. It’s a dangerous book to read; for it shows us how to put pluralism into practice, how to
move from the slogan to the reality.” In his writings and his lectures, Smart endeavored to
explain the philosophy and history of various religions in the context of daily life through the
ages. Once he marshaled his ideas, he said, he could write a book in as little as eight days.
With Phillip E. Hammond, Smart in the last decade published several books in a series called
“The Religious Contours of California.” Because of its multi-ethnicity and plural culturism, they
said, the state encompasses a microcosm of world religions. The books, along with the
widespread teaching of comparative religion, Smart believed, would build a more cooperative
statewide community. “Knowledge of religions,” Smart told The Times in 1994 when the first
three volumes were published, “creates an atmosphere of tolerance, while ignorance fosters
prejudice.”
He turned one of his hobbies, poetry, into the 1996 book, “Smart Verse: The Owl Flies Amid the
Wood Wind Hooting.” Born Roderick Ninian Smart on May 6, 1927, in Cambridge, England, the
professor’s son was educated at Oxford University. From 1945 to 1948, he served in Ceylon
(now Sri Lanka) in the British Army Intelligence Corps. Smart taught successively at University
College of Wales, the University of London and the University of Birmingham before joining the
University of Lancaster faculty in 1967. He remained there until 1982, teaching for six of those
years in Lancaster and Santa Barbara. During his long career, Smart also was a guest lecturer
at far-flung schools--the universities of Wisconsin, Queensland, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Delhi
and Edinburgh, and Princeton, Otago, Harvard, Yale and Banaras Hindu universities. Married in
1954 to Libushka Clementina Baruffaldi, Smart had four children, Roderick, Luisabel, Caroline
and Peregrine.
Defining Religion
Defining religion is not an easy task. It might be
straightforward but how we define the concept may in fact
exclude groups that others might consider religious. It is also
contentious because a particular definition of religion informs
how we view religious change, whether it is bound to fade
away or simply evolve. Finally, we must also be aware that
the very concept of religion has its roots in the Western
experience of Christianity, which is about doctrinal assent
and institutional affiliation (Asad 1993)). This is different from
the way religions such as Islam or Taoism are deeply
embedded in the wider culture through diet, money, and
governance, among others. Nevertheless, we proceed with
the following sociological discussion because it is helpful in
understanding religion as a social reality.
There are two ways of defining religion as a social
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reality. The first is substantive, which is concerned with what constitutes religion. In this sense,
religion involves beliefs and practices that assume the presence of supernatural beings (Davie
2007). The main thinker here is the nineteenth century English anthologists Edward Burnett
Tylor who argued that religion was the attempt of primitive human beings to understand their
inexplicable individual experiences (Turner 1991). At a quick glance, this minimum definition
seems most appropriate. But it is limited, too. Supernatural beings do not play any prominent
role in Confucianism or in the more philosophical brancesof Buddhism. To address this, other
scholars have proposed the functional definition of religion. The definition is more concerned
with its social consequences. The French sociologist Emile Duekheim (2001) had a famous
definition of a religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that
is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral
community.” The definition does not assume any belief in supernatural beings. Instead, it has to
do with the sociological dimensions of beliefs and practices in the context of an organization.
Indeed, the communal dimension is one that resonates with the Latin origins of the word
religion: religare (“to bring together”) and relegere (“to rehearse painstakingly as in the case of
collective rituals”) (Roberts 2004).
In the literature, this definition has been appealing to many scholars. But what main conceptual
problem do you think this brings upon the study of religion?
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As in the previous definition, the main problem is in terms of coverage. But whereas the
substantive definition is limited, the functional definition is expansive in that it includes even
other seemingly non-religious phenomena. Nationalism, social movements, and even sporting
events are unified systems with specific beliefs and practices that form individuals into a
reconstituted whole. The brand of nationalism we are taught at school, for example, includes
saluting and pledging our allegiance to the flag of the Philippines. It also includes an exaltation
song in the form of the national anthem. Nationalism necessitates, too, a collective formation
usually in the military, which has its own guiding principles and rituals.
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES AND THE PHILIPPIE FLAG
This is a brief supplement to R.A.V. Saguisag’s piece titled “Time to convene for CA
abolition but none for ML grounds review” (Letters, 6/26/17) where, at the outset, he candidly
expressed his dismay over Congress’ supposedly ill-advised refusal to comply with its
constitutional mandate to convene in joint session to review President Duterte’s declaration of
martial law in Mindanao. Then he proceeded to advise the House leadership to seek the
Supreme Court’s intervention vis-à-vis the House’s dispute with the Court of Appeals over the
CA order to release Ilocos Norte officials who were earlier held in contempt and detained in the
chamber, instead of threatening the court with abolition.

“This is the civilized institutional arrangement, to correct errors of lower courts,”

Saguisag said, adding: “Supreme Court errors, of course, become the law of the land.”
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I cannot help recalling what our professor in constitutional law used to say: “When the Supreme
Court makes a mistake, that’s the law.” The Civil Code in its Article 8 is clear on this by
providing that judicial decisions applying or interpreting the laws or the Constitution “shall form a
part of the legal system of the Philippines.” As if to echo the professor’s remark, a colleague in
the UP Law faculty assertively brands the Supreme Court as “the court of last error.”
Now, how may Supreme Court errors be gleaned and brought to public attention? The following
situations may provide the answer.
A losing party litigant in a case decided by the Court who is not satisfied with its adverse
decision may file a motion for reconsideration that would assign alleged errors in the decision.
Also, a strong dissenting opinion in a case decided by the Court in a split vote may likely expose
the alleged errors in the majority opinion assailed as flawed.
Students, professors and practitioners of law may openly debate the correctness of the
Court’s arguable decisions. Legal scholars may weigh in through published commentaries
critical of the Court’s certain questionable decisions.
Interestingly, the Court may sometimes reverse itself. A case in point: Ebranilag v.
Division Superintendent of Schools of Cebu, decided in 1993, which upheld the religious
freedom of members of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the petitioners, and exempted them from saluting
the Philippine flag which, in their view, is an “image” to which the Bible prohibits them from
rendering obeisance. This decision reversed the Court’s earlier ruling in Gerona v. Secretary of
Education (106 Phil. 2), which sustained the flag ceremony as a valid exercise of the police
power aimed at inculcating in the public the virtue of patriotism and consequently did not exempt
members of Jehovah’s Witnesses from saluting the flag. Evidently, the Court made a mistake in
deciding Gerona.
Of recent vintage is the latest ruling of the Court in a 2013 decision striking down the
pork barrel system as unconstitutional, thereby reversing its earlier rulings in two cases, LAMP
v. Secretary of Budget & Management (2012) and Philconsa v. Enriquez (1994), which upheld
the constitutionality of the same funding scheme. Again, the Court appears to have erred in
deciding the LAMP and Philconsa cases.
Yes, indeed, let’s face it: The Supreme Court is a human institution. It cannot claim
infallibility in its decision-making process. To be sure, it may commit errors in rendering its
decisions. And should that happen, that’s it. That’s the law.
That’s the bottom line.
BARTOLOME C. FERNANDEZ JR., retired senior commissioner, Commission on Audit

ACTIVITY 2

Essay: If you were a judge in the Supreme Court, which position would you have taken
concerning the case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their non-participation in flag ceremonies?
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FOUR RESPECTS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF (JOHNSTONE 2004)
1. Collective Phenomenon – An individual who professes a religion is typically parts of a
religious organization or community. A part from receiving religious instruction in such
collective formations, the individual also feels some emotional identification with the
religious group. So, inasmuch as faith is a personal or private matter, individual who
profess a religion also invoke the wider community that they are part of.
2. Sacred/Supernatural – Reminiscent of the sociologist Emile Durkheim’s distinctions,
the sacred is associated with entities, events, figures, objects, and sites that are treated
with reverence as opposed to those that are taken for granted in everyday life. Most of
the time, the sacred is imbued with the supernatural. We are quiet example, whenever
we enter a temple or church. This is because people believe that divine beings are in
these places.
3. Body of Beliefs and Moral Prescriptions – Religions are guided by texts rendered
sacred by special event or figures. These beliefs can then cover a wider array of ideas
that organizes knowledge and reality for the followers. The origins and destiny of life,
concerns about salvations, key events of sacred entities, and the moral principles
constitute the body of beliefs that define religious institutions as distinct from others.
4. Set of Practices – These practices are typically in the form of individual and collective
rituals involving prayer, worship, purification, baptism, and sacrifice. Practices can also
be in line with moral and behavioral prescriptions. Wearing particular outfits or avoiding
the consumption of some food, while commonplace for some, may be deeply religious
for others.
Among many young people, the phrase “spiritual, but not religious” has become commonplace
to refer to their own spiritual journeys. What do you think this means? For some insights, you
may refer to Jayeel Cornelio’s book “Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines: Young
People Reinterpreting Religion” (2016).
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