Understanding World Religions A Road Map For Justice and Peace 2nd Edition Ebook PDF

Understanding World Religions: A
Road Map for Justice and Peace 2nd

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Detailed Contents
Brief Contents v
Preface xiii
Introduction 1
Traditions: Great, Little, Counterfeit, Hidden 2
Religions and Worldviews 4
The Seven ‘‘Dimensions’’ 5
Experiential and Emotional Dimension 7
Social and Institutional Dimension 9
Narrative or Mythic Dimension 11
Doctrinal and Philosophical Dimension 13
Practical and Ritual Dimension 14
Ethical and Legal Dimension 16
Material and Artistic Dimension 17
Two Dangers 22
Is Studying Other Religions Harmful to One’s Own Faith? 23
Complexities 23
Do Religions Cause Violence? Can They Promote Peace? 24
What Lies Ahead 26
Summary 27
Key Terms 27
Discussion Questions 27
Suggestions for Further Reading 28
1 Hindu Worldviews 29
Historical Periods 30
Narrative or Mythic Dimension Including Sacred Writings 32
vii
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viii Detailed Contents
Issues for Justice and Peace 39

Spokespersons for Justice and Peace 44
Summary 49
Key Terms 50
2 Buddhist Worldviews 52
Sacred Writings 53
Individual Inner Peace 67
Summary 76
Key Terms 77
3 Jewish Worldviews 79
Sacred Writings 81
Summary 107
Key Terms 108
4 Christian Worldviews 110
Sacred Writings 112
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Detailed Contents ix

Summary 138
Key Terms 139
5 Muslim Worldviews 141
Sacred Writings 144
Summary 167
Key Terms 168
6 Native American Worldviews 171
Sacred Writings 177
Summary 190
Key Terms 191
7 Marxist Worldviews 193
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x Detailed Contents
Classic Writings 194

Marxist Theory Today 208
Summary 217
Key Terms 217
8 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 219
Purpose of This Chapter 219
Palestine-Israel: Geography and History to 1967 222
The Israeli Occupation since 1967 237
Summary 256
For More Information 257
Key Terms 258
9 Religious Social Teachings: Christian and Beyond 260
Roman Catholic Social Teaching 260
Protestant Social Teaching 274
Beyond Christianity: Social Thought in Other Religions 281
Prelude to Liberation Theologies 282
Summary 282
Key Terms 283
10 Liberation Theologies 285
Historical Background 286
Other Forms of Liberation Theology 300
The Vision of Karen Lebacqz 307
Summary 307
Key Terms 308
11 Active Nonviolence 310
What It Is and How It Works 310
Some Nonviolent Activists 319
Women’s Groups 324
Nonviolence as a Tactic, or as a Way of Life 328
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Detailed Contents xi
Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers 328

Summary 330
Key Terms 331
12 Just War Theory 333
General Background 334
Ten Principles of Just War 337
Overall Application of the Principles to the Gulf Wars Waged by
the United States against Iraq 358
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing 358
Summary 366
Key Terms 366
Notes 369
Glossary 398
Bibliography 423
Index 445
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Preface
I n 1987, the University of St. Thomas inaugurated a minor in justice and peace
studies. We decided that it would be important to study how people’s worldviews
affect the choices they make that promote or inhibit justice and peace. At the time,
our program was unusual. Not many people in this country understood why it
would be not only useful but even essential to understand other people’s world-
views. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, the country started coming around to our point of view. In 1987, there
was no textbook available to introduce what we wanted to talk about, so David
Smith started to write one and shared it with his students in duplicated form over
his twenty years of teaching the courses. Elizabeth Burr became the book’s second-
ary coauthor for the first Rowman & Littlefield edition (2007), and together we have
co-revised the text for the second edition (2015). Many other people have helped
along the way. This book, now in its second edition, is the result.
In the course Theologies of Justice and Peace, for which this book was originally
designed, in addition to reading and discussing this book, each student was asked
to research one worldview that differs from her own, using a series of steps to orga-
nize her study. At the end of the semester, students read and discussed each other’s
projects. When we duplicated this book in its earlier forms for their use, we included
in the book extensive instructions and other aids for that study project. Since we
could not predict how many people would be interested both in the content of this
book and in the instructions for such a project, we decided to put the instructions
on the World Wide Web at http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/justpeace/Rowman
.html. Here we will briefly describe what is available there.
DETAILED PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

FOR STUDENTS AND FACULTY
Students are instructed how to study a worldview according to the following eleven
steps:
xiii
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xiv Preface
1. Describe your own worldview and presuppositions by answering the nine sets
of questions given. (Those steps are summarized in the introduction to this
book.) This step will help you (a) to think about many things you have taken
for granted, (b) to become aware of the variety in our own class, and (c) to
accept and value our differences. The step is graded pass-fail.
2. Describe what you know as you begin your study: the worldview you have
chosen to study, what you know or don’t know about it as you start, what
you want to find out.
3. Select a local resource to help you with your study, preferably someone who
lives the worldview you are studying.
4. Experience the worldview through a vicarious experience—a narrative such
as a novel, memoir, autobiography, film, play, interview, or foreign travel.
We are looking here for stories, not yet for academic information or analysis.
5. From academic research, describe the main ideas and practices of the world-
view, especially with regard to justice, peace, prosperity, and security.
6. List and describe briefly the main sacred books, classics, and traditions
(including oral traditions) of the worldview. Read parts meditatively and
report on the experience.
7. Describe how some real person has been influenced by the worldview in their
work on behalf of justice and peace, or how some community living the
worldview has responded in some real conflict. This step will consider what
happens when one person or a group attempts to live out the worldview’s
ideals in the actual, messy world.
8. Rewrite your responses to the questions of step one as if you personally held
the worldview you have been studying.
9. Write a utopia that would make sense to someone holding the worldview.
What would a perfect world be like, why isn’t the world like that, what is the
best situation we might hope for in the real world (a ‘‘possi-topia’’), and how
might we move toward that better future?
10. Reflect on your study. Compare what you know and believe now with what
you did in step 2 when you started. Did your study confirm your expecta-
tions, challenge, or surprise you? How helpful was your local resource of step
3? How could this course be improved?
11. Give us a list of the resources you used with comments for future studies
indicating how useful each item was, and for what steps it was useful.
Extensive resource lists for the project: For the last twenty years, we have been
assembling the annotated resource lists that our students have produced (step 11
above)—you can see their comments on books, periodical articles, websites, and
more.
OTHER TREASURES ON OUR WEBSITE
Space limitations have prevented us from publishing everything we would like to

share. Some of what didn’t fit is already or will be available at our website.
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Preface xv
• Two sets of maps showing Native American and Palestinian loss of land.
• Footnote lists for each chapter and a bibliography list, all with active hotlinks,
so that one can read the book in front of the computer or notepad and jump
quickly to materials mentioned in the footnotes and bibliography with a click
of the mouse or a tap on the screen.
• Overflow topics that didn’t fit and are mentioned in the text as available on
our website.
• Expanded suggestions for further reading.
• Additional spokespersons for each worldview.
• An article David wrote that applies many of the things we talk about in the
book; it is called ‘‘Inspired Authors and Saintly Interpreters in Conflict: The
New Testament on War and Peace.’’
• An article Elizabeth wrote about Palestinian Christians, which supplements the
content of chapter 8; it is called ‘‘Out of Palestine: Solidarity with a Displaced
People.’’
• Further web links, study questions, additional diagrams and tables, photo-
graphs, and maybe even a PowerPoint presentation or two.
We will continue updating the second edition on the website.
WHAT IS NEW IN THIS EDITION?
As we revised the book for its second edition, we considered feedback from reviews
submitted to the publisher plus other sources. We wanted to broaden the frame-
work where possible, for example, in chapter 9, which is no longer strictly limited
to a Christian perspective. In the introduction, we expanded treatment of nonrelig-
ious moral norms, and added a section on the counterfeit traditions deceitfully
advocated by psychopaths. In chapter 5, we added sections on modernism and
Islamophobia. In chapter 6, we discuss how indigenous cultures react to colonial
evangelization, with special attention to the Lakota, Black Elk, who became a
Roman Catholic catechist, and to Yoruba slaves in the Americas who combined
their African beliefs with Roman Catholicism to create the syncretistic religions of
Santerı́a, Umbanda, Candomblé, and Vodou. In chapter 7, we added material on
how Chinese religion has adapted to Marxism and survived. In chapter 8, we
brought the Israeli-Palestinian struggle up to date. We added more Jewish and Mus-
lim material to chapters 9 through 12. In particular, in chapter 12 we clarified how
Judaism and Islam relate to the ten principles of communal force. Apart from these
specific additions, the book has been thoroughly revised throughout.
A FEW ADMISSIONS
This book is not neutral; it does not treat war, peace, injustice, and justice ‘‘impar-
tially.’’ As Johan Galtung points out,1 peace studies are similar to health studies—
both go beyond impartial understanding. Doctors don’t study medicine just because
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xvi Preface
they find diseases intriguing; they want to cure people. We don’t study worldviews
just because they interest us; we hope that understanding them will help us further
our work for justice and peace. Finally, we have tried to make the book interesting
rather than comprehensive. We sincerely hope that you will find our work (even the
second time) compelling but incomplete, so that you will be moved to explore on
your own some of the areas we introduce.
The two of us come from different backgrounds with somewhat different per-
spectives, although we share significant common ground. David is a Roman Catho-
lic priest with a doctorate in theology and a licentiate in sacred scripture. A covenant
member of Servant Branch of the People of Praise (a Christian ecumenical charis-
matic community), he has studied in Rome and Jerusalem, and has traveled exten-
sively to research sacred scriptures, religions, and movements for justice and peace
through Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central
and South America. He has served on a peace team in the occupied territories of
Gaza and the West Bank. Elizabeth’s formal religious background is Protestant Epis-
copal. Her doctorate is in the study of religion. In addition to introductory univer-
sity courses in Christianity, especially the New Testament, she has taught ‘‘The
World of Islam’’ numerous times, as well as several justice and peace courses. Since
1970, she has visited Israel-Palestine a number of times and is involved with others
in seeking a just resolution to this conflict. She is also a trained Jungian analyst.
Further background information for both will be available on our website.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have helped this book take its current shape. We express sincere grati-
tude to Tatha Wiley, who originally introduced us to Rowman & Littlefield. We are
also especially grateful to Anne King, who wrote a large part of chapter 7 on Marxist
worldviews, to Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer for his contribution to chapter 4 on Christian
worldviews, and then in preparation for the book’s second edition, to Edward (Ted)
Ulrich for reviewing chapters 1–2, Susan Stabile for reviewing chapter 2, David Pen-
chansky for reviewing chapters 3–4, and Samir Saikali for reviewing chapter 5. We
are equally grateful to Ross Miller, our first edition editor at Rowman & Littlefield,
for his editorial guidance, and now to Sarah Stanton for her expert oversight and
patience during the process of revising the book as well as to Jehanne Schweitzer
for her fine work as production editor. We appreciate the helpful comments of
reviewers of the first edition: Prathiba Nagabhushan for the International Journal on
World Peace, Carlo Filice for the Journal for Peace and Justice Studies, and Andrea
Wisler and Bethany Haworth for the Journal of Religion, Conflict, and Peace. Others
who have read and offered helpful comments on various chapters, who have taught
the course the book was designed for, who have helped David out with his various
study trips, or who in other ways have helped us gather significant material and
experience contained in this book, include Zev Aeloni, D. C. Ahir, Fr. Antonio
d’Agostino, A. T. Ariyaratne, Rev. Naim Ateek and others at Sabeel in Jerusalem,
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Preface xvii
Mubarak Awad, Kedar Bahadur Basnet, Fr. Tissa Balasuriya, Jeff Carlson, Dennis
Carroll, Soraya Castro, William Cavanaugh, Michael Cullen, the late David Dellin-
ger, Lorna Dewaraja, Rev. Noel Dias, Fr. Peter Dougherty, Rabbi Amy Eilberg, Jay
Erstling, H. R. H. Chief Fonkem Achankeng I, Arun Gandhi, Giselle Garcia Castro,
the late Fr. Rafael Garcı́a-Herreros, the late Ira Gordon, the late Ned Hanauer, Linda
Hulbert, the late Abp. Dennis Hurley, Fr. Diego Jaramillo, James Jennings, Michael
Klein, Jonathan Kuttab, Carol Schersten LaHurd, John Landgraf, Martha Larsen,
Ramu Manivannan, Orlando Marquez, Patrick Mawaya, Ashok Mehrotra, José
Mı́guez Bonino, Fr. Hugo Montero, Fred Nairn, Michael Naughton, Leuben
Njinya-Mujinya, Michael Novak, the late Arsham Ohanessian, Adil Ozdemir, Rev.
George Palackapilly, Agapitos Papagapitos, Santiago Pérez Benitez, Fr. Aloysius
Pieris, Vivek Pinto, Calvin Roetzel, the late Fr. Greg Schaeffer, Gerald Schlabach,
Sylvia Schwarz, Juan Luis Segundo, Dr. Suniti Solomon, Padre Dagoberto Sotelo,
Sr. Florence Steichen, Ahmed Tharwat, Cris Toffolo, Heidi Tousignant, Dr. Solo-
mon Victor, Gerald Vizenor, Sr. Liz Walters, Ira Weiss, Susan Windley-Daoust, Fr.
Alex Zanotelli, and Fred Zimmerman. We are grateful to colleagues in the American
Academy of Religion, the Catholic Biblical Association, the International Peace
Research Association, the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and the Society of
Biblical Literature at the University of St. Thomas, the other University of St.
Thomas in Rome (the ‘‘Angelicum’’), the Catholic University of America, the École
Biblique et Archéologique Française (Jerusalem), and the European Peace Univer-
sity (Stadtschlaining, Austria).
Elizabeth expresses sincere thanks to the Theology Department and the Justice
and Peace Studies Department at the University of St. Thomas for a grant that
enabled her to devote significant time to preparing the book’s second edition.
And now the book is in your hands. We pray that God will help you to under-
stand, appreciate, and put into practice whatever we have said that is true and help-
ful, and to overlook or ignore whatever we have said that is not.
David Whitten Smith

Elizabeth Geraldine Burr
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Introduction
The Study of Worldviews
[Humans] expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of
the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir
[human] hearts: What is [a human]? What is the meaning, the aim of our life?
What is moral good, what sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it
serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retri-
bution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which
encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?
—Nostra Aetate1
T alk about justice and peace can be frustrating when my worldview (set of pre-
suppositions) differs radically from yours. Your comments may not even make
sense to me. This is especially true for people from different parts of the world or
from groups holding radically different religious or ideological beliefs. But many of
the most difficult world conflicts seem to take place between such groups: Jews,
Muslims, Christians, and Marxists in Israel-Palestine; Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs
in India and Pakistan; Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka; Marxists and Christians
in North Korea and Cuba; and so forth. Conflicts also occur between subgroups
within a major worldview, for example, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ire-
land, or Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq.
A worldview is an overall way of seeing and relating to the world we live in and
any larger world that may be beyond our world. It asks about the meaning of what
we experience and how we should respond to the people, forces, and things that
surround us. This book seeks (a) to help you decide whether it is true that under-
standing other worldviews promotes justice and peace, (b) to help you learn the
most basic elements of some worldviews you are likely to encounter as you pursue
justice and peace, and (c) to teach you how to study other worldviews in a sympa-
thetic way so that you can understand why others think, feel, and act the way they
do, anticipate their actions, and perhaps enrich your own worldview.
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2 Introduction
We hope this book will reduce your fear of people whose views of the world differ
from yours. We also hope it will encourage you to examine your own worldview
more deeply so as to embrace those of its dynamics that promote justice and peace,
and to resist or reshape those that promote self-interested privilege and violence.
You may find that much of what you have presumed to be common sense held by
all reasonable people is rather part of your own particular worldview and open to
critical challenge. In multicultural societies, people disagree about what constitutes
‘‘common sense.’’
None of the worldviews featured here will be presented completely, but you can
become aware of how worldviews influence other people’s vision and judgment so
that you will be less surprised by how they react. You will learn what needs to be
investigated to clarify positions: what implicit claims and questions lie concealed
beneath the surface of an argument, and what values are at stake in the answers to
those questions.
This book will briefly explain seven influential worldviews: Hinduism, Buddhism,
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, indigenous (mostly Native American with some atten-
tion to the Yoruba) religions, and Marxism (with some attention to Chinese reli-
gions). In chapter 8 we present the Israeli-Palestinian issue as a case study of
worldviews in conflict. We also give special attention to Christian and other reli-
gious social teaching, liberation theologies, active nonviolence, and just war theories
because they illustrate how religious beliefs influence attitudes and actions toward
justice and peace.
TRADITIONS: GREAT, LITTLE, COUNTERFEIT, HIDDEN
What influences one’s attitudes and actions is not necessarily the worldview that
one claims to hold, but rather the worldview that one actually holds. People are
often unaware of the difference between their alleged worldview and the actual prin-
ciples that govern their actions. In addition, some people deliberately lie about their
worldview and principles.
The great tradition denotes the way a particular tradition is taught by its most
enthusiastic leaders and practitioners, developed by major writers and apologists
(propagandists), and expressed in its sacred and classic texts. In contrast, the little
tradition denotes the way many people—often only vaguely committed to the prin-
ciples of a classic tradition—are actually living out the worldview. Little traditions
tend to focus on immediate, short-term, individual desires and pleasures; great tra-
ditions encourage people to sacrifice those desires and pleasures in favor of deferred,
long-term, socially shared goals.
In this book, the counterfeit tradition denotes the deceptive values and princi-
ples falsely claimed by some people to justify their actions—they don’t actually
believe in them or act on them; and the hidden tradition denotes the actual values,
principles, and goals that motivate these deceptive actors. The last two terms are
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The Study of Worldviews 3
not commonly used, but their reality is enormously important for understanding
world injustice.
Psychological research has challenged the popular notion that all humans have a
conscience—a basic understanding of right and wrong—despite the different forms
it might take in different people.2 But just as some humans are born physically crip-
pled or become crippled through an accident, some humans are born without any
capacity to sense or understand what other people are feeling; others lose this capac-
ity through accident, disease, or early traumatic life experience. They are as incapa-
ble of understanding what other people mean by ‘‘compassion’’ or ‘‘empathy’’ as a
colorblind person is incapable of understanding what other people mean by ‘‘red’’
or ‘‘green.’’ Normal people are usually unaware of these people’s hidden tradition:
the latter experience no doubts, no regrets, and no shame for anything they do.
They lie constantly with no restraint and no emotion. They believe that they are
exceptionally talented, although they seldom are. They still make choices on the
basis of their (hidden) worldview, but that worldview takes no account of other
people’s feelings. Like a newborn infant, they simply seek whatever feels good to
them with no attention to anyone else except insofar as others can meet their
desires. Early in their lives, they become aware that most people are different, and
they become adept at pretending to have compassion. But the contrast between what
they say and what they do eventually reveals to perceptive people that they not only
don’t have compassion, they don’t even know what compassion means. The most
dangerous of these handicapped people are called psychopaths.
Some psychopaths become serial killers or other types of criminals. However,
many succeed in hiding their handicap and gaining positions that promise wealth
or power—especially in politics and business. They hide their handicap by using the
moral language of accepted worldviews, but they distort the meaning of the words
they use—words like freedom or democracy—creating a counterfeit tradition, and
they do not act according to the values they claim to hold. Rather, they act accord-
ing to their hidden tradition to gain what they want without regard for anyone else.
It would be comforting to think that these people are rare, but research reveals
that 0.5 percent to 1 percent of humans are ‘‘essential psychopaths’’ by heredity,
and about another 5 percent lose their capacity for conscience through brain injury,
disease, toxic pharmaceuticals, or early childhood trauma.3
Sometimes these people succeed in taking control of a nation or culture, as hap-
pened in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.4 Their counterfeit appeals to widely
held values can confuse ordinary people and lead them to cooperate with disastrous
and criminal policies—aggressive war, repression, genocide. Another 12 percent of
people can suppress their conscience (at least for a time) and cooperate with the
psychopaths, believing that this is the only way to ‘‘get ahead’’ or have an influence
on the actual world.5 Once a culture has been captured by this 18 percent, a large
share of the remaining population is likely to go along with the leadership because
they accept as true the counterfeit tradition preached by the leaders, are confused
by the distorted way that tradition is presented, and lack the self-confidence to resist
the leaders. A famous series of psychological experiments by Stanley Milgram in the
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4 Introduction
United States in the early 1960s shows that most people will defer to people in
authority, even against their own conscience, to an astonishing and frightening
degree.6 Likewise, the book They Thought They Were Free documents how Germans
under Nazi rule failed to confront their leaders, whom they saw as ‘‘big people,’’
whereas even the professionals among them saw themselves as ‘‘little people’’ who
were not qualified to get involved in politics.7
Moral outrage at the true psychopaths is counterproductive, since they really are
incapable of understanding how their actions affect other people. What a society
needs to do is to recognize the situation (the falsity of the counterfeit tradition these
leaders appeal to, and the influence of the hidden tradition that explains what is
actually happening) and refuse to cooperate with their plans.
Full-blown psychopaths cannot be treated psychologically, since they don’t
believe that there is anything wrong with them. Treatment efforts just teach them
new ways to manipulate ordinary people.
Fortunately most people still have a functioning conscience. Eventually, often
after great suffering, they realize what is going on. Some then refuse to cooperate
with the corrupted leadership, or even oppose it actively—at great personal cost.
Others find safer ways to act inefficiently or interfere secretly, thus weakening the
power of psychopathic evil.
While this book will make some reference to counterfeit and hidden traditions,
it will primarily seek to understand the great traditions of major worldviews and to
encourage people to act ‘‘creatively, compassionately, and nonviolently’’8 in line
with the most positive characteristics of these traditions.
When one believes in a great tradition, one trusts the doctrinal teachings of that
religion or worldview and acts on them. But many members of a religion, even some
of those who carefully think through its implications, are not so sure that the great
tradition is right. They act on what they think is really true—their little tradition—
rather than on what they are supposed to think is true. Psychopaths cannot under-
stand the rules at all—the rules seem like naı̈ve nonsense to them—but they may
appeal to the rules deceitfully to gain the support of ordinary people while violating
those rules by their own actions.
RELIGIONS AND WORLDVIEWS
Some worldviews are called religions. Others, like Marxism and secular humanism,
are not. Still, secular worldviews act like religions in many ways.
Most Westerners presume that they know what a religion is: it is something like
Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam; it believes in something beyond the ‘‘ordi-
nary’’—in God or gods, some unseen Power or powers, something beyond com-
mon, everyday experience. Yet when Western scholars began studying ‘‘world
religions,’’ they found that many peoples don’t even have a word for religion.
How much does a worldview like Hinduism have to be ‘‘like’’ Christianity to
qualify as a ‘‘religion’’? Is there any single ‘‘thing’’ that we might call Hinduism?
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(Even the word ‘‘Hinduism’’ was invented by Westerners.) For that matter, is there
a single thing we can call Christianity? Rather than decide these questions, we will
study ‘‘worldviews’’ as a more generic reality. We will consider several ‘‘dimensions’’
that are widely, if not universally, shared by worldviews, and we will presume that
everyone in the world has (1) at least some experience of something, (2) at least a
shadowy sense of what they are experiencing, and (3) a preferred or habitual way of
understanding and relating to whatever that is.
As we carry out this study, we will keep in mind several questions that help focus
our attention on how our worldviews affect how we act for justice and peace. More
detail regarding the questions is available on our website.9 Worldviews disagree over
how to answer these questions:
1. Is there something about humanity as it actually exists that might help explain
the persistence of war, oppression, torture, criminal activity, corruption, quar-
rels, and broken relationships? If so, what is it about humanity that has these
effects, and what is the cause of this situation?
2. Depending on your answer to question 1, what might be done to respond to
the real situation of humans? Can we make these changes for ourselves with-
out outside aid? What kind of aid might we need?
3. Does an invisible world interact with our world of experience? Do spiritual
powers care about us or answer prayers? Do we survive death?
4. How do we decide what actions are good? Through ‘‘secular’’ experience and
study, divine command, the example of a religious leader, a personal relation-
ship with God or other spiritual power, our own intuition, or ‘‘common
sense’’?
5. Why does suffering exist? Does it have any positive purpose? What should we
do about it?
6. What is the purpose of human life? What is success? What brings happiness?
How does this life relate to a possible future life?
7. What does justice mean? Equality? The freedom to keep what one has earned?
Is justice for others as important as justice for oneself?
8. What can we be secure about or confidently control? How do we handle feel-
ings of insecurity or powerlessness? Is it all right to maintain our security at
the cost of someone else’s well-being?
9. Are we primarily promoting or defending goodness, justice, peace, freedom,
security, or prosperity? For whom? What should we be defending? Can we do
so effectively, without causing more harm than good? Can force or violence be
justified in their defense? Can nonviolence be equally or more effective?
THE SEVEN ‘‘DIMENSIONS’’
In his book The World’s Religions,10 Ninian Smart proposes seven dimensions that
are common to all or most religions.11 They are not ‘‘pieces’’ of a religion or world-
view as much as ‘‘viewpoints’’ or ‘‘aspects.’’ As a material object has three ‘‘dimen-
sions,’’ and all three are dimensions of the same thing, so a religion or worldview
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6 Introduction
has seven ‘‘dimensions.’’ Rearranging Smart’s order to make them easier to remem-
ber and to show connections between them, these seven dimensions are:
1. Experiential and emotional—people gain experience of life; some people have

life-changing experiences.
2. Social and institutional—they seek out others with similar experiences and
form groups for support; gradually these groups grow in size and complexity.
3. Narrative or mythic—within the group, they pass on their experiences in the
form of stories.
4. Doctrinal and philosophical—as people ask questions about the experiences
and the stories, they explain them rationally as best they can—some of the
meaning cannot be expressed rationally, but must remain as expressed in the
stories themselves.
5. Practical and ritual—if they understand their experiences to relate to powers
or beings beyond visible, everyday experience, they work out concrete ways of
relating to those powers or beings (for example, through liturgy or worship);
they also work out formalized ways of relating to ordinary people and things
(for example, social etiquette).
6. Ethical and legal—they decide what actions and way of life are appropriate to
their experiences and their understanding of those experiences; they also
develop laws to govern the communities they have formed.
7. Material and artistic—in living out the preceding six dimensions, they produce
material things (buildings like temples, songs like hymns, visual arts, literature
like drama and poems) that are appropriate to their experiences and their
understanding.
In brief, people have experiences (1); come together with others (2); try to share
and understand their experiences in story (3) and reasoned discourse (4); and seek
to live out their experiences in solemn or sacred acts (5), ordinary acts (6), and the
material facilities they create (7).
This order has a certain logical attractiveness and was probably the order in which
the founders of the worldview and early converts to the worldview experienced
these dimensions, but it is not the order in which many later followers experience
them. Most people are ‘‘born into’’ a particular religion or worldview—socialized
into it within their family. While they begin life with individual experiences, these
are not the experiences most central to their parents’ worldview. Perhaps the first
dimension they experience is (6): ‘‘Johnny, don’t do that!’’ When they ask why not,
they are more likely to get a narrative (3) than doctrine (4), since they are too young
for doctrine. They also experience the social (2), ritual (5), and material (7) dimen-
sions before they understand the reasons for them. As they grow older, they may
get a good dose of the doctrinal dimension (4) through some form of religious edu-
cation before they finally (if ever) share the core experiences (1) that are the basis
for all the rest.
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When people who were born into a worldview do finally share the core experi-
ences that underlie it, they find that everything has deeper meaning than they had
realized—the rest ‘‘comes to life.’’ Often they have to rethink it all. This is called
‘‘adult conversion’’—not conversion from one worldview to another, but conver-
sion of a person from a merely theoretical knowledge of a worldview to a deeply
personal relationship with it.
Now let us look at each dimension in more detail.
EXPERIENTIAL AND EMOTIONAL DIMENSION
Many Westerners first encounter ‘‘mysticism’’ in a context of Far Eastern religious

thought, perhaps through the New Age Movement, Hare Krishna, or Transcenden-
tal Meditation. Concepts like yogis, reincarnation, the illusory nature of everyday
reality, ‘‘mind over matter,’’ and astral projection are foreign ideas to the Western
mind. Some are then surprised to hear that there is a long-standing and widely
developed Christian mystical tradition12 that describes experiences often similar to
those recounted in Far Eastern traditions, while it understands and explains them
differently. You can read about a variety of mystical experiences from many differ-
ent traditions in The Varieties of Religious Experience by the American psychologist
and philosopher William James.
Sociological Support
Impressed by James’s book, the American sociologist-priest Andrew Greeley, in a
national survey of 1,500 average Americans, added a few questions looking for mys-
tics. He asked, ‘‘Have you ever had the feeling of being very close to a powerful
spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?’’ He was astonished to find
that 40 percent of his sample said ‘‘yes, at least once’’; 20 percent said ‘‘several
times’’; and 5 percent said ‘‘often.’’ He asked them how intense the experience was.
Two-thirds of them put it at the top of a seven-point scale. He gave them a simple
psychological test to see whether they were all ‘‘crazy.’’ They came out healthier
psychologically than any other group who had ever taken that test.
He was disappointed when some of his colleagues dismissed his results without
discussion and he couldn’t attract money for further research. He thought that a
group showing superior psychological health who reported having mystical experi-
ences was worth investigating. Other colleagues—professional sociologists—
approached him quietly to ask whether he might be interested in their mystical
experiences.13
Mystical Experience
Mystical experiences are hard to put into categories, but there are some characteris-
tic types.
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8 Introduction
Numinous Experiences
One type has been called numinous experiences. The name comes from the Latin
word numen, which refers to a local spirit believed to inhabit a brook, grove of trees,
mountain, or other natural feature. Experiences of this sort bring us into contact
with a presence that (a) attracts us while, at the same time, (b) sending a thrill of awe
or fear down our spines. Picture yourself walking through a graveyard at two o’clock
in the morning just as a shadowy shape rises from the ground. A number of Jewish
prophets describe their visions in ways that seem to fit this type. Seeing God, Isaiah
falls flat on his face crying, ‘‘Woe is me’’ (Isaiah 6:5). Paul falls to the ground when
he sees a bright light and hears the voice of the risen Jesus, his expectations of arrest-
ing Christians in Damascus shattered (Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:13f). Fear is not always the
dominant element. Some numinous experiences are dominated by the feeling of
love and joy. Still, there is a sense of contact with someone or something ‘‘different’’
or ‘‘Other’’—something powerful that we don’t control.
Pan-en-henic Experiences
Quite different is a mystical experience more typical of Hinduism, though not
unknown among Christians.14 In this experience, technically termed pan-en-henic
(literally: ‘‘all-in-one’’), the mystic feels herself united with all of reality. Far from
feeling fear or awe in the presence of an Other, the mystic feels almost a loss of the
sense of self, which can also be frightening. Many yogic exercises are designed to
lead a person into a pan-en-henic experience. The yogis believe that such an experi-
ence shows us what the world is really like.
Shamanic Experiences
A third type of mystical experience is common among shamans. These are religious
leaders who, either without willing it or through a deliberate vision quest, pass from
this world to another, have experiences there that endow them with power, and
then return to this world—often carrying the marks of the journey in chronic illness
or woundedness. Having made that journey, they can use their power to help others.
You will find accounts of shamans’ visions in Native American literature, for exam-
ple, the classic book Black Elk Speaks.15
‘‘Born Again’’ Experiences

A fourth type is the ‘‘born again’’ experience of adult religious conversion, either
into one’s own religion or worldview, now seen in a new way, or into a completely
new worldview. Typically, a surrender of faith leads to intense experiences of con-
viction and joy and to a new clarity about the meaning of doctrines that were pre-
viously ‘‘accepted on faith’’ without understanding. There are numerous Christian
accounts of the ‘‘born again’’ experience, especially in Evangelical and Pentecostal
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literature. An example of the ‘‘born again’’ type outside of confessional church con-
texts is the Alcoholics Anonymous experience of surrender followed by group
exploration of the ‘‘twelve steps,’’ which suddenly take on new life and new power.
More Subtle Experiences

Many mystical experiences don’t fit neatly into any of these categories. Even the
60 percent of people who answered ‘‘no’’ to Andrew Greeley’s question may well
experience feelings of a more subtle intensity that give meaning and justification to
the worldviews they hold. Our deep convictions can be supported by emotions felt
at the birth of a child, at the death of a friend, while walking in nature, during a
religious ritual such as Communion at Mass or the singing of hymns, or when sit-
ting quietly in prayer, perhaps in a holy place. Even such a simple feeling as the
thrill of hearing our national anthem played during the Olympic Games grows out
of and gives support to our commitment to each other as citizens of our nation.
If one has such experiences, and if—as is sometimes the case—they don’t follow
the usual rules of time and space, they may be difficult to describe to others. One
usually begins by telling a narrative or myth, our third category below. But first, one
may seek out others who have had similar experiences, leading them to create socie-
ties and institutions of like-minded people. This brings us to the social dimension.
SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION
When people share a life-changing experience, they come together to support,

encourage, and discuss it with one another. Their association eventually takes on
concrete, institutional forms. Different worldviews produce different types of com-
munities. Islam has been particularly well organized socially. It gives central impor-
tance to the umma, or religious community. Since for Muslims every aspect of life
should be marked by submission to Allah, they see no reason to separate religion
and state.
Institutional Forms within a Religion or Worldview

Religious groups organize themselves socially in a self-conscious way, since their
sense of being in contact with a spiritual reality gives them a deep awareness of
shared experience and moves them to come together for common worship. Differ-
ent religious groups prefer different institutional forms. Many Protestant churches
have a fairly democratic structure. The Roman Catholic Church has a monarchical
international structure, although it is becoming more democratic at the local, parish
level. But these are broad generalizations. Major churches change their structures
over time, adapting them to local conditions.
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10 Introduction
Institutional leadership is not the only, or perhaps even the most important, kind
of leadership in churches. There is also the leadership of sanctity and spiritual expe-
rience. Sufis, prophets, and saints may elicit more reverence than caliphs, chief rab-
bis, and bishops. Respected local churchgoers and activists may be more influential
than imams, preachers, and pastors. Reflect on the social structures in whatever
church or analogous group you belong to. What sorts of things are done in com-
mon? Who makes the decisions? Do the decision makers represent one particular
group, age, sex, or race to the exclusion of others? Who has the most influence on
others? In what ways do members depend on each other and relate to each other?
Relation between Religion and Society

Typically, in primitive societies the entire tribe shares the same worldview. No one
asks how the tribal society relates to the larger society, because there is no larger
society other than external tribes, which are seen as foreign.
More complex societies may have an official religion, albeit challenged by alterna-
tive worldviews; the society may see itself as religious but not committed to a partic-
ular religion; or it may think of itself as indifferent to religion—leaving religion to
the ‘‘private sphere.’’ But societies are never indifferent to worldviews as such: even
societies that treasure separation of church and state have widely accepted principles
or ideals that derive from a worldview, although that worldview may be unexpressed
and unconscious. The conviction that separation of church and state is valuable and
necessary is itself a value judgment deriving from a particular way of seeing the
world. So is the conviction that citizens should be ready to fight to defend the state.
A worldview or religion may see itself as the dominant faith in one geographic
area, as one among many in another area, and as an embattled outsider in a third.
Islam is dominant in Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia,
influential in India, and marginal in the United States, though less marginal than it
used to be. Some religions or groups are not large enough to be dominant or even
major actors anywhere. These are groups such as the Amish, often called ‘‘sects’’ or
(by those who are hostile to them) ‘‘cults.’’ They relate to society defensively, doubt
that they can have much influence on the larger society, and fear the influence the
larger society may have on them. Major religions are so extensive that they domi-
nate large areas of the world. These are the so-called world religions, most of which
we are studying in this book. Liberal Protestants are an example of a subgroup
within a major religion that actively tries to influence the larger society without
fearing that the society will overwhelm them.
In general, religions and other voluntary associations (such as Alcoholics Anony-
mous, the Freemasons, Marxist parties, justice and peace groups) both influence the
larger society and are influenced by it. The question of whether such groups are
more ‘‘democratic’’ or more ‘‘monarchical’’ illustrates how church structures are
influenced by secular structures. Reflect on your own experience and consider to
what extent your church or similar group has felt self-confident or threatened in
relation to the larger society. Does your church try to conform to the larger society—
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‘‘to fit in’’? Does it try to influence or change the larger society? Does it prefer to
separate from the larger society?
Influence of Religious Structure on Members

Religious and analogous groups aim consciously to encourage and influence their
members. They also influence their members unconsciously by the structures they
adopt. Sometimes these structures act against their conscious efforts: exhortations
to love can be ineffective in a structure of dominance and special privilege, as was
true of colonial churches in Africa. It is important to examine whether the structures
of a particular group reflect and encourage the ideals preached by that group.
NARRATIVE OR MYTHIC DIMENSION

Narrative of an Experience
After a mystical experience, how does one describe what happened? In his book Life
after Life, Raymond A. Moody tells about a woman who became frustrated because
she had only ‘‘three-dimensional words’’ with which to describe her near-death
experience even though the experience was more than three-dimensional.16 In I
Have Met Him: God Exists, André Frossard writes, ‘‘All these impressions which I
find it so hard to translate into the deficient language of ideas and images occurred
simultaneously and were so telescoped the one into the other that after many years
I have not yet been able to digest all they contained.’’17 After his final vision, Thomas
Aquinas quit writing entirely. Still, people narrate as well as they can. People’s stum-
bling narratives are understood best by those who have had similar experiences.
Myth
Beyond describing the experiences, people want to describe the kind of world that
might explain such experiences. Often narrative and poetry are better suited to
describe the indescribable than academic discourse is.
Modern Westerners tend to use ‘‘myth’’ to mean ‘‘false,’’ for example, the ‘‘six
myths’’ of good health, or the ‘‘five myths’’ of weight loss. In this book we are using
the term in a different sense. Theologically, myths intend to express truth. Some
myths succeed and some fail, just as some scientific theories succeed and some fail.
In Worldviews, Ninian Smart defines a ‘‘myth’’ as ‘‘a story of divine or sacred sig-
nificance.’’18 Scholars of religion like Ernst Cassirer or Mircea Eliade point out that
myths are not just literary products, although we often meet myths, like those of
Greece and Rome, in written form from the past. Native American tribal societies
act out myths in sacred poetry, song, and drama. Through the Mass or the Lord’s
Supper, Christians act out, in sacred readings, song, and drama, the myth of the
death and resurrection of Jesus, a myth that they believe is grounded in history and
yet transcends history.
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12 Introduction
Committed participants believe they come into contact with sacred power
through the ritual celebration of a myth. They overcome the normal limitations of
time and space to encounter personally the primal energy of an ancient event, or
of a reality that can only be expressed by nonhistorical narratives. Thus Christians
encounter the power of Jesus’ resurrection at the Lord’s Supper, the power of cre-
ation in the Easter vigil, the power of God to transform humans in baptism. Other
myths try to explain how the physical and spiritual reality we live in came to be
(creation), where human sin and evil came from (‘‘original sin’’), and how history
as we know it will end (eschatology).
In his book Myths and Realities, John McKenzie discusses myths in relation to
biblical narratives such as the creation and flood stories. Speaking of myths and
mythmaking in general, he points out that myth intends to express truth, but through
symbolic forms of expression. It tries to represent an insight into a reality that cannot
be expressed logically. Myth deals with basic questions of importance to all humans
that lie deeper than the things we can touch and see: questions like the nature of
God or spiritual forces; the purpose, direction, and goal of human existence; the
origins of the world, of humans, of sin and evil, of human institutions; how humans
relate to spiritual being, to physical nature, to each other. Myth does not ‘‘solve’’
these problems. Rather it suggests to humans what attitude they should take in the
presence of such mysteries.
Four Characteristics of Myth

McKenzie outlines four characteristics of mythic language and thought:
1. Myth does not expect to understand what is unknowable. Instead it expresses

the unknowable in symbols taken from experience. What is expressed is an
intuition rather than a ‘‘fact.’’
2. Myth believes that the events we see are controlled and energized by a divine
or spiritual background that is personal. Believers in the myth do not see it as
a ‘‘personification’’ of natural forces. That is, they do not speak of it as if it
were personal because the events we see look personal; rather they believe that
the events we see are the way they are because the background is personal.
3. Myth does not deal with normal historical events (events that happen in a
certain time and place), but rather with timeless realities in the ‘‘eternal Now’’
of the spirit world, which is the source of the recurrent events we observe.
Even the death and resurrection of Jesus, which in one respect can be fixed in
history, in another respect is seen by Christians as timeless and eternally effec-
tive because it is an action of God, who is outside time.
4. Sometimes different myths seem contradictory, not because one of them is
wrong, but because no single myth can express the full reality. Several myths
are used to try to embrace the reality. They may contradict each other on the
surface level of signifier, but not on the underlying level of what is being signi-
fied.19
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Modern American Secular Examples

All of this may seem remote to secular people who don’t believe in a spirit world.
But before such people decide they are superior to ‘‘primitive’’ mythmakers, they
might ask themselves what stories they tell each other, and what those stories mean
to them. Why do Americans repeat stories about George Washington ‘‘unable to
tell a lie,’’ ‘‘honest Abe’’ Lincoln, and victorious General Eisenhower? Do these sto-
ries express what Americans are like? And by what sort of ‘‘causality’’ might Ameri-
cans share in the abilities and virtues of their heroes?
Similarly, when we speak of success and the purpose of life, what message do we
give and receive from the programs we watch on television—dramas like police and
spy shows, ‘‘reality’’ shows, and confrontational talk shows? What attitude do we
take in the face of opposition? That evil is a temporary mistake caused by a few
stupid or evil people, and that strength and cunning will enable us to restore good
by destroying those evil people? If so, we are illustrating what the theologian Walter
Wink calls the ‘‘myth of redemptive violence.’’20
In short, narratives and myths are one way a community passes on its combined
experience to the next generation and reinforces its common understanding of what
reality is like. If a person gives no attention or authority to the myths and narratives
of her tradition (in psychological terms, to the unconscious), she reduces her under-
standing of reality to the narrow range of experience that she herself can have. At
the same time, we need to be critical of the myths of our own society and culture,
recognizing that they are but one set of myths, different from those of other peoples
though sharing archetypal features, and equally likely to mislead if taken literally.
Prophets challenge myths of their own societies in the name of what seems to them
to be a higher authority.
Ritual Enactment of Myths

Finally, how do we act out our myths? Think of public events marking national
holidays, major political demonstrations, memorial remembrances of national fig-
ures like Martin Luther King Jr., ticker-tape parades for triumphant generals, post-
age stamps showing national symbols like the Statue of Liberty, anniversaries of
historically significant events, and Olympic victories that reinforce our sense of
superiority. The acting out can go beyond mere ceremony. It can bring us into con-
tact with a power capable of blessing us or saving us from danger. This aspect of
myth leads us to the practical and ritual dimension, which we will discuss shortly.
But first, consider another response to religious experience. Such experience gives
rise to many questions, to which people seek rational answers as far as possible. The
response to that quest is the doctrinal dimension.
DOCTRINAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION
Doctrine is a shorthand way of expressing the meaning of religious experiences and

narratives. It has several functions: (a) it attempts to explain as clearly as possible
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14 Introduction
what our experiences and our narratives mean; (b) by expressing the worldview in
as brief and clear a form as possible, it helps us to articulate and pass on to others
our new vision of the world; (c) it helps us to see how the different parts of our
worldview relate to each other and tries to resolve apparent inconsistencies; (d) it
helps us to judge which new ideas and which new explanations of the worldview
succeed in expressing, or at least do not do violence to, the central experiences and
insights of the worldview; (e) it helps us to relate the worldview to new questions
and new ideas in the larger society around us; (f) it helps us to know who is a
member of the community and who is not.
When one understands the doctrine of a particular worldview, one is in a position
to understand why its members act in the ways they do. That is, doctrine influences
ritual, ethics, and the social and material shape of the culture that the worldview
generates. There is a classic saying in medieval theology: lex orandi, lex credendi. It
means that the way we pray (ritual) reveals what we believe (doctrine). This is true
even of psychopaths, if one realizes that they are acting on the doctrines of their
hidden tradition rather than on those of the counterfeit tradition which they pur-
port to follow. So let us consider how doctrine shapes ritual.
PRACTICAL AND RITUAL DIMENSION
Ritual deals with actions that are in some way particular to a worldview; they are
not just generic human actions like sleeping, waking, eating, and so on. They are
generic human actions that are done in a particular way as a result of a particular
worldview. For example, the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony, which differs from a sub-
urban career woman’s microwaved morning tea, assumes the character of a ritual.
The meaning of a particular ritual depends on the worldview within which it is
performed. When we think of rituals, we are most likely to think of prayer or public
liturgical worship, which are forms of ritual common to Jewish, Christian, and
Muslim worldviews. In these religions, prayer and liturgical rituals enact conversa-
tions with God or other spiritual beings.
Sacrifice
Animal and vegetable sacrifice is—or was—a widespread ritual practice among
humans. Since it seems foreign to many of us today, it is useful to examine its mean-
ing. Sacrifice is usually considered to be a gift given to God or other spiritual beings.
The primitive view is that valuable things can be transferred over from this world
to the spirit world in a variety of ways. Fire seems a divine medium for such
exchange, since it is capable of turning solid, material things into spiritual sub-
stance. Killing an animal is another way to transfer value over to the spirit world,
since death frees the soul, considered to be the most valuable part of the animal,
from matter.
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Worshipers transfer gifts to the spirit world in order to develop and maintain a
relationship with God and spiritual beings. While to some people such gift giving
may look like bribery, at its best it is an attempt to build a relationship of caring
and trust: I show my good disposition to God by offering things of value in the
confidence that God, now well disposed to me and by nature good, will meet my
needs or desires. To create such a relationship, I must not be cheap or deceitful in
my gifts. The offerings must be ‘‘spotless,’’ of good quality, such as I might offer to
people of influence in human affairs. ‘‘First’’ things are especially valuable (first-
born animals, the first armful of harvested grain) because the first symbolizes and
stands for the whole. When I offer the ‘‘first,’’ I am symbolically offering everything
to God. More generally, rituals within many worldviews also offer God nonmaterial
gifts: praise, obedience, service, time, and attention in prayer.
Festivals and Sacred Times

Rituals also celebrate sacred times: annual or recurrent celebrations commemorat-
ing key events whose power continues to reverberate in the community. Examples
include Jews celebrating their rescue from bondage in Egypt at Passover and their
reception of the Law of Moses at Shavuot (Jewish Pentecost); Christians celebrating
the birth of Jesus at Christmas, his resurrection at Easter, and the descent of the
Holy Spirit at Christian Pentecost; Muslims celebrating the initial revelation to
Muhammad during Ramadan, etc.
The significance of an event depends on the particular meaning that event has
for the community celebrating it. The original historical event takes on a mythical
aura, which carries its symbolic power down into the present time. For example,
Jews celebrate the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948; Palestinians recall the
same event as al-Nakba—the catastrophe—because for at least 750,000 Palestinians
it meant the loss of their homes, farmlands, and country. Similarly, Protestants of
Northern Ireland annually celebrate their victory in the Battle of the Boyne (1690)
by marching through Catholic neighborhoods; the Catholics experience these vic-
tory parades as humiliating.
Rituals and Power

If rituals can reenact historical events, they can also act out ahistorical myths. Native
American tribal societies act out myths in sacred poetry, song, and drama. Through
the Mass or the Lord’s Supper, Christians act out, in sacred readings, song, and
drama, the myth of the death and resurrection of Jesus, a myth that they believe is
grounded in history and yet transcends history.
Committed participants believe they come into contact with sacred power capable
of blessing them or saving them from danger when they celebrate a myth. Through
ritual, they overcome the normal limitations of time and space to encounter person-
ally the primal energy of a historically ancient event, or of a reality that can only be
expressed through nonhistorical narratives. Thus Christians believe they encounter
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16 Introduction
the power of Jesus’ resurrection at the Lord’s Supper, the power of creation in the
Easter vigil, the power of God to transform humans in baptism.
ETHICAL AND LEGAL DIMENSION
How we choose to act depends on what we think the world is like, that is, on our
doctrine. We understand that our actions have consequences. If we think, as some
spiritual Hindus do, that the world is an illusion that perpetuates suffering, we
choose actions that separate us from the world. If we think, as some monotheists
do, that a punitive God is watching our every move and comparing it with a list of
rules, we choose to follow the rules. Religious people think through the implications
of their beliefs for action and express the results in moral judgments and laws.
Some religions base their laws and moral judgments closely on the original mysti-
cal experiences of the group. They speak of ‘‘divinely revealed laws.’’ Muslims make
this claim for the Quran, Jews make it for the Law of Moses (especially the core of
the law as expressed in the ‘‘Ten Commandments’’), and Christians make it for the
teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as represented in the New Testament Gospels.
‘‘Divinely revealed’’ laws may or may not seem reasonable. If we act against the
law of gravity by stepping out of a skyscraper window, there are rapid and obvious
consequences. If we act against the arbitrary rules of someone bigger than we are,
the consequences depend on whether that person is watching. Yet the divinity that
is revealing the laws may be warning us of natural consequences that we cannot see
with our limited vision.
In general, we are more likely to follow laws willingly if they make sense to us. If
all we perceive is the law and the authority that punishes lawbreakers, we may follow
the law but do so resentfully. In the former case, our motivation is intrinsic; in the
latter case, it is extrinsic. Social research shows that extrinsic motivation reduces a
person’s eagerness to do what the motivator is encouraging, even when that action
is intrinsically attractive. Low grades and ridicule discourage students, but high
grades and gold stars also reduce students’ eagerness to read, question, and learn
in comparison with those who are not being extrinsically motivated—extrinsically
motivated students forget the excitement of learning and instead study mainly for
grades. Young children are always asking, ‘‘Why?’’ By the time they are in college,
they ask, ‘‘Will that be on the test?’’21 Religious founders, leaders, and sacred texts
often say we will be rewarded and punished for our actions, but the founders them-
selves and their immediate followers weren’t primarily motivated by rewards and
punishments. They just fell in love with God, goodness, beauty, compassion, and
truth for their own sake. Saint Augustine expressed his conviction that God’s com-
mands make sense when he said, ‘‘Love God, and do what you want.’’ He did not
mean that by loving God you can get away with anything, but that when you love
God you end up wanting what God wants.
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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Understanding World Religions: A

Road Map for Justice and Peace 2nd

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Issues for Justice and Peace 39

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Doctrinal and Philosophical Dimension 114

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Classic Writings 194

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Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers 328

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DETAILED PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

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OTHER TREASURES ON OUR WEBSITE

Space limitations have prevented us from publishing everything we would like to

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We will continue updating the second edition on the website.

WHAT IS NEW IN THIS EDITION?

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David Whitten Smith

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TRADITIONS: GREAT, LITTLE, COUNTERFEIT, HIDDEN

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RELIGIONS AND WORLDVIEWS

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THE SEVEN ‘‘DIMENSIONS’’

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1. Experiential and emotional—people gain experience of life; some people have

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EXPERIENTIAL AND EMOTIONAL DIMENSION

Many Westerners first encounter ‘‘mysticism’’ in a context of Far Eastern religious

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‘‘Born Again’’ Experiences

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More Subtle Experiences

SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION

When people share a life-changing experience, they come together to support,

Institutional Forms within a Religion or Worldview

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Relation between Religion and Society

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Influence of Religious Structure on Members

NARRATIVE OR MYTHIC DIMENSION

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Four Characteristics of Myth

1. Myth does not expect to understand what is unknowable. Instead it expresses

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Modern American Secular Examples

Ritual Enactment of Myths

DOCTRINAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION

Doctrine is a shorthand way of expressing the meaning of religious experiences and

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PRACTICAL AND RITUAL DIMENSION

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Festivals and Sacred Times

Rituals and Power

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ETHICAL AND LEGAL DIMENSION

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Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least