Accidental Canonization

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.
-Richard Francis Burton

In his recent book Everything You Know About God Is Wrong, Russ Kick claims that the majority of atheists and agnostics surveyed are in full support of comparative religion classes taught in public school, while the most vocal opposition comes from Christians. This seems counter-intuitive, since many conservatives are constantly attempting to bridge Church and State, especially in regard to public education, but there are a number of reasons that American Christians might be against the study of religion in schools.

First, and perhaps most predominantly, many Christians (as well as Muslims and Jews) are against comparative religion because they distrust teaching any religion or mythology other than their own, especially one that might be presented on equal footing (1). Second, there is a certain amount of willful ignorance about the academic side of Christianity among many self-proclaimed Christians. This can be seen in a public distrust, not just of historians and archaeologists, but also of any recent translation of the Bible. There is a growing movement against all non-King James versions of the Bible, and especially against the more scholarly college-approved editions such as the New Revised Standard Version (2). As Miriam Fergusun, the former Governor of Texas, famously stated, "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for Texas." (3)

Comparative Religion

It is true that a greater knowledge about religion can lead to a greater certainty in one's own unbelief (for example, the more I learn about the early history of the LDS Church the less likely I am to convert to Mormonism, to pick on an easy target). However, a deeper knowledge about one's own beliefs and those of others might also lead to a more stable and enriching faith. Just as atheists with a passable knowledge of religious philosophy tend to be more secure in their convictions and argue their case better, so too do monotheists or polytheists seem to value their own tradition the more they learn about it's history or theology.

The majority of Christians will probably agree on the importance of learning about the history of their religion, but a far smaller percentage will argue for the merit of learning about other faiths. After all, the Bible implicitly states that other religions were created by the Devil (2 Corinthians 11) and explicitly says that the only way to salvation is through Christianity (John 14:6), so why should anyone care about what those heathens believe when we already know about Jesus? Well, for starters, many of those heathens are our friends and neighbors, and those that aren't are the people that we're trying to save, either spiritually or militarily. More to the point, a decent understanding of others' faiths can lead to a greater understanding of our own. This is true when theologians adopt philosophies and practices from other religious traditions, such as using Muslim or Hindu arguments for the existence of the Christian God, and equally true when determining what does not work in one's own tradition, such as when the Greek Orthodox Church discovered that they accidentally canonized a major figure from a rival religion.

The story of Barlaam and Josaphat (not to be confused with Jehosaphat, the famous jumper from the Old Testament) is thought to have been written down in the 11th Century, though they are said to have lived sometime around the 3rd Century CE. Both St. Barlaam and St. Josaphat are commemorated in the Eastern Orthodox Church on August 26th, while the Catholic Church held their feast day on the 27th of November.

12th Century Scroll of Barlaam and Josaphat

The gist of the story is that a rich Indian king had been persecuting Christianity and that an astrologer predicted that the King's son would grow up to become a Christian. The King feared this fate and kept his son Prince Josaphat inside the palace walls since birth in order to prevent him from being a religious man. However, the Prince eventually snuck out of the palace and saw the suffering of the outside world as well as a traveling Christian hermit named Barlaam. Barlaam introduced Josaphat to spirituality, and the Prince eventually left his cozy palace and became a Christian saint.

If that story sounds at all familiar, it is probably because you have had some amount of study in comparative religion. The religious scholar Wilfred C. Smith discovered that the story of Balraam and Josaphat was in fact the story of the Buddha, translated and retold over numerous centuries (4). Even the name Josaphat comes from the Sanskrit term Bodhisattva, which is what the Buddha was until his death and attainment of nirvana at the age of 80. From Bodhisattva came the Persian Bodasiv, and from that the Arabic Yudasaf, which was translated into Greek as Ioasaph and eventually as the Latin Iosaphat.

What we can learn from all this is the way in which knowledge of one religion can enlighten us about another. The Roman Catholic Church has since removed the feast day of Balraam and Josaphat from their calendar, though many fictional or mythological saints still remain both in that institution and in the Eastern Orthodox Church (5). The fact that the study of religion helped in some way to improve a tradition reinforces the central thesis of this blog: that in order to save religion, we must perform surgery upon it.

Links:
1. Atheist Teaches Religion in Public Schools, on About.com
2. God's form of government is a theocratic monarchy...therefore, it makes perfect sense that His word would be translated for the English speaking people under a monarchy, by a crazy person
3. Spanish in Texan Classrooms, by Jimmy Carter
4. Buddha Turned Into European Saint, on the Free Republic
5. St. Brigid, Pagan Goddess, on Wikipedia