What is a Religion?

 In a rapidly pluralizing world, governments are wrestling more and more with the issue of what is and is not a legitimate religion. This matters for matters of human rights, since, the instant a religion is recognized as legit, its followers are entitled to freedom of conscience. For example, Canadian courts are wrestling now with the issue of polygamy. If some breakaway Mormons are polygamous as an article of faith, then by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, no Canadian government can declare polygamy illegal. Muslim women are demanding the right to wear the hijab. But what about the government's legitimate interet in being able to identify, for example, a crime suspect?

To put a fine point on it all, what—ahem--what if somebody's religion, as religions certainly have done, calls for... human sacrifice?



Not good for tourism.



So the question of what does and does not constitute a legitimate religion is an important one. We are currently far too ready to acccept anyone's claim about anything they believe, or pretend to believe, being a religion, or a religious requirement. The problem with this is that it erodes real religious rights—as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for example, is deliberately duly constituted to do.

They have a clearer, and a different, concept in Korea. They profess to see no ambiguity. Ask, and anyone there will tell you that Confucianism is not a religion, Taoism is not a religion, and shamanism is not a religion. Christianity and Buddhism are religions.

So there really is aline that can be drawn. It is indeed easy to see that shamanic, pre-monotheist traditions, “paganisms,” once you have seen them up close (as in the case of Korea's surviving shamanism) are radically different things from the great universalistic faiths that emerged within the past 2,500 years.

Religion requires legal recognition and protection because religion can require certain things of us: freedom of religion is freedom of conscience. If and when, therefore, one's religion is not a matter of conscience, it does not need, and does not deserve, any legal recognition or protection. Shamanistic religions make no appeal to conscience. They do not therefore require legal protection, because they are by nature not ethical or moralistic. If they require obedience to any particular rules, it is not on moral grounds; it might be on ritual grounds, or on grounds of magical efficacy. Their demands may even be knowingly immoral. So nobody's conscience is violated by not being able to practice these ritual requirements.

So much for human sacrifice. “Do unto others” is universal, and no religion that violates it is a religion properly so-called.

Conversely, Confucianism, or Platonism, or Humanism, or atheism, are philosophical and perhaps also moral systems, but not religions. They rely on human reason as warrant for their judgements and decrees, as opposed to a supernatural agent. This being so, governments, as social contracts, have every logical and moral right to supercede them, since they too are based on human reason. For the individual, if one's government fails to see the logic of one's own ethical judgements, one can go along, with a clear conscience, on the grounds that the social contract is the higher good. Moreover, there is every likelihood that the government is right, and you are wrong.

I would see this as a fatal flaw in all non-religious moral systems. They can therefore permit such things as the Holocaust of the Jews. But that is as different issue: for our present purposes, it means that such philosophical systems are not worthy of special legal protections accorded to religions.

A true religion is different: one is obliged to follow its ethical dictates, and they are established not only by the light of this world, but of eternity and the absolute. Accordingly, governments have not the authority to violate them, they are not negotiable among humans as part of the social contract, and one is obliged, morally, to defy the government should it deny them.

Here's a fair test governments could use for deciding what is and what is not a religion: fair, and anything but subjective.

Does this belief have any martyrs? Has anyone ever died rather than deny it?

Bellini, The Murder of St. Peter, Martyr.

If even one person has been prepared to die rather than deny the given creed—given that that choice was clearly offered—then this is pretty definite proof that, for its adherents, that creed is making a demand on one's conscience.

Some genuine religions might be left out by this standard, if they are modern enough. But it would not matter, would it? If they have no martyrs, they have not been persecuted, or at least not severely. If they are not persecuted, they are not in need of legal protection. Once it is clear they are, the protection is extended automatically.