What's the Role of Theology in Society?
- lavenderspiritcrea
- Jul 4, 2024
- 9 min read
Tags: Interreligious, Morality, Emotionality, Humanity, Theology
By: Maurena L. McKee
Title: What's the Role of Theology in Society?
Summary: This topic delves into the impact of theological ideas on social structures and cultural values, revealing the essential nature and perhaps inevitability of theology within humanity.
Introduction:
Theology has come to form in my consciousness as a traditional means of congregation for study of systems in relation to morality. Theologians meet to face moral injury of today.
Furthermore, by encouraging grace and faith to be an inherent felt-sense and intrinsic knowing, members within interfaith and interreligious congregations lend to emotional boundaries within society. This statement is one of my favorite personal beliefs as a theologian, while remembering that tradition allows for healthy emotions and relationships — as interactive wisdom.
St. Andrew's Calgary @StACalgary Photo From: St. Andrew's Welcome Video
Role of Theology in Society:
As a theologian, I notice there is space for spiritual discourse and faith dialogue — the more theologians congregate, the more grace is felt within the world.
The hard feelings have a place to be expressed; even if not in a public space such as a church or a private space such as a chapel, expression is more-or-less encouraged within human culture through theology within the human psyche.
All have a space within the mind to consider personal beliefs and explore one’s own set of systems that form morals and values—whether inherently or intrinsically, one’s own religion. Theology upholds this space as grace, allowing and encouraging an individual to be gracious. As we hold society accountable for accepting the heart, even amongst the humanists within theology, where we naturally integrate aspects of anthropological discourse on the body into the current.
Conceptions of the body are central to the philosophical underpinnings of the entire discipline of anthropology, as stated by critical medical anthropologists Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret M. Lock (1990) in "The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology." Furthermore, to consider how theory and practice within the world today, contemporary anthropologists examine historical philosopher legacies that have influenced modern collective viewpoints, such as the Cartesian legacy.
Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1990) state that "the philosopher-mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who most clearly formulated the ideas that are the immediate precursors of contemporary biomedical conceptions of the human organism" (1990, pp. 9). The main concern for critical medical anthropologists is the course of Western history and civilization, studying how the legacy to natural and clinical sciences is a rather mechanistic conception of the body and its functions.
While for theology, conceptions of the soul are central to the philosophical underpinnings of the entire discipline of theology -- in relation to anthropology and the body. Arguably, it is theology that may continue to transfigure the word of knowledge or philosophy, by recovering from the damage of Cartesian dualism and channeling the clarity necessary for our entire collective consciousness.
"The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology" by Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1990, pp. 6) offers a descriptive and meaningful conceptual framework that iterates three perspectives by which the body may be viewed:
(1) as a phenomenally experienced individual body-self (2) as a social body, a natural symbol for thinking about relationships among nature, society, and culture (3) as a body politic, an artifact of social and political control" (1990, pp. 6).
This anthropology has led me to apply the three bodies to my professional and personal path as a theologian, offering a conception for sanity today. The beauty to find as a theologian is that all theologies offer a recognition of this phenomena, allowing for healthy boundaries to be known.
After implementing Scheper-Hughes and Lock's prolegomenon into my research and practice for many years, I later came to find an awareness and application within Śākta theology. As a Śākta theologian, my studies bring me to focus prescriptions from Maha Devī, the Great Goddess.
Within "Instruction in the Yoga of Knowledge," Chapter 4 of The Devī Gītā, The Song of the Goddess: A Translation, Annotation, and Commentary, C. Mackenzie Brown (1998) explores the correspondance between three parts of a syllable and "the three bodies—Gross, Subtle, and Casual—of the Self, with their individual and cosmic counterparts, as well as their correlative states of consciousness" (1998, pp. 156). From the Śākta perspective, the Great Goddess prescribes meditation on her mystic syllable Hrīm for realizing identity of oneself with her own supreme Self.
Three Bodies in Yoga: Sthula, Sukshma, and Karana Sharira || Derived from ancient Vedantic texts, Treya Sharira' or the 'Doctrine of Three Bodies' is one of the fundamental aspects of yoga. Here, we discuss the theory of sthula, sukshma, and karana sharira - the physical, subtle, and causal body.
One may consider the similarities between these two notions of the three bodies, perhaps noticing that the conceptions are of the same realization of esotericism. Thus, I suggest that viewing the causal body as the individual-body self, the subtle body as the social body, and the gross body as the body politic, reveals a deeper awareness of all. In further words, there is a specific consciousness operating within each of soul, corresponding within each association of one's interaction with the grand scheme of things.
In Śākta tradition, along with all Dhrama traditions, there is in-depth esoteric wisdom of the body that may readily correspond with the findings of contemporary anthropology. Furthermore, Abrahamic traditions also recognize a distinction between the three bodies, seeing the social body as a means for offering care when an individual is in need.
In "Doubled in the Darkest Mirror: Practice and the Retold Narrative of the Jewish Burial Society" Chapter 9 of Medicine and the Ethics of Care, Laurie Zoloth (2002) refers to the chevra kadisha, or the Jewish ritual burial society (literally: the "blessed comrades"). "If the language of health care decision making is self, autonomy, and control, then the language of the chevra is other, dependency, and powerlessness. Because death will come to us all, this practice reminds us that, ultimately, we all need each other" (2002, pp. 273). The key here is shifting the genre of the story from medicine to community, as a social body affirms that each will die surrounded by the waiting arms of others.
A social contract is created in which role-specific duties emerge, by framing the performance as chosen, ritualized, and mandatory. "Operating in most Jewish communities, the chevra is a group of women and men selected to prepare the bodies of the dead according to rabbinic tradition, with a liturgy based in the Song of Songs and a practice that forces the abstract discourse of embodiment into intimate, tangible detail" (2002, pp. 271). Ritual acts such as the tachrechim, or sewing burial shrouds amongst those that care for a dead body, reveals how it is the community that shape the practitioners.
In final words, the individual body-self is granted upon a path for a personal spirituality, while a social body is formed upon the recognition of ritual and communion, sharing of spiritual discourse and religious practice.
As a Śākta theologian, I suggest that a focus on mastering ritual and tradition offers more life force to be present within the individual body-self and social body, with less life force of the body politic in primacy—lending an internal spaciousness to have all emotion, outside of an artifact.
Theology upholds this space, as we hold society accountable for accepting the heart. Spirit has a space and is no longer constricted by the ever-changing body politic. There is buffer between the person and society, because of theology.
References:
Brown, C. Mackenzie. (1998). The Devī Gītā, The Song of the Goddess: A Translation, Annotation, and Commentary. State University of New York Press.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Margaret M. Lock. (1990). "The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology." Medical Anthropology Quarterly. New Series, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), pp. 6-41 (36 pages). https://www.jstor.org/stable/648769.
Zoloth, Laurie. (2002). "Doubled in the Darkest Mirror: Practice and the Retold Narrative of the Jewish Burial Society." Medicine and the Ethics of Care.
The spirit has a space and is no longer constricted by the ever-changing body politic. There is buffer between the person and society, because of theology. Thus, I state that religion is essential.
We must consider the origin roots of the word “religion” as well as the formation of theology
There is buffer between the person and society, because of religion — or otherwise because of accepting religious practice as necessary and inevitable, calling it religion. (LAT.)
Karl Marx, to some degree, took away the right for one to declare and form their own religion upon one's own accord. The social theorists have become gray magicians, with mixed messages, like most humans, yet for some have been more amplified than others -- leaving holes in our collective consciousness and harnessing the human psyche in the body politic.
Though Marx did have a realization of the impacts of the Cartesian legacy, sensing how "the mind/body dichotomy and the body alienation charactertistic of contemporary society may also be linked to capitalist modes of production in which manual and mental labors are dividied and ordered into a hierachy. Human labor, thus divided and fragemented, is by Marxist definition "alienated," and is reflected in the marked distoritions of body movement, body imagery, and self-conception" (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 1990, pp. 22).
"Descartes sought to reconcile material body and divine soul by locating the soul in the pineal gland whence it directed the body's movements like an invisible rider on a horse. In this way Descartes, a devout Catholic, was able to preserve the soul as the domain of theology, and to legitmate the body as the domain of science" (ibid.).
The rather artificial separation of mind and body, the so-called Cartesian dualism, freed biology to pursue the kind of radically materilist thinking expressed by the medical student, much to the advantage of the natual and clinical sciences. Howecer, it caused the mind (or soul) to recede to the background of clinical theogy and practice for the next three hundred years" (ibid.).
"The natural/supernatural, real/unreal dichotomy has taken many forms over the course of Westerns history and civilization, but it was the philosopher-mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who most clearly formulated the ideas that are the immediate precursors of contemporary biomedical conceptions of the human organism" (ibid.).
Descartes was determined to hold nothing as true until he had established the grounds of evidence for accepting it as such. The single category to be taken on faith, as it were, was the intuited perception of the body-self, expressed in Descartes's dictum: Cogito, ergo sum--I think, therefore I am. From this intuitive consciousness of his own being, Descartes proceeded to argue the existence of two classes of substance that together constituted the human organism: palpable body and intangible mind" (ibid.).
..."4.41. Before attaining the final absorption, one should contemplate within one's self the trial of three letters known as the sacred syallable of the Goddess, for the sake of meditating on the two meanins of the mantra.
4.42. The letter h is the Gross Body, the letter r is the Subtle Body, the letter ī is the Causal Body. The whole sound hrīm is I myself as the Transcendent Fourth.
4.43. In this manner, recognizing sequentially the triadic elements of the seed mantra contained within the comprehensive whole, the wise person should reflecton the identity of the whole and the parts.
4.44. Prior to the moment of total absorption, while contentrating earnestly in the above manner, with the eyes closed one should then meditated upon me the Goddess, Ruler of the Universe.
First draft:
This topic delves into the impact of theological ideas on social structures and cultural values. Theology has come to form in my consciousness as a traditional means of congregation for study of systems in relation to morality.
Furthermore, by encourage grace and faith to be an intrinsic knowing, members within interfaith and interreligious congregations lend to emotional boundaries within society.
The statement above is my favorite personal belief. Tradition allows healthy emotions. The hard feelings have a place to be expressed; even if not in a public space such as a church or private space such as a chapel, expression is more-or-less encouraged within human culture through religion.
I state that religion is essential. Karl Marx, to some degree, took away the right for one to declare and form their own religion upon one's own accord. The social theorists have become gray magicians, with mixed messages, like most humans, yet for some have been more amplifed than others -- leaving holes in our collective consciousness and harnessing the human psyche in the body politic.
The individual body-self is granted a path for a personal spirituality, while a social body is formed upon the recognition of communion and sharing of spiritual discourse.
Religion offers more life force to be present within the individual body-self and social body, with less life force of the body politic in primacy.
There is buffer between the person and society, because of religion.
Theology upholds this, even upon the humanists, as we hold society accountable for accepting the heart. The spirit has a space and is no longer constricted by the ever-changing body politic.
