At Home in The World

Rationality, Belief

King criticizes the impulse to “reduce” religion to political, sociological or other dimensions, or to “reduce” such forces to religion (13-14). Discuss his argument. Are you convinced that this is a problem? What might be an alternative approach?


King writes that “one consequence of the modern distinction between the spheres of religion and politics has been to foster a suspicion among Westerners that any linkage of the two realms is an example of a ‘merely rhetorical’ use of religious discourse to mask some underlying political, ideological or ‘worldly’ intention” (13). King advances the example of the Hindu doctrine of karma as promulgated by elite brahmans in order to bolster his claim. The brahmans are understood to act under social and political pressures (in hopes of maintaining their privileged social and political status) rather than by actual religious convictions, which, according to King, are made alien to the ‘public’ realm of political and social authority, relegated to the realm of the ‘private’. King argues that religious convictions and pressures are valid in their own right, and do in fact exist and exert influence in the public sphere, and therefore need not be construed as masquerading for political (and not religious) agendas. For King, the religious and the political are not separate realms in our public reality (14), and he adamantly rejects the “Enlightenment-born” bifurcation of religion and politics. However, assuming that we do in fact suffer from this tendency to reduce bona fide religious impulse to political plotting, and assuming that we become aware of this, and treat the previously-political motivation as in fact a religious one, are we better off? What is gained here?

I am trying to tackle King’s article, but admittedly I am not sure that I possess a firm enough grasp on the material to competently respond. I write now more for teasing out my own thoughts. Bear with me while I inflict the thrust of my mental disentangling upon you the reader. This article, for me, is centered upon King’s primary aim to shed light on the extent to which the mystical is in fact political. He wishes to do away with what he sees as a synthetic veil flimsily partitioning the ‘private’ and the ‘public’ domains insofar as mystical experiencing is concerned. So, for King, before we can even tackle the question of what is mysticism, we must broach the topic of “what is the agenda of power underlying a particular characterization of mysticism?” (9). I certainly concede that the acceptance of various brands of mystical experiences as valid necessarily relates to the extent to which those experiences were compatible with the authorities deeming them valid. So, through this lens, certainly “defining mysticism is a way of defining power”. The mystical, then, as King argues, cannot be treated as uninvolved with the political.

However, perhaps it is my own naïveté on such matters, but is there no mystical independent of the political? To draw upon what I see as a parallel in Christianity, there are gospels which were admitted into the Christian bible, and others which remain apocryphal, so, their revelatory or testimonial status is intimately ties, and dependent upon, the political authorities at work. However, is there not a dimension to these texts (whether admitted into the cannon, or rejected) which renders them valid or invalid, authentic or inauthentic in and of their own right regardless of the political dimension at play? To return to mystical experiencing, does it not possess a certain self-definition independent of the political sphere with which it is entangled? King appears to be arguing that mysticism has indeed been defined, articulated and condoned by political authorities, but surely such ‘definitions’ are political ones, and need not trespass upon the experience itself, indeed need not intrinsically ‘define’ these experiences. One is the outer core definition; the other is the inner experience. However, this appears to be the very dichotomy against which King advocates. Or is it? The inner experience may in fact hold sway in the political arena, but my point is that it need not be defined by that arena, or rather, any definition provided in that arena could not measure or ‘define’ the experience itself. On this basis, the impulse in King’s work, i.e., to expose the extent to which the religious and the political are forever mated, does not hold much appeal for me. In all fairness, however, I have never been interested in politics in the least.

I am nevertheless intrigued by the Enlightenment-born dichotomy King discusses (13). There is a peculiar divide between the realm of science and that of religion that, as King advances, rests upon the extent to which science (and philosophy) may be articulated ‘objectively’, oriented towards the empirical, quantifiable, and demonstrable, poised to be shared with others in society. Then there is the inexplicable, “irrational” internal private impulse towards religion. This distinction reminds me Tagore’s novel “The Home and The World” set in 19th century colonial Bengal. There is much food for thought in this work, but I draw upon it because the aforementioned parallel is one of its running themes: the husband acts in the ‘world’ while the wife exerts authority in the ‘home’. The world is the colonized India, where science and social progress reign supreme, a public realm of secular western ideals. The home, on the other hand, is the hearth of the country, the private realm remaining impervious to colonization, where language, culture, and religion privately endure. Mother India finds solace from her British parasites in the sanctum of each Indian home. The man wears a suit, the woman wears a sari. This fits all too well with the Public-Private Enlightenment dichotomies advanced by King on p 13.

King seems to be saying that the distinction between Home and World is artificial, and in fact, the man who goes out into the public spheres often draws from the impulses and sympathies born of his alter-ego, the feminine, intuitive, religious, sacred convictions within him. For him to draw upon his religiosity, and thus liberate it from what King paints as a marginalized status in post-enlightenment secular society, he exemplifies the extent to which religion is at work in the political domain. But, again, I fail to see how this helps us understand religion in the absence of political exertion. We see the ‘home’ aspect at work in the ‘world’, but what is it like in its own state, at home? Surely we ought not to ‘reduce’ the religious to the sociopolitical, but may be not examine it independent of the sociopolitical?