Fruitful Conversations in Religion, Culture, and Teaching
Maya graduated from Elizabethtown College in May and concluded her duties as STS Production Assistant. On Monday she'll being a new chapter as a newsroom intern at the renown Philadelphia public radio station, WHYY.
Indeed, the comparative method has long been the preferred tool of those seeking to prove the similarity—and especially the equality—of religions across time and space. That agenda, however, has not always been successful and has at times engendered ironically problematic scholarship.
Because portions of the world developed differently due to histories and geography unique to their specific region, they in turn cultivate traditions organic to the heritage of their area—they develop a culture. It is this culture from which all traditions of a given region are derived, including particular rituals relating to as well as the practice of specific forms of spiritual maintenance. From this culture, ethnic identities manifest symbiotically, coexisting in the continuation and evolution of a society’s cultural climate.
The drastic reversal of many essential elements of Maoism by Deng Xiaoping indicates that in order to preserve the very survival of the Party, the founding principle, as sacred as Maoism, can be rejected. In this sense, Maoism was treated in a transactional way, so much so that once its utility ceased to exist, it was immediately thrown away.
In his 1974 essay, ""One of the Many Faces of China: Maoism as a Quasi-Religion," Joseph M. Kitagawa acknowledges Chairman Mao’s movement to create a new culture as “Maoism.” Instead of calling this movement a “religion,” he refers to Maoism as a “quasi-religion.” In doing so, he attempts to avoid the clashing reactions that often comes along with referring to a movement as a religion. Yet, viewing the development of Maoism in terms of the sociology of religion can help us understand the way it has mapped the culture, ethnicity, and gender of today’s China.
