Reading: '"Why Are You Mixing What Cannot Be Mixed?" Shared Devotions in the Monotheisms', by Dionigi Albera

(2008, History and Anthropology, 19, 1, pp.37-59)

A major chunk of this essay is focused on responding to arguments made by R.M. Hayden in his 2002 essay 'Antagonistic tolerance: competitive sharing of religious sites in South Asia and Balkans' (Current Anthropology, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 205–231). Unfortunately, I haven't read this essay, so I don't know how accurate Albera's critique is. So here's an attempt at a third-hand summary: some people argue that if you have a shrine at which people from two different religious traditions worship side by side, then this is evidence of religious tolerance*. Hayden argues that in fact, shared shrines can be vehicles for conflict between the two traditions (he uses the phrases 'competitive sharing' and 'antagonistic tolerance'). For example, shared use of a shrine may be something that happens when one side pragmatically decides that they can't get away with totally repressing the other side's rituals, and so their best bet is just to take control of them themselves (p.39).

Albera thinks that Hayden is overstating his case, to the extent that "syncretism, in his view, is always a more or less disguised form of competition. The tolerance is under no circumstances genuine. [...] From this point of view, even the crossing of the borders between the groups is only tactical ground recognition of another’s domain, a temporary form of compromise tolerated by a weak minority, or accepted by a majority momentarily blocked in its will to dominate. The direction is clear: in the end a group is bound to triumph over the others and to impose its monopoly of the sacred site." (p.39)

Hayden apparently also applies Barth's theories of ethnicity to religion. I assume this means he's arguing that when analysing religions, we should be focusing on the way in which religious groups emically define the borders between themselves and other religions (and asking: under what cirumstances do people try to cross those borders?). This strikes me as a reasonably sensible idea- at least, it seems to work with ethnicity (or at any rate, it seems more productive than, say, trying to make a definitive list of all the key properties of a particular ethnic group). However, Albera argues that it's not necessarily helpful to think of religious groups as having 'borders' in this way (p.39).

Hayden apparently does acknowledge that there are likely to be differences between the way in which ordinary people see the relationship between different religions in their everyday local environment, vs the way in which religious or political leaders talk about these relationships (apparently Nandy called this the distinction between 'religion as faith' and 'religion as ideology', but I'm not convinced I like those terms. 'Ideology' and 'faith' are words that sound conceptually slippery and not especially value-neutral). But Albera thinks Hayden doesn't follow this up enough, leading to the impression that he sees 'Hindus', 'Muslims' etc as undifferentiated blocs (p.39).

Albera also thinks Hayden needs to be clearer about when he's referring to syncretism in the sense that there's one shrine which is used for rituals from multiple religious traditions, or in the sense that the rituals themselves contain elements from more than one tradition (p.39). This seems like an important point. Albera points to Fredrik Hasluck's set of three categories: "conversion, intrusion and identification. The circulation of a series of legends may suggest that a saint belonging to religion A was in fact secretly converted to religion B; that the mausoleum of a saint of religion B also housed the tomb of a saint of religion A; that the holy person of religion A was actually the transfiguration of a saint of religion B." (p.51 in Albera; original reference is Hasluck, F. W. (2000), Christianity and Islam Under the Sultans, ed. Margareth M. Hasluck, The Isis Press, Istanbul (originally published by Clarendon Press, New York, 1929, p.457-8). Albera further stresses that we need to think in terms of "a range that can go from a simple proximity to imitation, borrowing and blending." (p.55)

Albera's decided to illuminate this issue by looking at the Meditteranean. Most people assume that there's a major fault line in this area between Christianity and Islam (cf Huntington's Clash of Civilisations). This view is backed up by obvious examples from places like Kosovo. There's also the fact that both Christianity and Islam are monotheistic and hence relatively exclusivist. Both religions tolerate a certain amount of syncretism between their own rituals and the 'pagan' traditions of convert populations (e.g. by converting formerly worshipped deities into saints), but it's harder to picture a way for either religion to compromise when faced by a rival monotheism (p.40). Having said this, Bahá'í seems to cope ok- but maybe that's a sign that in order to officially syncretise two or more creedal monotheisms, you need to expend a lot of effort on explaining how you intend to integrate their doctrine. Most of the stuff Albera discusses in this essay involves popular religion rather than top-down initiatives (the fact that most Abrahamic syncretisms seem to be local popular worship rather than officially sanctioned stuff may also explain why women often seem to be heavily involved in syncretic worship- see p.52).

There's some evidence for syncretism between Judaism and some early Christian churches (e.g. Christians attending synagogues in Antioch, Thessalonia's Basilica of Saint Anthony attracting Christians, Jews and pagans) (p.41). For some reason, though, later Christians don't seem to have co-worshipped with Jews very much at all- and when they do, Muslims tend to be involved too- e.g. at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. As Albera notes, you'd expect to see more Christian-Muslim syncretism than Christian-Jew or Jew-Muslim even all religions were equally willing to syncretise with each other, purely because the number of Jews in the world is smaller. But this can't be the idea story, because rates of Muslim-Jew syncretism seem relatively high (p.44). There's also the fact that, in general, Islamic nations have been more open to allowing resident communities of religious minorities than Christian nations have been- so the opportunities for closer interactions are higher (p.42).

Having said all this, you still have situations of exclusively Muslim-Christian shared sites, like 15th century Mount Sinai. The Christian pilgrim Felix Fabri records that he and his companions prayed at Sinai chapel in 1483 and found Muslims worshipping in the adjacent mosque. This didn't seem to perturb them, since Fabri calmly notes that “men of all rites and all sects flocked here from all parts of the world” to venerate Moses. However, Fabri further notes that neither Muslims nor Christians would tolerate the presence of Jews at the site (p.45). After the emergence of Islam, churches and mosques sometimes shared the same courtyard (or even the same building- there's evidence that the shift towards more geometric motifs in the mosaics of the Church of St Stephen in Jordan happened so that strongly aniconic Muslims using the building to worship wouldn't be offended by art depicting living beings (p.42).)

Sometimes when historical Muslim writers describe visiting Christian churches, it sounds like they were mainly there as tourists attracted by their hospitality and tranquil gardens. At other times, it sounds like churches represented a kind of forbidden fruit, by offering the opportunity to consume alcohol or "the prospect of establishing relationships with Christian women or with young monks (one of the most famous Muslims poets, Abu Nuwas, who lived between the eighth and the ninth century, sang in his verses of his desire for a young monk)" (p.42). But sometimes they were also drawn to churches for religious reasons- some Muslims attended Christian festivals or even services, worshipped icons and relics, sought healing or made vows.

Random interesting quote: "There is in Algiers, rue Sainte, a small synagogue on an old marabout: when the last Muslim oukil, Sheikh Khider died in the last century, without a successor, he left, by title deed, the local to a rabbi friend, with the clause that Muslims would be allowed to come. The curious fact is that Muslim women continue to come, when a thâleb told them that this could help to cure sterility or avoid repudiation. They revolve seven times around the teba, the podium of the readers of the Torah, which is roughly in the middle of the room and that even during the office, without troubling the assistants and without the latter troubling them." -recorded by Emile Dermenghem, 1954, quoted p.50

"Sometimes homonymy has been the vehicle of assimilation, as in the case of the cult of Saint Thecla in Istanbul, which after the Turkish conquest was replaced by that of Toklu (orDoghlu) Dede (see Hasluck 2000: 66)." (p.51) (quoted because it will amuse Bunny).

A small thing that seemed a bit odd to me- in Albera's conclusion, he makes the offhand remark that "even in their most intransigent constituent—behaviour related to religion—civilizations appear contradictory and inhabited by diversity" (p.54). Is Albera using the word intransigent to mean 'uncompromising'? If so, I'm not sure I understand why he thinks religion is civilisations' most intransigent constituent- there are lots of things civilisations are unwilling to compromise over (e.g. their political and economic systems)- I'm not sure why he seems to be saying that religion is necessarily more fixed and inflexible than anything else.

One other interesting quote: "This inspired the famous observation of Pierre Bayle (1740: 265): “Mohammedans, according to the principles of their faith, are obliged to use violence to destroy other religions, and still they tolerated them for several centuries. Christians have received order to preach and educate, and nevertheless from immemorial time they exterminate by iron and fire those who are not of their religion.” -Pierre Bayle, 1740, from Brunel's Dictionnaire historique et critique (quoted p.56). This strikes me as one of those quotes which are pithy but rather oversimplified- still, it might be interesting to see if there's a proper critique from anyone who knows more about the topic than I do.


* On the surface of things, this seems like a fairly reasonable assumption- I was somewhat confused when Hardacre didn't seem to find it plausible when she was discussing the relationship between Shinto and Buddhist priests at shared shrines in pre-Meiji Japan (she definitely wasn't citing Hayden to support this, because she was writing well before 'Antagonistic tolerance' was published, but she might have been drawing on a similar argument from someone else).

Reading 'Shinto and the State: 1868-1988', Introduction and Chapter 1

(Helen Hardacre, 1989, Princeton: Princeton University Press)


I'm somewhat disappointed by this book. I think that's probably a result of mistaken expectations, though. It would probably be a pretty useful book if you were planning on doing a project on Shinto and had a bunch of other sources, but wanted to check you'd covered all the key events during a certain period. Hardacre also explicitly states that she decided to devote minimal attention to the excitingly-controversial WW2 period, since so much has already been written about it in relation to Shinto. That's a reasonable decision, but the end result was a book which felt quite dry and left me feeling like there were lots of things she'd brought up which I would have liked her to go into more detail about (in particular, the relationship between Shinto and Buddhism).

If I'm reading Hardacre right, then here's a potted summary of Shinto's development over the last couple of centuries. It sounds as though Shinto in the mid-nineteenth century was pretty similar to traditional Chinese polytheism (in the sense that it didn't really exist as a unified entity with its own name or institutions, and ordinary people didn't have any issues about mixing and matching it with Buddhism). At least, they sound pretty similar at a village level- I know virtually nothing about how pre-20th century Chinese religion worked at a government level, so I'm not sure how the comparison holds up in that respect.

Hardacre stresses that up until the late nineteenth-century priests who worshipped the kami (Shinto gods) were markedly low-status compared to Buddhist priests. This was apparently made quite clear by the Japanese system of formal ettiquette (for example, Shinto priests got seated lower than Buddhist clerics at village assemblies- p.15). True, the imperial court patronised both Buddhist and Shinto rituals, but in the Tokugawa era the real power (and hence the money to fund rituals) lay with the Shogunate, who sound as though they didn't hold the kami in particularly high esteem (or at any rate, they don't seem to have stressed the relationship between themselves and the kami in order to legitimate their power, as later Japanese governments have done) (p.11).

Most Shinto shrines were located within Buddhist temples, and only staffed parttime. Shinto priests were also all legally required to register with Buddhist temples and receive Buddhist funeral services when they died. Meanwhile, the kami were referred to as the protectors of Buddhist divinities (and their "phenomenal appearances (suijaku)"- whatever that means), implying that they were lesser beings. Ise (one of the top Shinto shrines) believed it was necessary to chant Buddhist sutras before the kami's altars, so that the kami could attain salvation (which is interesting because it sounds a bit like the way that Jains see the gods as being dependent on the Tirthankars' teachings, since they're otherwise doomed to the cycle of rebirths just like everyone else is). See p.14.

Hardacre remarks that "this situation did not pass entirely without protest, but organised resistance among Shinto priests was virtually unknown before the Meiji Restoration" (p.15). To me, this raises a question: to what extent did Tokugawa Shinto priests actually see this situation as problematic?

Hardacre seems to imply that the average Shinto priest resented being under the thumb of Buddhism and wished that they could operate independently. Obviously Hardacre is an expert on this topic, whereas I've read a grand total of one other book on Shinto (which wasn't primarily focused on Japanese history). So Hardacre's sense of the priests' perspective is going to be much more reliable than mine- I'm just wondering whether the majority of priests necessarily resented the situation. I can imagine a situation where the average Shinto priest saw their lower status as a matter of course (maybe even feeling grateful towards Buddhist temples for being gracious enough to offer their patronage to Shinto shrines). Or maybe you could have a situation where many Shinto priests dreamed of being as high-status as Buddhist priests were- but they mostly aspired to quit their jobs and become Buddhist priests, or something similarly high-status, rather than wishing that their current role could be more prestigious.

I'm having a particularly hard time guessing how Shinto priests felt about the legal requirement that they should have Buddhist funerals. John K. Nelson has given me the impression that Shinto's death taboo renders the concept of Shinto funerals pretty emically problematic (they do happen, but seemingly not that often, even when the deceased was a major patron of a Shinto shrine. See Enduring Identities p.281-2). Under those circumstances, is it possible that most Shinto priests didn't really care what sort of funeral they got (and were happy to delegate the nasty, ritually-impure business of funeral-conducting to someone else)? Again, I'm aware that Hardacre knows more about this topic than I ever will- apart from anything else, there's the fact that greater government support for Shinto would later lead to a brief wave of Shinto priests vandalising Buddhist property, which suggests there must have been some level of latent hostility (see p.63). I just wish she'd go into a bit more detail.

I also have no idea how Buddhist priests felt about Shinto in general- did they see its priests as potential competitors, or as subordinates doing a low-status but necessary job (spiritual janitors, maybe)?

The relationship between Shinto and Buddhism shifted in the Meiji period, due to the influence of a group of nationalist intellectuals known as the National Learning school. They had been around for some time, but the upheaveal of the Meiji period resulted in their radical ideas getting attention from politicians. The National Learning writers believed that Japanese culture needed to be purged of all foreign pollution (including Buddhism, since that had originated outside Japan). The arrival of Perry's fleet in 1853 led some of them to decide that the Japanese people needed to be united under a common ideology- this was the only way to strengthen the nation enough to expel the Western barbarians (p.16-17).

Phase One of Operation Expel The Western Barbarians seems to have involved a lot of fighting fire with fire. The plan basically seems to have been: let's capture Christianity, clone it, drain off all the theological content, and then shove Shinto into the vacant structure, bending it into whatever shape it needs to be in order to fit (the result looking maybe kind of like Krang and his robot suit from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or maybe some sort of cyborg Wicker Man. Whatever the case, it should definitely be drawn by Keith Thompson). This process is apparently known as the Great Promulgation Campaign, which I can only hope sounds catchier in Japanese.

I can't imagine that many religions would survive this process well, but Shinto seems like a particularly stupid choice. The National Learning goal was to end up with a belief system that was very focused on doctrine- specifically, on an integrated set of doctrines under central control, and phrased in such a way as to make them sound militaristic and authoritarian (in the sense of focusing attention on the national government and its Strong Leader). In particular, they were expected to exalt the virtues of Japanese soldiers who had died in war. The priests of this new religion were also expected to adopt a pastoral role, moulding the lives of ordinary Japanese subjects (as well as preaching the standard theology to their congregations).

In other words, Shinto priests were expected to adopt a role which they were almost uniquely ill-suited to. Most of them had very little experience in public speaking, pastoral work, or disseminating doctrine to the public. This was the sort of thing that Buddhist priests specialised in- and Buddhist priests abandoned the Great Promulgation in droves as soon as it became apparent that the endgoal was to render them obsolete (although there were some who stuck around, using their superior preaching experience to subtly insert Buddhist doctrines into campaign sermons and so convert government-backed projects into stealth Buddhist evangelism drives. It didn't help that preachers were expected to fund these programmes themselves- the Buddhist clergy could depend on generous donations from long-standing parishioners, while the smaller Shinto shrines seriously struggled to fund their speakers. See p.45-6).

This is all in addition to the fact that Shinto priests were now suddenly supposed to be actively competing with Buddhists for the right to conduct funerals, and thus were effectively expected to ignore Shinto death taboos in order to perform rituals which many felt were beneath their dignity (although apparently the fact that funerals were a good source of income helped soften the blow for some. See p.47, 35). The general upshot seems to have been that the Campaign got mocked a lot for fermenting religious tension while trying to make Shinto priests do Buddhism's job (p.44). This impression was presumably not improved by bizarre incidents like the one where the Campaign's Great Teaching Institute moved into a building which had previously been a Buddhist temple patronised by the Tokugawa family. For some reason which I'm still struggling to grasp, the installation ceremony involved getting Buddhist priests to do a Shinto ritual while disguised as Shinto priests (using wigs and robes). The Institute itself soon came to be known as the Bureau of Indecision, or the Siesta Office (p.44).

The whole thing seems particularly badly-planned since it doesn't even seem to have made a serious attempt to capitalise on Shinto's existing support base. The Japanese public seems to have viewed Shinto priests as people whose job was performing a set of necessary rituals which required a certain amount of specialist liturgical knowledge. The exact form which these rituals took varied fairly widely from shrine to shrine. If you were really intent on turning Japan into an industrialised authoritarian state, then I'm sure there must have been SOME way to convert these familiar local rituals into a propaganda tool. Instead, Great Promulgation tried to abolish variation in favour of a nationally standardised system which most priests and worshippers seem to have found shallow, dull and confusing.

For example, the new state pantheon emphasised the role of the Three Deities of Creation. Only one of these deities (Amaterasu, in the form of Tenshōdaijin) had any kind of popular following. There was also a kind of official creed, in the form of the Three Great Teachings (which were apparently meant to reassure Buddhist priests that the Campaign had a solid doctrinal basis and hence was worth their participation). The three tenets were:

1. patriotism and respect for the gods
2. "making clear the principles of the Way of Heaven and the Way of Man"
3. reverence for the emperor and obedience towards the imperial court

Which is fair enough, but if you're trying to indoctrinate people en masse, it helps NOT to try using an ideology which has no existing basis in popular thought. This is especially true if you really suck at explaining the ideology to the people who are expected to be propagating it. It doesn't help that the whole philosophical system seems to have boiled down fairly quickly into a list of religious duties for the pious citizen (including exciting responsibilities like paying your taxes, supporting conscription and accepting various aspects of Western culture in the name of "civilisation"). See p.43-4.

As a final added bonus, the Campaign succeeded in pissing off the priests at Izumo shrine (one of the nation's most important Shinto centres) by refusing to include their patron deity in the new core pantheon (as the official god of the underworld). This sparked off a row which split Shinto into factions and ended up encouraging most priests to believe that they should be trying as hard as possible to avoid discussing theology (since it only seemed to cause trouble). In the end, the Great Teaching Institute wussed out of making a formal decision on whether Izumo's god (Ōkuninushi no Mikoto) should be made official lord of the underworld or not. They just announced that Shinto priests above a certain rank were henceforth banned from ministering directly to parishioners. This meant that people like Izumo's top priests were now officially prevented from conducting funerals. The logic was apparently that if they weren't conducting funerals, they'd have no opportunity to make public pronouncements on which deity (if any) was in charge of the underworld. See p.49.

It's apparently incidents like this one which have led some Shinto-supporters to argue that Shinto is not a religion (since they feel that 'religion' implies a focus on doctrine, plus undignified stuff like funerals and prayers for the this-worldly benefit of parishioners). The argument seems to be that Shinto is, by contrast, a system of necessary rituals which transcends mere religion. Priests, it seems, should be striving to limit their performance of mere religious rituals to the bare minimum necessary to secure enough support from parishioners to keep the shrine running and funded (see p.34-5).

This is interesting, because it suggests a worldview very different to the one which drives the tension that sometimes gets described by Western theologians as doctrine vs praxis. It also suggests a big difference from the argument (often voiced by Western humanists) that various East Asian belief systems are not really 'religions' since they don't prioritise god-appeasing rituals clearly enough (thus making them secular philosophies by default). I'll have to see if I can find anything that elaborates further on the issue.