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“Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.”
–Spock, “Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country”

Coleman’s articles raise the issue of competing systems of belief and education. How do you study or even discuss a group that has a completely different system of truth validation? Is there a balance between relativism and absolutism? Coleman is, in a way, trying to justify studying a group that most scholars view as extreme and anti-rational. He argues that perhaps the greatest reason surrounding the negative view of such research is the geographical closeness of the group. The idea that this group is, in a loose sense, a cultural part of the home “world” of the anthropologist makes it a problematic object of study.

My issue with Coleman’s ideas, and thus the topic I want to discuss, stems from this passage:

“Stewart (2001:327) asks how one can reveal the mystical secrets of ‘their’ religion if one neither believes in those secrets nor in the mystical power of any faith. I confess that I do not feel this query gets at the heart of the problem. Why should we assume in rather liberal Protestant fashion that our own forms of inner mystical experience somehow give us access to theirs? Such an argument falls into the trap of assuming that we are all potentially seekers in our different ways after the same ineffable Truth (McCutcheon 1997).” (Coleman, “Abominations of Anthropology”, 42)

More important to Coleman is another perspective explored by Stewart, concerning whether it is “alright” to be initiated into a religion as long as you never really believe in it or renounce the beliefs at the end. Now I understand that these two questions/perspectives are different ways of approaching a similar problem, but while the second question may seem more relevant to Coleman the first question seems more important from a philosophical standpoint. Firstly, although I am not familiar with Stewart, I loosely interpret his question as asking whether or not a scholar can fully understand and thus explain a religion if he/she is not religious. (I use religion instead of mysticism, but substituting mysticism for religion would produce an equally valid argument.) Implicit within this position is the idea that there is something special about religious belief, a “secret” way of knowing something. It therefore seems valid to question whether an individual who is not an initiate into one of these “secrets” can represent the religion he/she is studying. (This seems to be a twist on the insider/outsider approach that people have been talking about.) I disagree that this is a slippery slope into extreme Absolutism. Positing that there is a mode of thought that is unique to religion does not imply that all religions share a common goal and are seeking the same Truth. For example, analogously, just because all philosophers use a special mode of thought, speculative, analytical inquiry, this does not mean that all philosophers are seeking the same Truth.

Jumping now to Coleman’s preferred question of whether it is ethically and psychologically acceptable to take on the role of an initiate, to become an actor, it seems that this question is inherently burdened with the ideas from the first question. (Can merely acting the parts, going through the motions without belief, really explain the religion to the scholar?) In order to discuss this second question on its own I want to bring in two more quotes. First, Coleman quotes Hastrup just before presenting Stewart’s two questions: “In anthropology, the claim to knowledge remains based in a personal experience.” (Coleman, “Abominations of Anthropology”, p. 42) And secondly, he says this in relation to his and by association secular academia’s perspective and the perspective of the pastor of Word of Life: “However, we simply cannot assume that engagement in ‘conversation’ implies common understanding of the rules and meanings of what is going on.” (Coleman, “Abominations of Anthropology”, p. 45) Because Coleman’s subjects are a part of his society, not a geographically distinct other, it is difficult to adopt the role of the initiate. This is partly due to the fact that the group in question is familiar with the various academic disciplines and has created its own method of argumentation in dealing with them. So, if the anthropologist’s claim to knowledge is personal experience, then this study radically changes the nature of the anthropologist’s experience. The systems of thought used by both parties must be questioned. The example that comes to mind for me is the arguments about miracles given by al-Ghazali and David Hume. While there is no historical connection between the two they both used the same premises of skepticism to prove opposite positions, Ghazali for and Hume against miracles. I bring this up because it raises the question of the role of belief. Can belief shape logic? If the anthropologist is an actor, one without belief in the tenets of the subject he/she is studying, does this shape the conclusions he/she will reach? Implicitly this is asking whether there is a component to religion that can only be understood by the practitioner, and this component then adds wisdom to logic. (Belief can make a Ghazali instead of a Hume?) It would seem then that the anthropologist can never fully understand/explain the essential nature of the religious group he/she is studying. But perhaps he/she can come closer to understanding it if, like Stewart suggests, he/she is a practitioner of another religion? But can the academic actually explain the essence of belief and faith?