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Deep Religion

Unless you're new to my posts, you've probably already figured out that I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a life-long Mormon, I've spent a lot of time thinking and learning about the teachings of my church. I've learned that some stuff isn't real stuff but cultural stuff (e.g. having to wear a white shirt to Sunday meetings; caffeine isn't the thing that's forbidden in the Word of Wisdom). I've also learned some cool stuff that is real stuff (e.g. God's love for all His children; the grace of Christ is monumental and beyond capacious). But one thing that I never really learned about in official Church settings (General Conferences, Sunday Schools, Institute/Seminary classes) was the broadness of religious thought that the world has yielded. Despite being awash in my religion, I've never gone deeply into religions.

There's an explanation for this, of course--plenty of them. One is the fact that Mormon Sunday meetings are designed to foster and discuss, well, Mormon theology. I don't go to a math class and then bemoan the paucity of poetry. (Okay, yes, I do, but I think the point stands.) Sure, there may be one day during the year when, for a particular, instructive purpose, a math teacher will use the metrical structure of a good poem to help students understand a particular math concept. But it's used as an example and as a specific lesson; it's not the primary purpose of the class.

Another is the idea that those who teach Sunday School aren't scholars of, well, anything Church related, really. That's the whole concept of a lay clergy--from the bishop at the top on down, no one in a Mormon ward is called to do Church work professionally.* While there can be cross-over (a coworker of mine, who studied Early Christianity in university, has training and expertise on New Testament teachings), the person teaching about religion on Sunday is selling insurance on Monday. So I don't expect a diverse, in-depth lecture on areas where Buddhism and Mormonism cross-pollinate from the IT administrator who's been asked to teach a Sunday School lesson.

So I'm not blaming the Church for the dearth of religious knowledge that I've been given. It's not their job to teach me about the diversity of belief in the world. That's my job.

Lately, I've been listening to a book called Genghis Khan and the Quest for God, which, aside from having a title that sounds like a rejected Harry Potter rip-off, is a fascinating look at how the Mongols perceived religion, absorbed it, and tolerated it. I'm not finished listening to it, but the first four hours or so have been very interesting. I'm learning a lot about a portion of the world that I tend to neglect (for a number of reasons, not the least of which because I don't teach either this time period or this section of the planet in my world history class, focusing as I do on the European experience), and I can't get over the inventive, fulfilling ways in which other religious worship.

I mean, I'm familiar with the Big Three (or Four, if Mormonism really is a fourth Abrahamic religion) of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I have a working knowledge of them, and though there are plenty of gaps in my Jewish and Islamic understandings (I've a pretty firm grasp on a good swath of Christianity), I feel comfortable discussing them. Much of what I learn about the Big Three is a refinement of previous knowledge, rather than gaining anything new.

But Asian ideas and religions are quite different for me, and I don't have equal interest in the sundry types. For example, Hinduism has never really tugged for my attention, but Buddhism and Taoism are constant, returning refrains in my thinking. So as Weatherford continues explaining how Genghis Khan's religion--and his response to the many different religions he encountered--I'm struck again and again by the worthwhile diversity of worship.

For example, I had never head of Manichaeism before reading this book, nor some of the other smaller religions and beliefs that Genghis subsumed, destroyed, or absorbed. The earlier beliefs of the Mongols, before they were codified under Genghis Khan's rule, is also quite interesting.

This kind of study--stuff that's outside of the mainstream, that's been suppressed, censored, or persecuted into extinction--feels like some of the truest parts of history to me. Not because the teachings are necessarily true, True, or truer than what I have, but because it feels intensely human. Describing the world, understanding our place in it, being a part of the larger, greater whole of existence, is something that reverberates through humanity. Whether science explains it, gods do, or a tradition unlike any other, there's a unity in desire to comprehend more that makes me feel closer to my sister and brothers of other times and other places.

That's what I mean when I say "deep religion".



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* The Church, as a bureaucratic entity and as a business, has employees. Seminary and Institute teachers are exceptions to what I'm talking about above, as well as BYU religious professors. I'm talking about the local, ward-level kind of organization. 

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