Speaking and Listening in Religion

Ownership is a really crucial aspect particularly in religion, and I've blogged about this before. How are we able to take large, powerful, doctrine- and scripture- and prophet- based religions and make them our own? Faith is a deeply personal thing, but religion as a whole seems ironically unipersonal. It is an organization, in essence. A business.

I appreciated what Harding mentioned in relation to this concept about the dialogue of the speaker being internalized by that of the listener. It is an interesting concept. When someone is listening to and analyzing and hearing something, they are in the process of being converted. They take the words and ideas of someone else and turn them over in their minds. However at this point, they are still the words and ideas of someone else. The key point in making the religion their own, however, comes when they begin to take these ideas and words and beliefs and speak them themselves. Their words and ideas become the words and the ideas of the person that was the speaker prior. This helps each person to feel a sense of ownership over ideas that may be universal in a particular religion. When we are able to change our inner voice, we identify more deeply and profoundly with whatever it is we are converting to.

I was also interested by the concept that one cannot passively observe and analyze a religious experience. As Harding said, she could not expect to be able to go in and immerse herself in this religious culture, but keep her thoughts and feelings and ideas separate. As humans, we become involved no matter how much we try to keep ourselves away. I think this is an important aspect of anthropology. We cannot expect to conduct research and learn, without addressing the effect our subject matter will have on us. And I would argue that this isn't something we should avoid. We are human and prone to feel and relate and be changed. It adds a personal and honest element to the research. Instead of trying to stay detached from the research, we should acknowledge the effect it has on us and try to understand why.