Riflessioni antropologiche sulla religione - Some anthropological reflections on religion

A series of general, theoretical and methodological reflections on the different forms of religious ideas and practices diffused among all human cultures is here proposed from an anthropological point of view. The first step is based on the consideration that the most diffused idea within very different social contexts is that of the existence of spiritual not-human invisible beings, capable of influencing the lives of the humans, if addressed in certain forms and in certain times. A common character of the religious ideas (in particular within the religious systems of the three monotheisms) is that they do not accept a normal and ordinary way of confutation and critical discussion about the principles and central ideas. They show a case of undisputable statements on reality and are founded on a trust in certain ideas and beliefs received from others, respected person or sacred texts, without a particular sensibility to accept the recourse to empirical evidences. Their principal concern is about some “elementary aspects of human life”, normally impossible to be controlled by the humans in a technical and operational way. The fundamental methodological aspect to be taken into consideration is that the religious ideas and practices have to be studied historically, because they are connected with concrete and historical problems of the human societies that produced them, and that they change continually in time, owing to different circumstances. The comparative method is another indispensable instrument for the study of the religious phenomena; every religious system has to be examined in the context of the numerous analogies and differences existing between the various societies of men living in the same and in different times, which have been continually in contact among them, which generated influences and reciprocal loans. On a more general level, it appears necessary, for the theoretical and comparative study of religious phenomena, to criticize and put on discussion the same religious system existing within the culture of the student of religious ideas and actions. A sort of “religious relativism” appears then to be necessary. In the case of Christianity in particular, it appears necessary to reconstruct carefully the ancient and recent history of Christian religion, with all its transformations, in order to get a sufficient distance from the implicit influences of that very complex cultural-religious system, which could produce a sort of deformation in the process of understanding and interpretation of the religious ideas of the others. The last part of the essay is dedicated to a presentation of an extended text on religious ideas and shamanism, collected among the Shuar Indians of Ecuadorian Amazon, to which the general and methodological suggestions and the reflections presented above have been applied