Name: Why Do We Still Perceive All Religions Through a Christian Lens? An Alternative Approach to Understanding Religion
Date: Tuesday, October 30
Time: 5:00pm – 6:30pm
Location: Coach House, Green College (6201 Cecil Green Park Road, UBC)
Description: The comparative study of religion begins with Jesuit missionaries at the end of the 16th century and in North America until the mid-1960s was primarily taught in Christian seminaries. Hence, it is not surprising that all religions tend to be understood on the Christian model. Thus the religions of large parts of the world—examples being Chinese Religion and Native American religions—are not accorded recognition by the Canadian government. Even contemporary cognitive and evolutionary studies of religion are skewed by these ethnocentric blinders. This talk will begin with laying out the parameters of the Christian model of religion and point out that virtually none of them apply to any other religion. The talk will then move to laying out the parameters of a hitherto unrecognized religious construct that begins with the horticultural revolution and continues today in virtually all religious traditions outside of the far north unchanged by the monotheistic religious complex and/or Western colonialism.
Ticketing: FREE
Open to Public, Anyone broadly Interested in Religion, History, and Society
