Culture & Religion

Can Religion Be Cultured? Can Culture Be Religious?

Religion, the word itself scares most people silly. It is a word that speaks of irrational belief, naïve commitment and pathetic escapism. Religion is associated with boring, stale routine, where human creativity gives way to divine intervention. Religion, for many, is the euphemism for inadequacy, mediocrity and complacency.

Culture, on the other hand, is a word that embraces the finer things in life. It is a word that speaks of artistic accomplishment, literary genius and mind cultivation. Culture is associated with exciting, pulsating wantonness, where the human condition is tuned to perfection and the human consciousness is perfected to a tune.

As the universe’s DNA would have it, the paths of religion and culture do not often cross – and when they do, they usually stare at each other crossly. Therefore, rare indeed is the possibility of jumping the fence dividing the polar opposites – never mind straddling it.

Last week, I had the opportunity of shuttling between the creativity of Yiddish culture and the commitment of Yiddish religion. One day I’m in a shtetl called Kerhonkson (Yiddish in phonetics but English in genetics), the next I’m in place called Crown Heights (English in phonetics but Yiddish in genetics). The dichotomy between the two cannot be lost even on one who speaks no Yiddish:

In Kerhonkson, I was at a Yiddish cultural and folk arts program. It was secularism at its best – or, as the religious would have it, at its worst: choir boys were bowing to the notes of music, fanatics were worshipping the letters of literature, devotees were praying to the strokes of visual arts.

In Crown Heights, I was in a Chassidishe Shul. It was religion at its best – or, as the secular would have it, at its worst: old men in white flowing beards were swaying to and fro, their prayer shawls soaked in tears; people were yelling at each other, a farbengen reaching its zenith; children were pulling on their fathers’ kapotes, begging to go home for kiddush.

Both Kerhonkson and Crown Heights spoke the same language, Yiddish, and played the same songs, Chasidic niggunim, but there was something very different about the two.

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Culture is a body; language – music, literature, art – its limbs. A body is a beautiful thing, to be cherished, cultivated, and challenged. However it is not an end in itself: Culture, like the body it represents, must have a message, a reason, a purpose with which to perpetuate. You don’t think so? Well, just ask the Greeks and Egyptians. (What, they’re nowhere to be found?!)

Have you ever walked in a forest and seen, among the evergreens, a tree whose branches bare (!) no leaves and whose skin has turned a cold gray? That is a body without a soul, a culture without a purpose, a life without meaning.

Of course, the cultured would argue that culture is for culture’s sake alone and does not need a “higher purpose” (higher, that is, than man) with which to make it come alive. But then what happens once the song stops, once the sentence ends, once the art fades, will culture then still continue to live?

It is a beautiful thing words – but even more beautiful is what they say. It is a beautiful thing music – but even more beautiful is what it sings. It is a beautiful thing art – but even more beautiful is what it paints. That’s where religion comes into the picture (or photo if you’re cultured – a la movie vis-à-vis film). If Culture is the messenger then Religion is the message: religion does not replace culture, just like culture shouldn’t replace religion – they should walk hand in hand, one complimenting the other.

A healthy relationship between body and soul is when the body communicates the soul’s message and the soul energizes the body’s communication. So should the relationship between culture and religion be, with culture communicating religion’s message and religion energizing culture’s communication.

The problem of course lies in when one or the other is misused and, thus, abused. When one worships culture as if it were religion or when one treats religion as if it were culture, then both culture and religion become distorted.

This is why many people are “scared silly” (to quote the first paragraph) by religion – the religion they’ve come across is less religion and more culture, that is, less soul and more body. And, this is also why many people see culture as false – the culture they know is devoid of any soul and spirit.

So, yeah, religion ought to be cultured and culture ought to be religious. However, don’t confuse the two words – after all, we wouldn’t want to wear a pair of jeans called “true culture” and go to the doctor for a “throat religion.”