Lesson video

Hello there, my young philosophers, theologians, and social scientists.

My name is Miss Marx, and I'm going to be your Religious Education teacher today.

Today we're going to be tackling one of those big questions that we cover in religious education, what do we mean by religion?

Or when is something religious or not?

We're going to think about that by using a framework from a very important religious scholar, who was called Ninian Smart, and it's a theory that he came up with, with how we can look at and sort of analyze and understand different religions and other worldviews.

And this is all part of our work of thinking about, what is religion?

And does everyone understand it in the same way?

So when you're ready, let's go.

So by the end of this lesson, you'll be able to explain how Ninian Smart's dimension of religion seeks to help us understand religion as a human phenomenon.

So let's start with our key terms.

Dimensions, for Smart, these are the different aspects or parts that make up a religion.

Phenomenon, something which can be seen, observed, or studied.

Phenomenology, the study of what humans experience.

Worldview, the term Ninian Smart preferred to use as to refer to religious and secular ideologies.

So look out for those in today's lesson.

So our lesson today will have two sections, studying religion and Ninian Smart's dimensions.

So let's start with our first section, studying religion.

If Andeep and Laura were studying something, here they are in their science gear, what would you expect them to be doing?

Pause the video and have a think.

You can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

But when you're studying something, you're looking closely at it, aren't you?

And you're looking at every detail on it.

Maybe you're using your eyes, maybe using your different senses.

If Andeep and Laura are studying something, I might expect them to be looking closely at it, measuring it, comparing and contrasting it, spotting how things relate, seeing how things change.

So when you study something, you're really paying close attention to it, aren't you?

What could it mean then to study religion?

You might be sat in a religious studies classroom at the moment.

What does it mean to study religion?

Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, the discipline of religious studies aims to study religion and worldviews in a similar way, through observing and seeing what we class as religion or worldviews.

Religions can be studied by seeing how people practice them, hearing about the impact religion has on believers, noticing how religions relate and may change over time.

These are all different ways that we could study religion.

Someone who's a very important scholar in religious studies is Ninian Smart.

He was the one who first developed a Department of Religious Studies at Lancaster University in 1967.

Ninian Smart was an important scholar of religion who helped to establish religious studies as its own discipline in academia.

Before Smart's time at university, people usually studied religion as part of history, theology, or philosophy courses.

Smart introduced a new way of doing this as the study of religion with its own right.

Disciplines like theology, philosophy, and history were concerned with the truth of religious claims, whether a story was historically accurate.

Were the claims about God and the afterlife true, or could they be argued to be?

Ninian Smart introduced a new approach, he used the scientific idea of methodological agnosticism.

So not sort of deciding whether it's true or not, or right or wrong, but just taking it as it is.

You study the religion or worldview in its own right.

And he also introduced the term worldview.

In religious studies, the scholar considered the importance of the actions and the stories to the believers themselves.

What mattered to Smart was not if the claims made in the religion or worldview were true, but what impact these had on the believer.

And so, we can kind of summarize Smart's perspective by saying, when we study religion, we should put our own judgements about the claims of those religions to one side and focus more on the experiences of the people taking part.

So we have to decide if you think it's true or not in order to study it, that's not the reason why we're studying.

We're studying to know what it matters to the person who's experiencing and part of that religion or worldview.

Let's do a quick check before we move on.

Which of these disciplines did Ninian Smart introduce to the academic community?

Philosophy, religious education, religious studies, or theology?

Which one was it?

Pause the video and have a go, we'll see what you come up with in a moment.

Well done, it was religious studies.

So Ninian Smart was interested in the phenomena of religion.

This means the way that worldviews and religions appear in the world.

What can we see?

How are they experienced by the senses?

Phenomena means how they're experienced by the senses.

And here we've got them, hearing, smell, sight, touch, and taste, and what we can know through using those senses.

How can religions and worldviews be seen, heard, touched, tasted, and felt?

The word phenomenology comes from ancient Greek, phenomenon and ology.

So phenomenon means that which appears, something which appears, a phenomenon.

Sometimes people say, "Oh, it was a strange phenomenon.

It was a weird thing that happened.

" So something which appears.

And ology comes from logia, meaning reasoning.

And we've got biology, psychology, sociology, theology.

So it's the study of.

So phenomenologists then aim to describe things as they appear, and have a focus on the lived experience of a person.

Ninian Smart was a phenomenologist of religion.

Let's look at a case study to understand.

We could look at an example of a Shabbat meal of a Jewish family, and here we've got the Shabbat meal happening.

What are the different experiences that Jews may have when taking part in a Shabbat meal?

Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, we could have eating food, drinking wine, feeling connected, feeling calm and peaceful, listening to scripture and prayers.

The light and the warmth of the candles, the smell of the food as well.

So these are all senses and things that are happening there and then for the people in that moment, experiencing that moment together.

As a phenomenologist, Ninian Smart would focus on those things and not be focusing on the historical truth of any scripture that's read.

Okay, we're gonna read a piece of the Torah.

Did it really happen?

The correct way to practice Shabbat.

Are this family doing it right?

Is that other family doing it better?

Is this correct?

The question of God's existence, did God command people to do this or not?

They are not things that phenomenologists would be necessarily interested in for their approach to studying religion.

Ninian Smart is taking them experiencing that meal together, and what is going on for them in that moment, using that methodological agnosticism that we talked about earlier.

In religious studies today, we will use other disciplines of philosophy and theology which will help us answer some of these questions.

But we're really thinking about Ninian Smart's dimensions today, and how that isn't the focus of what he was trying to do with religious studies there.

These questions could be addressed more in terms of theology and in terms of philosophy.

Let's do a quick check before we move on.

Which of these questions would Ninian Smart be most interested in when studying religion or worldviews, remembering he's a phenomenologist of religion?

A, are the religious stories historically accurate?

B, are the claims about God true?

C, are the religious believers experiencing something?

D, are the religious believers following the religion correctly?

Which of these would he be most interested in?

Pause the video and have a think, and we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, C, and the word there, experience, helps us remember experience, something happening, a phenomenon, phenomenology.

And that idea of seeing what they are experiencing, or knowing how they are experiencing the moment themselves rather than these other questions, well done.

Let's do a practice task to see what we've learned.

Consider the religions and worldviews you've already studied or that you know about.

What features or characteristics that we find in many religions or worldviews would a phenomenologist be most interested in studying?

An example might be songs, prayers, or chants.

Think of at least four different features, and create a mind map to show your ideas.

What things would a phenomenologist be interested in?

You could think about the five senses.

Think about the Shabbat meal example that we had earlier.

Create a mind map to show your ideas.

You could work with somebody close to you or work on your own.

Pause the video and have a go, we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, some great thinking.

So your mind map might look like the following.

Phenomenologists of religion might be interested in rites of passage.

So that might be things like christenings, bar mitzvahs, funerals, marriages.

Acts of worship, prayer, or meditation, songs, poetry, symbols, and art.

Religious experiences of believers.

Experiences of religious innovators, so those people who have kind of maybe have those messages from God about starting a new religion.

Important stories in the religion or worldview.

So these are all things that might really important to a believer, or someone who's experiencing the religion themselves.

A phenomenologist would be particularly interested in those, well done.

So onto our second section then, Ninian Smart's dimensions.

So now that we've heard about Ninian Smart's kind of perspective and his view, we can look at the tool that he came up with to help us look at religion following that perspective.

What's important to note is that he wasn't aiming to define what religion is.

He's not trying to say this or that isn't religious, he's almost like putting that to one side.

What he wanted to do was to provide a tool for how we can study religion and worldviews, and not necessarily have to define if they're religious or not.

But they are things that we can study and look at, and perhaps see some patterns and similarities.

So, for example, "If you were to ask me," he says, "What is religion?

" "I would say go and see," rather than decide on a definition, go and have a look and see what religious people are doing, and what do they experience as part of their religion.

"There are things which religions and worldviews have in common, and I see this as family resemblances rather than being exactly the same as each other.

" So here I've got a picture of a family to remind us of that.

An example of family resemblances could be prayer across religions.

So we could say, not all prayer is identical across religions, but sometimes there are these similarities.

What's similar between these images?

Here we've got Muslim prayer, Jewish prayer, and Sikh prayer.

What could we say is kind of similar between the three, to help us see that they're all kind of forms of religious prayer then?

Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well done, we could talk about bowing or kneeling, or having your head lowered, or showing some kind of submission to something as a family resemblance.

Even though they might be saying different things, or facing different directions, or doing different actions, there's some family resemblances between them.

Can you think of any other examples like that across different religions and worldview?

Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, to help the scholar of religion to classify these different experiences and aspects of religion and worldviews, like we've just looked at prayer as one example, Smart set out seven dimensions of religion.

Actually, his writing evolved over time.

So at some point, there was six, or sometimes there was an eighth one that was added.

But generally, people accept that he set out seven dimensions of religion.

So we're gonna cover those together.

They were ritual, mythological, doctrinal, ethical, social, experiential, and material.

So these are the seven dimensions, or aspects that he said religions and worldviews will each have.

To different extents, some might have stronger emphasis on one rather than another.

But he said that they will all have kind of a part of this within them.

Could you think of any dimensions that could be missing from this group?

So I said that sometimes, particularly later in his life, he wrote about there being eight, there was an eighth one.

Could you think of that might be, or what is missing?

Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Towards the end of his life, Smart added an eighth dimension, which was political, because of the influence over politics to do with religion and worldviews.

But we don't always have to necessarily include that when we're talking about his dimensions.

So we'll stick to the seven.

Not all religions have the same dimensions to the same extent or in the same way.

Remember, we're talking about family resemblances, not identical carbon copies of religions, but they will all have some aspect of them according to Ninian Smart.

Let's do a quick check before we move on.

Ninian Smart wanted to define what religion is through his seven dimensions of religion.

Is that true or false?

Pause the video and have a go, we'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, it was false, wasn't it?

But why?

Because Ninian Smart was not hoping to define religion, but help the observer gather information about religion.

His goal wasn't to define what religion is or isn't, but just help us to gather and understand and classify and study religion as part of religious studies, well done.

So let's have a look at these different dimensions in more detail then.

Ritual, this dimension refers to ceremonies and outward behaviors connected to a spiritual realm.

They might be simple or complex, and they can be secular rituals too.

And they all have an inner and outer element to them.

So it's some kind of action, not just like a daily normal action, something special.

It could be with other people, it could be alone.

And it's connecting people to something greater and bigger than themselves.

So an example could be a christening as a ritual.

That happens where, okay, we might bath our babies all the time, but a christening within the church has a different spiritual significance to do with the connection of that baby to everlasting life and their Christianity.

Can you think of any other examples of rituals that connect people to the inner and outer actions, as well as perhaps the spiritual realm or something bigger than or beyond themselves?

Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Then we have mythological.

Now, this refers to stories which may or may not be historically true.

And no judgment is made about this, remember.

That's not the aim of what these dimensions are for.

But the stories symbolize the invisible world, and they're theologically significant.

They might be overtly religious stories about God, as an example, but they're not necessarily.

They're stories that have got some kind of significance to the believer.

So, for example, we could have stories to do with Lord Krishna within the Hindu Dharma.

So stories that have this kind of significance and importance to the believer have this, we this mythological aspect within religion.

Can you think of any more examples?

Pause the video and talk to the person next to you, or you can talk to me.

The third dimension we can think about is doctrinal.

Now, these are the official teachings or systems within a religion or worldview.

So this is what the person may be expected to believe, or the different teachings that there are, the doctrines.

They give clear guidance and systems for how to follow the religion and worldview.

So it's not necessarily the ethics of like what's right and wrong behaviors, 'cause we have got an ethical aspect as well.

It's more to do with how to follow the religion, what it means to be part of the religion, what do we do as part of this religion together?

So, for example, a doctrine could be that within Islam, the Quran is generally believed to be the unaltered, inerrant words of Allah, and that they can be followed as part of the life as a Muslim.

And here we've got a picture of some people reading the Quran together.

Can you think of any other examples of doctrines, or kind of really key teachings that you would find within religions and worldviews?

Pause the video and have a think, and you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

So I said earlier that doctrinal was not ethical.

So what is the ethical dimension then?

These are the moral principles and codes of behavior.

They can then translate into laws and attitudes in a society if that religion or worldview has had a big influence.

But not necessarily, it could just be within that religious group in that community.

The codes of how to behave and what to do, what is right and wrong?

So an example could be the idea within Sikhi, of caring for the vulnerable and to have equality.

That's a very strong ethical teaching within Sikhi.

We've got here Sikhi sewa, where people are caring for one another.

Can you think of any more examples of ethical principles or teachings within a religion or worldview?

Pause the video and have a think, you can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

And then we have the social aspect or dimension.

Religion and worldviews have a social, communal aspect.

They're not just about individuals, it's not just about a person on their own.

There's ways of them connecting with other people within it.

So we could have, for example, here we've got some pagans gathering together for the summer solstice at Stonehenge, coming together, celebrating and thinking about and sharing this moment together within their religion or worldview.

Can you think of any more other examples of how religions and worldviews have that social aspect?

Pause the video and have a think.

You can talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Another dimension is experiential.

So this is where people have powerful experiences.

It could be in the origin of the religion or worldview.

So it could be thinking back to the experience that somebody had.

Or it could be in the lives of the believers today.

They experience something together today connected to their religion or worldview.

So here I've got the example of charismatic worship within Christianity, where you might feel something as you're praying.

So that experience side of the religion or worldview.

Can you think of any other examples like that?

It could be the story of the origin of a religion, or it could be experiences that people have sort of today.

Pause the video and have a think, and can you talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Finally, we have this dimension.

Originally there was six and then this one was added on.

And then, we know that towards the end of his life, he added an eighth one.

So this was the final one that Smart added, which was material.

So this was added by Smart, and refers to the artifacts and objects which help followers of that religion to practice it or are connecting people to that worldview.

And here I've got an example of objects that are used for Buddhist puja.

But you could have all sorts of different kind of artifacts, symbols, art which is used within those religion and worldviews to help kind of focus people and draw them in.

Can you think of any other examples?

Pause the video and talk to the person next to you, or talk to me.

Let's do a quick check before we move on.

Which of the following dimensions was added last by Ninian Smart?

Was it doctrinal, material, mythological, or social?

Pause the video, have a go, and we'll see what you come up with in a moment.

Well done, it was material.

And now onto a practice task to see what we've learned.

Laura and Andeep, who were studying something at the start of our lesson, want to use Ninian Smart's dimensions to study a religion or worldview.

What questions should they ask?

And where could they find the answers?

Record your ideas and be ready to feedback to class, and you might want to work as a pair for doing this.

Remember the seven dimensions are ritual, mythological, doctrinal, ethical, social, experiential, and material.

So what questions should they ask?

And where could they look for the answers?

You don't need to worry too much right now about a specific religion or worldview.

But if they were asking these questions, what should they ask?

And where could they go for the answers?

You might like to record your ideas in a table like this.

So here I've got the dimensions down one side, and then questions to ask of where to look.

And I've done the first one for you.

Ritual, what special actions are there?

Where could they look?

They could watch a religious festival.

So you don't have to specify a religion here, but this could be for all different religions and worldviews.

What questions could they ask?

And where could they look?

Pause the video and have a go, and we'll see what you come up with in a moment.

Well done, some great thinking there.

Your answer may have included the following ideas.

So I did the first one for you.

Ritual, we could ask, what special actions are there?

And watch a religious festival.

There'll be lots of special actions in a religious festival, won't there?

Mythological, what important stories are there?

We could look by reading the sacred text.

Doctrinal, what important teachings are there?

We could read a statement of faith or a creed.

Ethical, what codes for behavior are there?

We could see how the community guides one another, and what advice they give for different actions.

Social, what community activities are there?

We could visit a place of worship or look at like, on their website, the different sort of things that happen there for the community.

Experiential, what feelings do believers have?

We could listen to a personal testimony of someone, maybe of someone who's converted into that religion.

How did it feel?

And material, what special objects are there?

We might see the religious clothing that somebody wears.

Or, again, we could watch somebody pray and see if there's special objects that they use.

That would help us to be really good phenomenologists of religion.

So Ninian Smart's dimensions, let's summarize everything we've learned today.

Ninian Smart introduced the discipline of religious studies to academia.

He had a phenomenological approach to religion and worldviews, taking them as they appear.

He focused on the experience of the believer.

Rather than define religion, he developed different dimensions to help someone study religion and see family resemblances between them.

The dimensions were originally ritual, mythological, doctrinal, ethical, social, and experiential.

And Smart later added a seventh, material.

So well done for your hard work today.

And I hope to see you again soon, bye-bye.