Lesson video

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

My name is Ms. Marx, and I'm going to be your religious education teacher today.

Today, we're going to be thinking about the work of Ninian Smart and his dimensions of religion that he came up with as a way of understanding and analyzing religion and non-religious or non-theistic worldviews.

And we're going to think about whether it really is a helpful or not tool for using when we're studying religion because there are different views about this.

So by the end of the lesson, hopefully you will come to your own conclusion.

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

So by the end of this lesson, you'll be able to evaluate the effectiveness and limitations of Ninian Smart's dimensions in the study of religion.

Let's start with our key terms.

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

Reductionist, a criticism that something is being shown in too simple a way; reduced down.

Secular, not to do with religion or religious ideas or beliefs.

Worldview, the way someone understands, interprets and inhabits the world.

So look out for those in today's lesson.

Our lesson today will have two sections, applying the dimensions and evaluating the dimensions.

So let's start with our first section, applying the dimensions.

What is the best way to study religions and worldviews?

What do you think?

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

Well, Lucas, Izzy and Alex are thinking about this question.

Lucas says, "Learning about their origins and their beliefs.

" Izzy says, "Learning about one at a time in lots of depth.

" Alex says, "Seeing what they claim about life and if that is true.

" So these are all different things we can look at when we're looking at religions and worldviews, aren't there?

They're different kind of aspects and disciplines we can use when we are studying it.

Ninian Smart's dimensions of religion is one way to help us study religion and worldviews.

Ninian Smart was an important scholar of religion who introduced Religious Studies to academia in 1967.

His dimensions of religion are a way to study religion or worldviews without making judgements about their truth claims.

For this, he was using the scientific idea of methodological agnosticism, so not deciding if something's true or not in order to be able to study it.

It doesn't really matter if it's true or not, you're just studying the thing as it is.

He said, "We should look at a religion or worldview as it's experienced by the follower.

We can look at the rituals, myths, doctrines, ethics, social activities, experiences, special objects and places connected to them to better understand them.

" Smart said, "However, that this was a starting point for looking at religions, not the entire discipline of religious studies," and we'll come back to that.

He wasn't saying this was everything and not to care at all about whether the claims were true, about whether the historical stories were true, but this was the way to start, the way in was to kind of put that to one side and more look at how the person in the religion is experiencing it.

Can you think of why that might be a helpful approach to studying religion?

Pause the video and have a think.

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

Well, Ninian Smart's approach was certainly very influential over the discipline of Religious Studies.

Let's have a think about why.

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

Which academic put forward the idea of studying religions through the dimensions of religion?

Was it Julian Baggini, Linda Woodhead or Ninian Smart?

Pause the video and have a go.

We'll see you come up with in a moment.

Well done, it was Ninian Smart.

So the dimensions can be applied to all religions and world views, theistic or non-theistic, so having a belief in a God or a being or not.

And Smart also believed they could apply to some secular worldviews, and he used one in particular for his example.

So these are the seven dimensions: ritual, mythological, doctrinal, ethical, social, experiential, and material.

And he said they could all be applied to religion or worldview, not necessarily all to the same extent, but they could all be applied.

So an example for ritual might be prayers, mythological might be origin stories, doctrinal could be key beliefs, ethical could be moral acts, social could be collective worship together, experiential could be meditation, and material could be artifacts and religious objects.

These are all different ways that different religions and worldviews could display some of these dimensions.

And I wonder if you could think of how some of those could apply to secular worldviews too.

So the dimensions can be applied to theistic worldviews.

So for example, let's take Christianity.

Wonder if you can think now of how some of these might apply to Christianity or experiences that Christians might have in some of these areas?

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

Well, let's have a look and see if you have some of these ideas.

Ritual in Christianity could be a baptism, mythological in Christianity could be Bible stories, doctrinal in Christianity could be the belief in the Trinity, ethical in Christianity could be the Golden Rule, social in Christianity could be churches or different things that happen at churches, experiential could be charismatic worship where somebody feels God, and material could be icons that are used to aid with prayer.

So this is how the dimensions could be applied to a theistic worldview.

Could you think of how they could be applied to another theistic worldview?

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

Well, now we can also apply them, according to Smart, to non-theistic worldviews, so it doesn't have to be all worldviews that have a belief in a God or a being.

You could have a non-theistic worldview, for example, Buddhism that doesn't have a belief in a kind of creator God.

So I wonder if you could think of how Buddhism could display any of these dimensions.

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

Well, ritual could be meditation, mythological could be stories surrounding the life of the Buddha, doctrinal could be the four noble truths, ethical could be the eightfold path, social could be the Sangha or the community, experiential could be enlightenment, a material could be stupas and places for meditation.

Could these dimensions be applied to another non-theistic worldview?

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

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

We've seen how the dimensions can be applied to theistic and non-theistic worldviews.

Give one example of how a dimension could be applied to a theistic worldview.

Hmm, the stories of Jesus' life in the Bible.

So over to you.

Give an example of how a dimension could be applied to a non-theistic worldview.

Pause video and have a go.

We'll see what you've come up with in a moment.

Well done, I've got here the ethical code for how to live in the eightfold path.

Now, I said earlier that Ninian Smart also said the dimensions could be applied to secular worldviews, so they're not even necessarily seen as religious at all.

Because Buddhism doesn't have a belief in God, but still often seen as a religious worldview, isn't it?

Whereas we can have secular worldviews too.

And I said he gave a specific example, and the example he gave was nationalism, particularly in the United States of America.

So this is his idea of a secular worldview that's not really religious but displays some of these dimensions.

What he said was, "Nationalism is more than just the history of a country and different customs or languages, it's more than just like culture in a country or history.

For him, it's about people believing in our way of life, our team is the best.

Nationalism can even lead to people being willing to sacrifice their life for their country.

" So something that really has that pull and that hold over somebody, this idea of their nation, nationalism.

Do you think that there are similarities between nationalism and religions then?

Pause the video and have a think.

You could talk to the person next to you, talk to me.

And Ninian Smart did actually add an eighth dimension to his dimensions towards the end of his life, which was political.

So I wonder if this informed some of that for him, this kind of crossover between nationalism and religion.

So if we stick to an Ninian Smart's case of nationalism as an example of a secular worldview that could show these dimensions, what could be said for some of these then to do with nationalism: ritual, myth, doctrine, ethics, social, experiential, and material?

What do you think?

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

Well, we could have for ritual things like Remembrance Day or commemorations, very sort of important somber rituals that happen that about something bigger than just the action itself that's happening there and then.

Mythological could be stories of wars or battles or kings and queens that have gone before.

Doctrinal could be around British values, and these are things that we uphold if we are British.

Ethical could be laws that are set out for how people need to behave.

Social could be things like village fetes or fairs or festivals that people do together celebrating who they are.

Experiential could be that joy at winning.

If you think about in the 1960s when England won the World Cup, the kind of experience people had, that was their country, their cup that they won, would that be seen as an experience of nationalism there?

Material, monuments, things that we have in our town squares and in our city centers that remind us of who we are as a nation.

Do you think it's right to apply these dimensions in that way to a secular worldview like nationalism?

Can you think of other secular worldviews this could apply to?

Obviously, this was Ninian Smart's example, but can you think of other examples?

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

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

What secular worldview did Ninian Smart apply the dimensions of religion to?

Was it capitalism, nationalism or secularism?

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

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

Well done, so let's do a practice task before we move on.

You're going to choose another religion or worldview we haven't already covered, so we've covered Christianity, Buddhism and nationalism, one that we haven't covered already in this learning cycle and discuss with your partner or you can write this down or you can work together as a pair how the seven dimensions could apply to it.

It could be religious, it could be secular, it could be theistic, non-theistic.

Choose one religion or worldview we haven't already covered, apply the different seven dimensions to it, pause the video, have a go.

We'll see what you've done in a moment.

Well done, you may have chosen one of the following.

I'll put two examples here.

So for Islam, we could have the ritual of Salah, daily prayers, mythological, the revelation of the Qur'an, the sort of story of the the night of the first revelations of the Qur'an.

Doctrinal, the belief that there's only one God, Tawhid.

Ethical, the five pillars, the Zakah as an example.

Social, Ummah and as a whole worldwide community of Muslims and also mosques and coming together at the mosques.

Experiential could be that sense of closeness to Allah.

Material could be that beautiful calligraphy you often see of the 99 names of Allah.

Within the Hindu Dharma, the ritual could be puja, daily worship.

Mythological, the Ramayana epic, the stories that we have within Hindu Dharma.

Doctrinal, the idea that there everything has dharma and also there is karma.

Ethical, ahimsa, non-violence and not acting in any hurtful, harmful way to any other being.

Social could be going to temples, different family traditions.

Experiential could be spiritual insight may be gained during meditation.

And material, murtis and different symbols like Om.

And I wonder if you chose one of those two to do as your example.

So now we go to our second section, evaluating the dimensions.

Now, that we've applied the dimensions, we can start to evaluate them and say whether they are a really helpful way to understand and study religion or not.

It can't be disputed that they're very influential, so Smart's approach to studying religion was very influential, and some scholars see it as a really helpful approach.

That's because it could be applied across different religions and worldviews.

We've just seen, it could be applied across religions, worldviews, theistic, non-theistic, secular.

They take the religion or worldview as it is.

So rather than kind of picking apart, is it true or not?

Did this really happen, didn't it?

Trying to unpick that, they just take it as it is for the believer as the religion states as it is.

And they can help the students to organize information because you know if we say we're gonna study religion, that's a whopping great big piece of human experience, isn't it?

It's absolutely enormous the number of religions there are, the different expressions, the different aspects, could just help to kind of organize it and sort it and find a way to study it.

If you remember, it's the study of religion that Ninian Smart is trying to help us to do.

So it can help us to kind of organize and systematize what we are looking at with this enormous thing of religion and worldviews.

So Izzy and Alex now are discussing if they think the dimensions are a helpful way to study religion or not.

Izzy says, "I think it's helpful to look at the different dimensions across different religions and worldviews because you see the similarities and differences between them.

" And Alex says, "I think it's also helpful if you want to do an in-depth study into one religion because you not only look at the experiences but also the myths and the doctrines.

" So I guess they're showing the two sides here.

You can look across different religions, the different myths or the different doctrines, the different rituals, but then also you could just pick one religion or worldview and really go into the different aspects or dimensions within that one religion.

So maybe that makes it a helpful way of looking at religion because you could do both of these things, but could you think of why someone might say that's not very helpful?

Pause the video and have a think and we'll see what you come up within a moment.

We'll come onto that in a moment.

Let's do a quick check.

Smart's dimensions can only be applied to one religion at a time?

Is that true or false?

Pause the video and have a go.

We'll see what you come up with a moment.

Well done, that's false, isn't it?

But why?

Because Smart's dimensions could be used to study one religion in depth, but also to compare and contrast different religions.

Well done.

So now we can come on to why some people might say it's not a helpful way to study religion.

While some scholars have criticized Smart's dimensions as reductionist, as they reduce religion down to a cabinet of curiosities.

So these were in the Renaissance period.

They were collections of interesting objects from around the world that someone could show off to others.

So maybe it was a way of like showing off where you'd traveled or what you'd managed to gather and you might have it as a cupboard or it could even be a little room and get people around and they'd all come and look at your cabinet of curiosities and, "Oh, isn't that interesting?

" And some people have said that that's what Smart is doing to religion, by sort of reducing down everything that religion is into just these little things we could see or look at from different religions to kind of show off to each other.

Why might the dimensions be criticized in this way?

Why might that be seen as a criticism?

Pause a video and have a go, and you could talk to the person next to you or talk to me.

Well, for many religious people, religion may be more than just these different dimensions.

There's something bigger and something greater that's missing from the way that Ninian Smart is describing religion through the dimensions.

Other scholars have criticized the dimensions for making religious and worldviews appear far more similar than they actually are.

So if we are looking at how ritual might be similar or myths might be similar or doctrine, do we end up making them look like they're just like different versions of the same religion and not really showing the differences between them enough?

So one example could be myths about the origins of the universe from the mythological dimension.

So you could end up saying, "Oh, both you know Dharmic religions and Abrahamic religions have got myths about how the world came about so therefore they're quite similar," but actually they're quite significantly different.

And I might end up sort of looking at one through the lens of the other and sort of thinking that's its version of the story I know already.

The idea of the Abrahamic sort of story that we might know of from the story of Genesis or it's found in the Torah and the Qur'an, the idea of God making the world and then you got Adam and Eve or Adam and Hawa, okay, so then do we then look to something like the Dharmic religions and say, "Oh, well, who was the creator God and when was it made and who were the first humans?

" Well, that's not the way to understand necessarily how the Dharmic myths understand how the origins of the universe came.

There wasn't necessarily that starting point with the long cycle of creation and destruction.

It's a very different way, completely different way to look at how the origins of the universe came about.

And by putting them together and saying they're both like dimensions of the mythological, do we end up kind of conflating them and looking at one with the lens of the other.

Abrahamic creation myths posit a personal creator God, whereas in Hindu Dharma it's very much the energy or consciousness of Brahman.

So you end up maybe thinking that they're same as each other when they're actually very different.

Can you think of the other examples?

Not necessarily the methodological dimension, maybe to do with prayer, maybe to do with different artifacts or experiences where they're actually very, very significantly different from each other.

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

Another example could be experiences people have as part of the experiential dimension, as we just mentioned.

So if I'm looking at the experiential dimension and I'm thinking about the experiences people might have when they're part of their religion or worldview, I might then put worship with meditation as part of they're both experiences because you're feeling something as someone who's part of that religion or worldview.

But actually there are significant differences between what a charismatic Christian may feel compared to someone who's meditating.

They're very significantly different.

And if I sort of lump them together as experiential, do I miss that difference?

Charismatic worship can have this like intense feeling of love and an experience of God, whereas meditation can be more sort of allowing your thoughts to arise in a detached way and sort of allowing different emotions to kind of pass on without impacting you or affecting you in the same way that it would within charismatic worship.

So how could they both be put in the same dimension?

How could Smart respond to this criticism though?

Can you think of how he could answer back to this criticism?

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

Smart was clear as well the dimensions could be applied to religions and worldviews that were theistic, non-theistic and fully secular.

So some scholars have challenged how this can help us study religion if it's applied so broadly to approaches of life which are not religious.

So we had Smart earlier applying this to nationalism, which isn't religious.

So how can it be studying religion if he openly sort of says it doesn't always have to be religious world views?

Izzy and Alex are discussing this criticism.

Izzy says, "I'm not sure if the dimensions have helped me decide what is religion?

" And Alex says, "I agree, I think the dimensions are more about human societies than religions.

" And this is a big criticism that's been posed about this approach to religious studies is does it sort of take seriously enough the religious aspect or is it more like studying society a bit more like sociology or anthropology, just looking at how humans are with religion as one part of that?

Faith, who's a Christian, and Hari, who's a Hindu, explain why they think the dimensions are reductionist and limited in understanding religion.

Faith says, "All those dimensions are part of my religion, but being a Christian is so much more than that for me.

It's about my relationship with Jesus and my hopes for eternal life With Him.

" It's like where is that relationship side within the dimensions there for Faith?

And Hari says, "The dimensions don't apply as well to my religion as other ones.

I think they force false similarities to be drawn between religions that are fundamentally very different.

" So for Faith and Hari there, the dimensions are too reductionist, they've kind of made religion that kind of cabinet of curiosities and haven't really understood the depth and the differences between their religions.

Do you think Smart could respond to these criticisms in any way?

What could he say back if he was talking to Faith and Hari and defending his dimensions?

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

Well, I think Smart would bring us back to the point we made earlier that this is a starting point.

For him, this wasn't the be all and end all, and we finished talking about religion once we've kind of decided something for each of the seven dimensions.

It was a starting point, a way in to studying religion.

And then you could get into more like what the differences might be, what the deeper meaning might be for certain things.

So I think that's how Smart would respond to the criticisms and I wonder if you would find that convincing or not.

Let's do another check.

What term is missing from this sentence?

Some scholars have criticized the dimensions for having a something view of religion and not really showing what religion is for religious believers.

Pause the video, have a go.

We'll see what you come up with in a moment.

What word is missing?

Well done, it was reductionist, one of our key terms.

So now let's do a practice task to see what we've learned.

Consider the statement Ninian Smart dimensions of religion are a helpful tool for studying religion.

Do you agree or disagree?

Decide if the points on the next slide are agreeing or disagreeing with the statement, and which side do you think is strongest, and why?

Do you agree or disagree with the statement?

Write your response or you can feedback to class.

And you might like to have this as a debate in the class.

So the points are here in the table and you're going to tick to show if they agree or disagree with the statement Ninian Smart dimensions of religion are a helpful tool for studying religion.

One, the dimensions can be applied to all religions and worldviews, meaning that comparisons can be made.

Two, the dimensions are reductionist and don't show what religion means to a believer.

Three, the dimensions ignore the important differences between religion and encourage false similarities to be drawn.

And four, the dimensions encourage a scientific approach to religion and judgements about their truth don't need to be made in agreement or disagreement with the statement Ninian Smart's dimension of religion are a helpful tool for studying religion.

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

Well done.

Your table should look like this.

The dimensions can be applied to all religions or worldviews, meaning comparisons can be made agrees with the statement.

The dimensions are reductionist and don't show what religion means to a believer would disagree with the statement.

The dimensions ignore the important differences between religion and encourage false similarities to be drawn would disagree with the statement.

And the dimensions encourage a scientific approach to religion and judgements about their truth don't need to be made could agree with the statement.

Well done.

So secondly, consider the statement, do you agree or disagree?

What side do you think is strongest or not?

And write your response or feedback to class.

And your response may be in agreement, "I agree with the statement because they allow the students to take a neutral, objective position about the religions and worldviews they are studying," or, "I disagree with the statement because they make religions seem more similar than they are and they also apply to secular worldviews so they aren't really religion anyway!

" And I wonder which side you landed on.

Let's summarize what we've done today, evaluating the dimensions of religion.

Ninian Smart put forward seven dimensions of religion as a way to study religions and worldviews through similar aspects that they have.

These can be applied to theistic, non-theistic and secular worldviews.

Ninian Smart gave the example of nationalism as a secular worldview that displays the dimensions.

There are reasons why these dimensions are a helpful way to study religion and there are key criticisms of the approach, including creating a cabinet of curiosities, being applied to non-religious worldviews, making religions seem more similar than they are, and promoting a reductionist view of religion.

So well done for your hard work today, and I hope to see you again soon.

Bye-bye.