Religion and Cultural Appropriation

[faithfyl]

I hear about cultural appropriation a lot and wonder how this relates to religious beliefs. Can a religion be appropriated when it should not be? For example, if you were not raised as a Buddhist, is it cultural appropriation to study Buddhism later in life and declare yourself a Buddhist? Or any other religion?

[Ivy]

I hear about cultural appropriation a lot and wonder how this relates to religious beliefs. Can a religion be appropriated when it should not be? For example, if you were not raised as a Buddhist, is it cultural appropriation to study Buddhism later in life and declare yourself a Buddhist? Or any other religion?

What an interesting question. I wonder if the most informative thing to do would be to ask someone from a particular religion to see how they feel about it, or how they were received if they converted from another faith. BH or Agri might be able to speak to this issue.

Someone I read once, years ago.....wish I could remember who it was*.....felt that one should best stay and work within whatever religion they were born into. Whoever it was had probably never heard of the cofc.

*maybe it was the Dalai Lama.

[faithfyl]

Someone I read once, years ago.....wish I could remember who it was*.....felt that one should best stay and work within whatever religion they were born into. Whoever it was had probably never heard of the cofc.
.

I've heard that before too, but it makes no sense. We don't choose the religion we were born into so it's really not fair if we have to remain in it.

[Ivy]

Someone I read once, years ago.....wish I could remember who it was*.....felt that one should best stay and work within whatever religion they were born into. Whoever it was had probably never heard of the cofc.
.

I've heard that before too, but it makes no sense. We don't choose the religion we were born into so it's really not fair if we have to remain in it.

I don't think they were saying you "have" to, but just that it might be the best for spiritual growth reasons, maybe something like that. I can't remember.
I did find an article the Dalai Lama had written about it. I'll post the link if I can find it again.

[faithfyl]

Sure. post the link if you can find it. I'd be interested to read more.

[Ivy]

Sure. post the link if you can find it. I'd be interested to read more.

Here you go:

h**ps://www.dalailama.com/messages/religious-ha ... -diversity

Please know that I don't necessarily agree with him on this; I just think his perspective is interesting. For those of us who were born into the Christian faith, I wonder if he would mean general Christian rather than a specific denomination. I don't know.

[agricola]

I am fairly sure the Dalai Lama was talking about 'Christianity' as a whole, not specific denominations - he was (gently) reminding people who admire Buddhism (for instance) thinking that it has something their own faith lacks, to look more closely within their own traditions, because (as he has said) each faith contains many features - and sometimes people can't 'see' those because they are too close to the big picture to see the details, so to speak.

As for the topic of cultural appropriation -

There is cultural APPRECIATION, where you admire and respect aspects of another culture, enjoy perhaps learning about those aspects, or enjoy participating with adherents of a different faith from your own.

And then there is cultural APPROPRIATION, where you take those admired events, holidays or ideas, and DECLARE OWNERSHIP of them for your own religious uses.

As for instance, the 'Christian Seder', which typically eviscerates the Jewish meaning by imagining a Christianized meaning and purpose to every step, and then being offended when told that they are being inappropriate.

Christianity is uniquely prone to that sort of thing, from claiming the entire Jewish Bible as 'theirs' to identifying themselves as 'the true Jews' and actual Jews as 'dead branches' pruned out and thrown away, to claiming that the Christian interpretation is 'the real, actual' (and only) proper interpretation, to efforts to obliterate Judaism by targeting Jews for conversion, to....

It is something of a mystery to me, really, that so many Christians want to blot out the memory of Judaism and Jews so devoutly, even though their own faith is totally dependent on Judaism being 'true'.

Weird.

Wanting to be a guest at a Passover seder and understanding what it all means is 'appreciation'. Deciding that you KNOW what it means and that the true meaning is Christianity, is 'appropriation'.

[Ivy]

I think you've nailed that, Agri. A great and glaring example. Certainly, some Christian groups have appropriated Jewish holy days for their own, misguided purposes.

[faithfyl]

And then there is cultural APPROPRIATION, where you take those admired events, holidays or ideas, and DECLARE OWNERSHIP of them for your own religious uses.

I sometimes attend Catholic holiday services. I'm not Catholic. However, I was raised as a Christian. And Catholics are Christians too, something many of them are very adamant about. So I wonder if they would view me as appropriating their religion or not. I'm not taking elements of Hinduism or Buddhism and trying to mix it in with my own beliefs. But it has occured to me that some might say I'm appropriating elements of Catholicism. I have not converted to Catholicism, either. I just enjoy the services.

[teresa]

Christianity is uniquely prone to that sort of thing, from claiming the entire Jewish Bible as 'theirs' to identifying themselves as 'the true Jews' and actual Jews as 'dead branches' pruned out and thrown away, to claiming that the Christian interpretation is 'the real, actual' (and only) proper interpretation, to efforts to obliterate Judaism by targeting Jews for conversion, to....

It's a quandary. How can one retain the historical root of Christianity without regarding the Jewish Bible as the precedent of the "New Testament"? Both Jesus and the apostle Paul understood God to be acting in Jesus, through Jesus, and as Jesus to accomplish the promises only God could accomplish -- promises that had been made to Abraham and renewed with Isaac and Jacob.

Hence Paul's frustration when his Jewish contemporaries failed to embrace Jesus as the anticipated Messiah, leading to Paul's comment about "dead branches" -- and these same dead branches being grafted in once again to the root of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, if they did not persist in unbelief. From Paul's perspective, the fruition of God's renewed creation could not and would not take place until "all Israel" had embraced Jesus as Messiah. But in the meantime, as Paul understood it, God was grafting the branches of erstwhile gentiles into the root of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

There is a way to divorce Christianity from its roots. But it leads (IMO) to a mistaken view of God, like the idea that individuals are born cut-off from God; that God chooses to save some people and allows others to perish; that one needs to believe certain facts in order to be part of the saved; that one needs to do certain acts in order to part of the saved. I don't think this "divorced" Christianity results in any better outcome when it comes to relationship with those of other religions, and likely contributes to a worst outcome.

It is possible -- as some Christian groups seem to do (for example, the Catholic Church) -- to embrace a rooted Christianity while being open to the ways that other religions express their experience of knowing God. This rooted Christianity by its very nature appropriates the historical context of the Jewish Bible as its heritage. I don't see any way around it.