I have family problems - Are there steps for recovery?

Every family has family problems but, there are certain measures you can take for recovery. Whenever you have a group of people who spend hours with each other there are going to be problems. Personalities clash and power struggles ensue as parents and children learn how to cope with each other.

The trick to the whole family structure is learning how to identify problems and then deal with those problems before they get out of hand. Take a moment to think about your family. What you will see is a tapestry made of people of different ages, different personalities, different likes and dislikes. This is your family.

A family's diversity must be acknowledged. Like it or not a thing called the generation gap will keep your family from operating totally on the same page. However, here are a few ideas to help your family cope with, and survive family problems.

Stopping the problem before it erupts is one of the best ways to deal with family problems. Family meetings can accomplish this goal. Family meetings provide a safe environment for each member to share their views on various issues. These meetings should be information sessions, not personal attacks or gripe sessions.

If you think members of the family may not open up, you can try having each member write down their thoughts and then share them by passing them around. Writing takes away verbal inflections which can cause a conversation to escalate into an argument. Remember, the whole idea of family meetings is to communicate no matter if the communication is audible or written.

If you feel a group setting would not be constructive, you can try having a one-on-one session with the person or persons you feel are at the root cause of your family problems. The main idea to remember is to keep talking, and try to work through your problems. The moment communication ends, the real problems begin.

Also go into each talk session with the attitude that you attributed to the problem just as much as the other person. This will help you take responsibility rather than blaming other people. As we all know, it takes at least two people to cause a problem and at least two people to resolve the problem.

Some other steps you can take to encourage your family's recovery include:

 Admit you need help: there is no shame in seeking professional help. Many times professional counselors have the knowledge and experience to help you seek out the best solutions to your family problems.

 Realize whatever you do it is for the common welfare of your family. If your family is dealing with a problem such as substance abuse or teenage pregnancy there are organizations that can help you cope and deal with these issues.

 Instill in the family a desire for each member of the family to recover. No member of a family is immune to family problems. Each person is codependent on the actions and behaviors of the other members of the family. This means each member of the family must accept what happened and have the desire to recover. If one member abstains, it will continue to affect the whole family.

 Do not hold anything against the person or persons who are causing the problems. It is ok to feel angry at the situation, but don't let the anger consume you; learn to vent your anger in a constructive way. Once you get past the anger, you can learn to forgive and eventually you will be able to move forward with your life. No matter what the cause of the problem or who is to blame, once the problem is dealt with, the issue should be left to fade into the past and the family should move on.

 Keep communicating. Once a problem starts, the communication should not stop. It is important to talk through your emotions and feelings. Bottling up turmoil is not good for you mentally or physically. Truthful communication builds trust, which is the basis for a healthy relationship.

 Take responsibility for your need to change. Too many times we try to change others in order to meet our expectations, but often we are the one who needs to change. So examine yourself and see if what you are doing is having a negative or positive effect on the family. Remember a small change in your attitude can have a major affect on your family.

These are only a few of the ways you can go from saying "I have family problems" to being on the road to recovery. Keeping a family functioning smoothly is not an easy task, but with a lot of work and love it can be done.

***

One of the most difficult matters to confront with respect to family relationships is that you don’t control the entire relationship yourself. Whether the relationship thrives or withers isn’t up to you alone. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

When major family relationship problems are encountered, it’s common to attempt a control strategy. You try to get the other person to change. Sometimes this approach works, especially if your request and the other person are both reasonable. But many times it just leads to frustration.

On the other hand, if you can’t change the other person, maybe you should just accept them as they are. That’s another strategy that sometimes works, but this one can also lead to frustration and even resentment if your needs aren’t being met.

There is, however, a third alternative for those times when changing the other person and accepting the other person as-is are both unworkable for you. And that option is to change yourself in a way that solves the problem. This requires that you redefine the problem as an internal one instead of an external one, and then the solution will take the form of an expansion of your awareness and/or a change in your beliefs.

An internal way of viewing relationship problems is that they reflect back to you a part of yourself that you dislike. If you have a negative external relationship situation, it’s a reflection of a conflict in your own thinking. As long as you keep looking outside yourself for the answer, you may never resolve the external problem. But once you start looking inside yourself for the problem, it may become easier to solve.

What you’ll find when you tackle such problems is that you harbor one or more beliefs that perpetuate the relationship problem in its current form. Those beliefs are the real problem — the true cause of the unhealthy relationship.

For example, consider a problematic relationship between yourself and another family member. Suppose you hold the belief that you must be close to every family member simply because they’re related to you. Perhaps you’d never tolerate this person’s behavior if it came from a stranger, but if the person is a relative, then you tolerate it out of a sense of duty, obligation, or your personal concept of family. To push a family member out of your life might cause you to feel guilty, or it could lead to a backlash from other family members. But genuinely ask yourself, “Would I tolerate this behavior from a total stranger? Why do I tolerate it from a family member then?” Exactly why have you chosen to continue the relationship instead of simply kicking the person out of your life? What are the beliefs that perpetuate the problematic relationship? And are those beliefs really true for you?

I love my parents and siblings unconditionally (I have two younger sisters and one younger brother). However, I haven’t had a particularly close-knit relationship with any of them for many years. There was no major falling out or anything like that — it’s just that my personal values and lifestyle have moved so far from theirs that there isn’t enough basic compatibility to form a strong common bond anymore. My parents and siblings are all of the employee mindset with a very low tolerance for risk, but as an entrepreneur, risk is my favorite breakfast. My wife and kids and I are all vegan, while my parents and siblings celebrate the holidays with the traditional consumption of animals. I don’t recall anyone in my family ever saying, “I love you,” while I grew up, but with my own kids I’m very affectionate and strive to tell them I love them every day. My parents and siblings are all practicing Catholics, but I left that behind 17 years ago in order to explore other belief systems. (Technically within their belief system, I’m doomed to hell, so that sorta puts a damper on things.) Even though this is the family I grew up with and shared many memories, our core values are so different now that it just doesn’t feel like a meaningful family relationship anymore.

Despite all these differences, we’re all on good terms with each other and get along fairly well, but our differences create such a big gap that we have to settle for being relatives without being close friends.

If you operate under the belief that family is forever and that you must remain loyal to all your relatives and spend lots of time with them, I want you to know that those beliefs are your choice, and you’re free to embrace them or release them. If you’re fortunate enough to have a close family that is genuinely supportive of the person you’re becoming, that’s wonderful, and in that situation, you’ll likely find the closeness of your family to be a tremendous source of strength. Then your loyalty to family closeness will likely be very empowering.

On the other hand, if you find yourself with family relationships that are incompatible with your becoming your highest and best self, then excessive loyalty to your family is likely to be extremely disempowering. You’ll only be holding yourself back from growing, from achieving your own happiness and fulfillment, and from potentially doing a lot of good for others. If I retained a very close relationship with my birth family, it would be like putting a lampshade over my spirit. I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

My way of dealing with my family situation was to broaden my definition of family. On one level I feel an unconditional connection with all human beings, but on another level, I see people with whom I share a deep compatibility as my true family. For example, my wife and I both have a strong commitment to doing good for the planet as best we can, which is one reason we each find each other attractive. And that’s partly why she’s my best friend as well as my wife. When I see people who are living very, very consciously and deliberately and who’ve dedicated their lives to the pursuit of a worthy purpose, I have a strong sense that on some level, those people are members of my family. And this connection feels more real to me than the blood relationships I was born into.

Loyalty is a worthy value, but what does it mean to be loyal to one’s family? Since loyalty is very important to me, I had to refine my view of this concept to place loyalty to my highest and best self above loyalty to the people I was born with. That was a difficult mental shift to make, but in the long run it has given me a sense of peace. I realize now that family is a concept which is capable of extending far beyond blood.

What I’m suggesting is that in order to solve family relationship problems, which exist at one level of awareness, you may need to pop your consciousness up a level and take a deeper look at your values, beliefs, and your definitions of terms like loyalty and family. Once you resolve those issues at the higher level, the low level relationship problems will tend to take care of themselves. Either you’ll transcend the problems and find a new way to continue your relationship without conflict, or you’ll accept that you’ve outgrown the relationship in its current form and give yourself permission to move on to a new definition of family.

You see… when you say goodbye to a problematic relationship issue, you’re really saying goodbye to an old part of yourself that you’ve outgrown. As I became less compatible with my birth family, I also gradually dropped parts of myself that no longer served me. I drifted away from rigid religious dogma, from fear of risk-taking, from eating animals, from negativity, and from being unable to say, “I love you.” As I let all of those things pass from my consciousness, my external-world relationships changed to reflect my new internal relationships.

As within, so without. If you hold onto conflict-ridden relationships in your life, the real cause is your inner attachment to conflict-ridden thoughts. When you alter the mental relationships within your own mind, your physical world will change to reflect it. So if you kick negative thoughts out of your head, you will find yourself simultaneously kicking negative people out of your life.

There is a wonderful rainbow at the end of this process of letting go, however. And that is that when you resolve conflicts in your consciousness that cause certain relationships to weaken, you simultaneously attract new relationships that resonate with your expanded level of consciousness.

We attract into our lives more of what we already are. If you don’t like the social situation you find yourself in, stop broadcasting the thoughts that attract it. Identify the nature of the external conflicts you experience, and then translate them into their internal equivalents. For example, if a family member is too controlling of you, translate that problem into your own internal version: You feel your life is too much out of your control. When you identify the problem as external, your attempted solutions may take the form of trying to control other people, and you’ll meet with strong resistance. But when you identify the problem as internal, it’s much easier to solve. If another person exhibits controlling behavior towards you, you may be unable to change that person. However, if you feel you need more control in your life, then you can actually do something about it directly without needing to control others.

I’ll actually go so far as to say that the purpose of human relationships may be the expansion of consciousness itself. Through the process of identifying and resolving relationship problems, we’re forced to deal with our internal incongruencies. And as we become more conscious on the inside, our relationships expand towards greater consciousness on the outside.

Types of families

I. Functions.

1.- One of the primary functions of the family is to produce and reproduce persons – biologically and socially. The experience of one's family shifts over time. The family serves to locate children socially and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialization.

2.- Also a family in a traditional society forms the primary economic unit. This economic role has diminished in modern times, except some certain sectors such as agriculture.

II. Types.

1.- Family joins together people's lives in emotional and economic ways. Family traditionally is the formation of a new household with the married couple living together in the same home, often sharing the same bed. This family is often referred to as patrilocal.

2.- There are some other, original traditions. There is a matrilocal family, for example in West Sumatra, with the husband moving into his wife's mother's household. The Hopi Indians of Arizona generally live in family groups called clans. It is usual for the woman to be the head of the family home.

3.- The majority of Inuit people from Alaska are nomads, they don't tent to live in houses and it is quite common for a man to have several wives. And in some regions of Tibet there are polygamic families with a wife having several husbands, because of the lack in men.

4.- In some parts of Kentucky and Virginia it is quite normal for girls of twelve or thirteen to get married and to start a family. Young couples tend to live with their parents until they finish their education.

5.- In Saudi Arabia there is the misyar family, it involves the husband and wife living separately but meeting regularly.

III. Single-parent.

In single-parent families a parent cares for one or more children without the assistance of another parent in the home. Single parenthood may occur for reasons: divorce, adoption, artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, or extramarital pregnancy, or as death or abandonment by one parent.

IV. Same sex.

Same-sex marriages have existed, ranging from informal to official unions. Numerous studies show that the children of same-sex couples are not disadvantaged. However, opponents of same-sex marriage claim that children do best with both a mother and a father, who honor their marital vows. To my mind it doesn't matter. Of course there may be some problems with sex-identification (Oedipus complex), but the same problem still exists in single-parent families.

V. Modern family.

The nature of the family is changing now. In European countries around half of all babies are now born to unmarried parents. Families are getting smaller, the birthrate is falling. More women have careers, they are waiting longer to start a family.

VI. Personal isolation.

People are more mobile, and they don't know each other so well as they used to. Now there is a trend, when a family is scattered all over the country or even over the world. One can have a lot of relatives, but they don't live together. People don't get acquainted with their neighbors and other people around.

I don't consider personal isolation to be a problem. People choose the way of living that they need. And if they need to live with relatives, they do. If they get a job in another part of the country, they may go there or they can stay at their home-town. It's a question of personal choice and setting of priorities.

VII. Unisex family.

Unisex family is when husband and wife share housework and breadwinning. So, it is possible for both to make their careers. They also can reverse their traditional roles. I think, unisex family is the most successful type of family, where both partners have equal possibilities, they can voluntary choose their way of life and role in the family. It is not fair to leave all the house work, which is much more unpleasant, then wage-earning, to the woman, who also wants to achieve self fulfilling. As for me, I hate housekeeping chores and I would be glad to take the role of the breadwinner in the family.

VIII. Reasons for marriage.

There are different reasons for marriage, I could divide them into two groups. The first group contains only one reason – it's love! When two people create a union to be together all their lives, they love each other and want to share one home, equal rights and one life.

Another group of reasons may be called a marriage of convenience, it is a marriage, managed for personal gain: to have children, for money, to have someone to do housework, to get citizenship and so on.

IX. Divorce.

1.- Divorce is the final termination of a marriage, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage. In most countries, divorce requires the sanction of a judge or other authority in a legal process.

2.- The legal process for divorce may also involve issues of child custody, distribution of property and division of debt.

3.-Reasons for divorce may also be different – emotional and divorce for convenience, which is rare. The family may become dysfunctional, there can be also an acrimonious divorce – full of anger, arguments and bad feelings.

4.- Sociologists claim, that a divorce may affect children badly, but I can't agree. It depends on the each certain family and each certain child. Some problems may emerge, but it's not connected with the divorce itself, to my mind, but with the personal relationship between parents or between parents and children. Also, the divorce cannot be considered as a problem, I think. It's personal choice of every partner, which has a right to live the way he likes. It doesn't affect society, as I have said, it doesn't affect children, at least in a direct way.

X. Trial separation.

There is also a status called trial separation. When a couple is not divorced, but they don't live together and don't take marital responsibilities, in particular it is connected with property.

Family reunion

The first problem for which you must find a solution is just what type of reunion you want to hold. Do you want to deal with the whole extended family (BIG reunion), or just your own little bitsy branch (you know, the Spiffy branch of the family)? Do you want an annual gathering (once a year), once every few years (which would be…uh, once every few years, obviously), or a once-in-a-lifetime event? Perhaps a ‘once upon a time.’ Oh, the choices…

Which Part of the Family Do We Invite?
The decisions on which side of the family to invite, and what type of reunion go hand in hand. Mister Spiffy advises against inviting all 300 descendants of Great Grandpa Jones to a pool party reunion, unless you have a really big pool.

The least planning intensive family reunion is simply invite those living in your own household ("Kids... think of dinner tonight as our family reunion"). OK, so that's not really a reunion since nobody is being "reunited". This means you need to figure out "who else" to invite. Start with your closest relatives and work out. Then stop when you've reached your limit.

· Mom and dad (who may also be known as grandma and grandpa)

· Brothers and sisters (Mister Spiffy says you better invite their families too!)

· Then work your way up the ancestral ladder... grandparents, great grandparents, etc. But remember, every step back on that ladder adds a ton of new potential attendees. In fact, you will probably come to a point where you don't have any idea who all the descendants are. This is the type of reunion that is especially important to announce in our Family Reunion Registry, so that those relatives can find you instead of the other way around.

Regardless of how you decide which branches to invite, make sure you don't invite only some people in the branch and not others (even if there are hard feelings involved... this will only make them worse).

What Type of Reunion Should We Have?
The simplest reunion to host (and fairly cheap, if you have one every year) would be a picnic or barbecue at a family’s home or a nearby park. If you’ve never held a reunion before and are a rookie to all of this, Mister Spiffy says this could very well be the way to go. It takes less time to plan and doesn’t cost a whole lot. It’s the easiest to spring for, too. It can be rotated between the homes of various people over the course of years or you can just find a nice park and hold it there each year. Just make absolutely sure that there are plenty of trees to sit under for shade and for the smaller folk to climb on. Mister Spiffy understands children very well and that they like to climb things – and he would prefer if it were not the rose trellis leading up to the roof.

Other relatively easy-to-plan reunions include a nice dinner and reception at a good restaurant, or maybe a nice hotel and resort. These don’t require a large amount of planning on your part (which has always been a plus for Mister Spiffy). All you need to do is make reservations, plan a few activities for people to enjoy, and notify relatives of the address of wherever you happen to be going.

If your family is the outdoors type, try out a family camping trip. Make sure the campsite you reserve is large enough for the family and that everyone knows to bring their own accommodations (RV, trailer, tent, or just a sleeping bag). If everyone brings his or her own food (you know, sharing and creating a massive smorgasbord), this becomes very easy to plan and carry out.

But, Mister Spiffy feels obligated to mention – don’t plan this during the winter or rainy season when there will be snow or six-inches of mud on the ground up there in all the campsites. That’s usually a damper on the occasion. Literally.

Big reunions need to be announced very far in advance to give everyone enough time to plan around it and save up. This would include, but is not limited to, reunions at theme parks (like DisneyWorld…Mister Spiffy likes going there), or larger reunions where massive swarms of relatives descend like locusts upon an old family homestead for several very long days. You can also take one of those family cruises if your family wants to pay for it (and pay for it they will).

Most of these larger reunions will require a significant amount of planning by those in charge – and can demand quite a significant outlay of cash from those members attending. Make sure you are ready to spend Mister Spiffy-like hours planning one of these.

Religion

What Is "Religion"?—Well, It’s Hard to "Say Exactly"

By Gerald A. Larue
Emeritus Professor of Biblical History and Archaeology
University of Southern California

________________________________________________________

Like the elephant in the oriental parable, religion is a large
and complex phenomenon. Definers tend to take hold of
a part of the beast and define the whole in terms of the part.

Educators who teach about religion immediately face the problem of defining the subject. Is a "religion" to be regarded as another form of human thought or opinion covered by guarantees of freedom, as is speech, assembly, press and so on? Or, does religion always imply supernaturalism?

There are further questions. Should the definition simply refer to those who feel that they are in a particular relationship to God (however defined) with an obligation to fulfill divinely revealed law? For example, Judaism is always listed as a "religion," but what about Humanistic Judaism, which focuses on persons and humanity without reference to a deity? In addition, many Secular Humanists tend to eschew the term "religion" because, in its popular interpretation, it carries with it overtones of a supernaturalism that they reject.

What does the word "religion" mean, and what is religion and what is nonreligion?

A Starting Place

The root of the word "religion" is usually traced to the Latin religare (re: back, and ligare: to bind), so that the term is associated with "being bound." The idea may reflect a concept prominent in biblical literature. Israel was said to be in a "covenant" (berith) relationship with its God (Yahweh). In a sense, the nation was "covenanted" or "bonded" to the deity. But what does being bound or bonded mean? Is a slave who is bound or bonded to his or her master in a "religious" relationship? Is a business agreement which binds partners in a legal covenant a form of "religious" binding? At one time in human history, such "bindings" may have had religious sanction, but today, in America, slavery is outlawed and business contracts are made in legal settings. This particular notion of religion as "binding" doesn't really fit and therefore this interpretation of the root meaning of the term proves not to be particularly helpful.

On the other hand, one might argue that the religious person is one "bound" by choice or by commitment to the tenets of a particular faith system. Once again, the parameters of this definition can be broadened to include any commitment to a particular way of life. Such an expansion would embrace concepts like "philosophy" or "psychology" or even any chosen way of living. One's religion then becomes "how one lives one's life" or "how one lives in the light of a particular commitment" or, in popular vernacular, one's "life style." Obviously, while the term "commitment" may provide some insight into the concept of "being bound," it is far too inclusive to be acceptable.

The Notion of Faith

Religion may embrace a conception of "faith," and it is not uncommon to find mention of the "faiths of humankind." The reference is generally to that to which individuals or groups are loyal, to that in which trust is placed. Theologian H. Richard Niebuhr pointed out that, when a patriotic nationalist might claim

"I was born to die for my country" he is exhibiting the double relationship that we now call faith. The national life is for him the reality whence his own life derives its worth. He relies on the nation as source of his own value. He trusts it; first, perhaps, in the sense of looking constantly to it as the enduring reality out of which he has issued, into whose ongoing cultural life his own actions and being will merge. His life has meaning because it is part of that context, like a word in a sentence. It has value because it fits into a valuable whole. His trust may also be directed toward the nation as a power which will supply his needs, care for his children, and protect his life. But faith in the nation is primarily reliance upon it as an enduring value-center. Insofar as the nation is the last value-center to which the nationalist refers, he does not raise the question about its goodness to him or about its rightness or wrongness. Insofar as it is value-center rightness and wrongness depend on it. This does not mean in any Hobbesian sense that for such faith the national government determines what is right and what is wrong but rather that the rightness of all actions depends on their consonance with the inner constitution of the nation and on their tendency to enhance or diminish national life, power, and glory. (p. 17)

"Value-center," "trust," "loyalty," "meaning" are intertwined to provide the definition of "faith" or "a faith." It is not difficult to understand that, whereas a theist may express such a faith in a god, an atheist or a humanist may also claim to have such a value-center that gives meaning and direction to life. This value-center would be a faith in the possibilities and potentials of "humanity." Inasmuch as many religions have humanistic concerns and dimensions, there will be overlaps in outreach to those in need and in the interpretation of meaningful response. Whereas the religious person may respond to human need because his or her faith system calls for such response, the humanist will respond out of the well-springs of compassion. The responses may be the same or paralleled, but the motivations will emerge from different value-centers.

Those who accept and those who do not accept supernaturalistic beliefs will enjoy the same or similar feelings of awe and wonder as they view a sunset, a magnificent forest, or the broad rolling prairies; or as they listen to the quieting murmur of a brook, the lapping of waves of a lake or ocean, or the soughing of wind in the tree tops; or as they witness the fury of an electric storm, a hurricane, or a tidal wave. The difference will be in the interpretations. The supernaturalist will interpret these experience with reference to a deity, the nonsupernaturalists will see them as manifestations of nature. The experiences will be the same or paralleled; the interpretations will differ. Perhaps both can be interpreted as "spiritual" experiences — in one case with supernaturalistic overtones; in the other resonating with wonder and awe, but without the supernatural.

Struggling for Definition

It is not surprising to discover that most present day scholars tend to avoid definitions when they discuss religions. The reasons for evasion become obvious as we look at some of the many earlier efforts to define the term. For example, in his Gifford Lectures (1902), the psychologist William James defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine". Obviously, this definition is too limited; religion is more than affect and more than what people do in their solitariness. As William Newsman pointed out: "regardless of what else may be said of religion, it is also a social phenomenon — it is something that people do in groups." Mircea Eliade the Roman Catholic historian of religions, rejected the study of religions solely from psychological or sociological perspectives and sought to examine the patterns or forms of religious expression. He would separate the sacred from the profane, even though he recognized that religion has the capacity to transform the profane into the sacred. The Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich wrote of religion in terms of "ultimate concern" within which he would include secularism: "For secularism is never without ultimate concern." The sociologist, Emile Durkheim , linked religion to the concept of "church:" "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." Obviously, this definition runs counter to the recognition of the ascetics who express their beliefs outside of a community.

Into this struggle for definition, others have introduced a number of special terms. … For example, Rudolph Otto in The Idea of the Holy produced a battery of Latin terms that suggest aesthetic dimensions in religion. He wrote of human confrontation with the "numinous," which is "wholly other" or outside normal experience and which is indescribable, terrifying, fascinating, characterized by dread and awe. The experience is of a mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, an "awe-filled and fascinating mystery." He wrote of the numen tremendum, which refers to the sense of the uncanny or that which renders a person "awestruck." All of these feeling responses he associated with religion. However, these terms refer to reactions not unlike those expressed by astronomers as they are awestruck, fascinated and moved by the immensity of space; or by our cosmonauts when, with deep emotion and fascination, they viewed the earth from space; or by poets and artists as they struggle to articulate the wonder they experience in everything from nature to human technological creativity; and by paleontologists and other scientists as they confront the mysterious beginnings of life on planet earth. As we noted above, some of us experience similar feelings as we view the majesty of the mountains, the beauty of a sunset, the power of the ocean, the deepest chasm in the crust of the earth, or the shaking of the earth during an earthquake or violent storm. These are human aesthetic responses to the wonders of our cosmos. They are not limited to "true believers" nor are they necessarily to be defined as "religious," although some would accept the term "spiritual," indicating the deep emotional stirrings evoked, but without any supernaturalistic implications.

Nor is it possible to link religion in a singular way to values, as Ames has done in his definition of religion as "the consciousness of the highest social values". Values rise out of society and can exist quite apart from religion. Religion is not alone in seeking meaning for existence. Joseph Gaer described religion as a person’s thoughtful response to the question "why?" This implies that religion alone seeks meaning for existence. But philosophy, psychology and the sciences also pose this question. Nor can religion be linked simply to "impulse directed to the conservation and preservation of life," as Jane Harrison phrased it. And the list goes on and on.

The question arises: How does one handle this problem? Perhaps the answer lies in "no definition."

Forging Ahead

John A. Hutchinson, in his book Paths of Faith, acknowledged the difficulty in defining religion. He wrote:

Formal definitions of religion are as numerous, as various, and often as mutually conflicting as there are students of religion. Often such definitions illustrate the oriental parable of the blind men describing the elephant, each taking hold of part of the beast and defining the whole in terms of this part. Like the elephant, religion is a large and complex phenomenon. In this connection, some historians of religion question or reject the word religion as a distortion of the form of experience it seeks to communicate. Several of the world's major languages lack any word that can be adequately translated as "religion." The common noun religion imputes a unity or homogeneity of experience that many observers believe does not exist. (pp. 3-4)

Hutchinson goes on to point out that substituted words do not work. However, he then attempts his own definition of the "ultimate valuation" experience—something at once particularly universal and yet so multifarious and multifaceted that its definition is elusive. The available terminology is inadequate, though, and satisfactory definition eludes even Hutchinson.

Given that we generally recognize and acknowledge that the development of religion is a particularly human endeavor, then we can follow a pattern set by those who simply discuss "religions" without becoming entangled in debates over precise definitions.

Religions include aspects of all of the themes mentioned above.

__________________

Whatisreligion? The question is not easy to answer. As St. Augustine said of time, most of us know perfectly well what religion is - until someone asks us to define it.

The groups, practices and systems that we identify as "religions" are so diverse (not all religions refer to God or gods, not all religions are concerned with morals, not all religions have beliefs about the afterlife...) that it is no easy task to bring them all under one simple definition.

Of course, this difficulty has not stopped people from attempting to define religion. The definitions are quite wide-ranging: some emphasize the personal, others the social; some the beliefs, others the uses; some the structures, others the functions; some the private, others the public; some the mundane, others the transcendent; some the truth, others the illusion. In many cases, a person's definition of religion is actually a definition of his or her own religion.

But while no one definition of religion can completely sum up what religion is, they all tell us something about religion and perhaps bring us closer to an understanding of what we mean when we talk about "religion."

"Religion: A general term used... to designate all concepts concerning the belief in god(s) and goddess(es) as well as other spiritual beings or transcendental ultimate concerns."
—Penguin Dictionary of Religions (1997).

"Religion: Relation of human beings to God or the gods or to whatever they consider sacred or, in some cases, merely supernatural."
—Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (online, 2006)

"Religion: Human beings' relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."
—Encyclopædia Britannica (online, 2006)

"Religion: (2) a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices; (4) a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith."
—Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (online, 2006)

"The religious response is a response to experience and is coloured by the wish to provide a wider context for a fragile, short and turbulent life."
—Philip Rousseau, The Early Christian Centuries (2002), p. 4.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opiate of the people."
—Karl Marx

"Religion is the human attitude towards a sacred order that includes within it all being—human or otherwise—i.e., belief in a cosmos, the meaning of which both includes and transcends man."
—Peter Berger

"Viewed systematically, religion can be differentiated from other culturally constituted institutions by virtue only of its reference to superhuman beings."
—Melford Spiro

"Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness."
—A.N. Whitehead

"...for limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence."
—R.N. Bellah

"Religion is the daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
—Ambrose Bierce

"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."
—Emile Durkheim

"One's religion is whatever he is most interested in."
—J.M. Barrie, The Twelve-Pound Look (1910)

"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of."
—Mark Twain

"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires."
—Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
—Napoleon Bonaparte

"We go into religion in order to feel warmer in our hearts, more connected to others, more connected to something greater and to have a sense of peace."
—Goldie Hawn, Beliefnet interview

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
—Bertrand Russell

"Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience."
—George Santayana

"Religion is all bunk."
— Thomas Edison

"To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbour in relation to God."
—C.S. Lewis, "Lilies that Fester" in The Twentieth Century (April 1955).

"Pure religion and undefiled before God the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
—James 1:27, New Testament

"Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Religion itself is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better."
—William Penn

"Religion, whatever it is, is a man'stotal reaction upon life."
—William James

"Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

NATIONAL IDENTITY

National identity is the person's identity and sense of belonging to one state or to one nation, a feeling one shares with a group of people, regardless of one's citizenship status.

National identity is not inborn trait; various studies have shown that a person's national identity is a direct result of the presence of elements from the "common points" in people's daily lives: national symbols, language, national colors, the nation's history, national consciousness, blood ties, culture, music, cuisine, radio, television, etc.

The national identity of most citizens of one state or one nation tends to strengthen when the country or the nation is threatened militarily. The sense of belonging to the nation is essential as an external threat becomes more clear. An example of this is the development of Taiwanese identity versus Chinese identity, which strengthened after the Republic of China became known internationally as "Taiwan" after losing its UN Seat and particularly starting in the late 1990s when it became clear that "China" (PR China) threatened Taiwan militarily. Although the official country name is "Republic of China" and its residents have been taught that their country is "China" and self-references in the educational system, textbooks, and school public announcements refer to students as "we Chinese..." in the 1980s and 1990s, growing numbers of adults in the 2000s started identifying themselves as "Taiwanese" in the face of hostile Chinese stance and military threat in the 2000s and the Pan-Green Coalition's promotion of Taiwanese identity.

There are cases where national identity collides with a person's civil identity. For example, many Israeli Arabs associate themselves or are associated with the Arab or Palestinian nationality, while at the same time they are citizens of the state of Israel, which is in conflict with the Palestinians and with many Arab countries. The Taiwanese also face a conflict of national identity with civil identity, in which residents are issued national identification cards and passports under the country name "Republic of China", when certain portion of them do not feel good about viewing their country as "China". This is also a reason why the Democratic Progressive Party advocates formal "Taiwan Independence" and renaming the country "Republic of Taiwan".

Also, there are cases in which the national identity of a particular group is oppressed by the government in the country where the group lives. A notable example was in Spain under the authoritarian dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1947) who abolished the official statute and recognition for the Basque, Galician, and Catalan languages for the first time in the history of Spain and returned to Spanish as the only official language of the State and education, although millions of the country's citizens spoke other languages.

The positive expression of one's national identity is Patriotism, and the negative is Chauvinism.

***

The appearance, extent, and character of nationalism in European society has attracted much debate among historians and sociologists. Although there is little consensus regarding the forces responsible for its manifestation, most specialists on nationalism believe it to be an essentially modern phenomenon, appearing in the late eighteenth century in Europe and North America.

Three theorists stand out in the genealogical debate over nationalism. Eric J. Hobsbawm defined nationalism as the popular realization of political rights in a sovereign state. A populace linked itself to a limited national territory and was embodied through a centralized government, an event Hobsbawm believed first occurred during the French Revolution. If nationalism was a modern invention, so were nations: the nation-state was the result, rather than the origin, of nationalist discourse. Ernest Gellner adopted an economically reductionist approach, deeming nationalism a necessary function of industrialization. Because industry required skilled labor, a common vernacular, and high rates of literacy, he argued, the need developed for a national "high culture," promoted by a state-run educational system. Simultaneously, the old agrarian order faded away and societal anonymity replaced provincial distinctness, facilitating the creation of a homogenous national culture. Like Hobsbawm, Gellner sought to dispel teleological notions of the nation as eternal; nationalism was a modern invention, created in response to the needs of a new economic system, even if it represented itself as a natural, historical phenomenon.

The theory of the nation as invention was taken further by Benedict Anderson, who saw nationalism as a process of "imagining communities." The decline of universal religious paradigms and the rise in print capitalism allowed for this cultural construction to flourish in the eighteenth century. The mass consumption of newspapers and novels enforced a common vernacular, linked a populace to urban centers, and encouraged common participation in a shared (imagined) culture. Anderson implied that the Reformation and the printing press did more to encourage nationalism than did the advent of industrialization. Despite their differences, all three of these prominent theoreticians identified nationalism, and by association the nation-state, as a phenomenon of the last few centuries.

If nationalism is a modern novelty, then what came before? Certainly the terms nation, patrie, and Vaterland were used before the modern period. What did they mean? Faced with this question, modernists distinguish between nationalism as political ideology and nationalism as cultural identity. Most postulate that the former occurs only in modern society, starting with the French Revolution, while the latter had early modern antecedents. The early modern variant is usually referred to as "national identity" or "proto-nationalism," and it implies an awareness by the populace, at least in part, of a common national culture not yet manifest as a motivating political ideology. Cultural bonds could be found in common language, religion, and custom as well as in the common social condition of being dynastic subjects. Citing these bonds, some historians see modern nationalism making an appearance as early as the sixteenth century.

Conversely, the historian Eugen Weber has argued that if the modern definition requires that nationalism be popular in scope, then nationalism did not permeate the French countryside until the late nineteenth century, when public schools and railroad access exposed the rural population to cosmopolitan cultural norms and formalized instruction in the French language. These latter two interpretations call into question the importance of the French Revolution in the development of modern nationalism.

Time, then, is not the most useful tool for categorizing nationalism or national identity. Nationalism appears irregularly and is dependent on a variety of historical factors or "accidents" that escape structural categorization. And one cannot simply label national identity as embryonic nationalism: not all national identities function within nations, and not all nations have "proto-national" origins. Moreover, national identity should not be seen as something that replaces local attachments. Identities were conterminous, and awareness of national belonging was appended to local and provincial identities. The historian Peter Sahlins has described early modern identity as a series of "counter-identities," in which local communities defined themselves through a multitude of attachments: village, county, province, nation—all of which were distinguishable from the "other," that is, the foreigner.

Throughout the early modern period, the character and intensity of national identity varied widely from place to place. Spain is an excellent example of the potential ambivalence of early modern identity. Spanish subjects generally did not think of themselves as Spanish, but rather as Castilian, Valencian, or Catalan; the formation of a Spanish identity was further hindered by the presence of multiple kingdoms in Spain and the unwillingness of the Habsburg monarchs to promote their association with the Spanish state, particularly in their Castilian exclusivity. Identity was further complicated by the Jewish and Moorish populations on the peninsula, which added a racial character to Spanish identity construction. Nonetheless, Catholic beliefs were widely shared among the inhabitants of Spain.

In Italy, certain Renaissance writers encouraged national awareness through an appeal to an ancient Roman homeland and by evoking civic pride in the cultural accomplishments of the Renaissance. Certainly some contemporary writers idealized Italy: Francesco Guicciardini's revealingly titled Storia d'Italia (History of Italy, written 1536–1540) describes the decline of independent Italian states during the early sixteenth century. The Italian Wars resulted in Spanish occupation of much of the peninsula, and local elites became Spanish clients. Additionally, the papal resurgence during the Counter-Reformation discouraged national consciousness, as the papacy claimed a universal jurisdiction that transcended national limits. Italy remained a geographical expression rather than a nation, and national identity only resonated in elite literary circles. The situation in Germany—conceived of as the homeland of the ancient Germanic tribes, the descendants of whom shared a common ethnicity (as members of a single Volk)—was similar. Germany was a patchwork of small principalities under the nominal authority of the Holy Roman Empire, but the empire was divided between Protestant and Catholic communities; it was not exclusively Germanic; and it lacked a strong central government. German identity was not political or territorial; rather, it was a cultural affinity consisting of linguistic, ethnic, and historical associations.

State centralization played an essential role in the development of national identity in France. The vicissitudes of the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) imbued the French monarchy with a national character that, though threatened during the Wars of Religion (1562–1598), was reinforced over the course of the seventeenth century. The crown was a powerful unifying factor in French society, and belonging to the French nation meant allegiance to the French king. Royal patronage of art, literature, and historical writing promoted French culture, and the international acceptance of the French language and Parisian styles as the epitome of civilization at least among European elites, contributed to the sense of its distinctiveness and superiority. The monarchical association with the patrie faded only during the eighteenth century, as Enlightenment discourses posited the French people, rather than the king, as the legitimate repository of national sovereignty.

Before nationalism became central to French revolutionary discourses, the Netherlands and Great Britain—two relatively isolated North Atlantic Protestant states—seem to have developed strong national identities, the Dutch in the seventeenth century and the British in the eighteenth. They may thus meet the key criterion set out by modern definitions of nationalism—a widely held political ideology that identifies the nation-state as a distinct and sovereign representation of a particular people and as the embodiment or defender of its culture. In the cases of both the Dutch and the British, national identity was deeply entwined with religion, economic wealth, and political revolt. Protestantism was essential to the creation of both nationalisms. Protestant theologians' insistence on widespread vernacular literacy, combined with the rise of print capitalism, facilitated the creation of a national religious community. Urbanization and a rising middle class gave common people a vested interest in the political order, and as the historian Linda Colley has shown, patriotism and profit went hand in hand. Daniel Defoe's The Complete English Tradesman (1726) provides an excellent example of this growing national identity, as it explicitly links the social benefits of international trade to national pride in being English. Military crises—particularly the struggles against a Catholic "other"—augmented Britons' burgeoning national sentiment by juxtaposing religious and national sovereignty against the fear of foreign invasion.

Significantly, both the Dutch and the British endured severe political crises that resulted in the demise of monarchical regimes. The resulting insecurities over political legitimacy necessitated justifications for revolt, and contemporary writers constructed a new kind of legitimacy based on a pseudo-historical national ethos. Dutch and British writers used classical allegories as reflections of contemporary political conflicts and as means of constructing essentialized notions of national uniqueness. Seventeenth-century coins, medals, and pamphlets associated the new Dutch Republic with the Batavians, ancient barbarians who fought Julius Caesar or, more often, with the Israelites. The Dutch saw themselves as a chosen people threatened by subjugation, and they deployed such images to distinguish themselves from surrounding peoples and states. In the British case, even if the English, Scots, and Welsh had individual claims of separate identity, they all knew that they were fundamentally different from the Catholic French. Protestantism for them became synonymous with "Britishness," hence the litany of characteristics the British believed themselves to exemplify: freedom, prosperity, and rationality, contrasted forcefully against the perceived superstition and impoverishment of the oppressed French.

The concept of national identity is complex, and its intensity, character, and origins vary with time and place. Some areas of Europe were completely ambivalent to national sentiment, while populations elsewhere could be considered exceedingly patriotic. Different classes and orders could display varying degrees of national identification, and there could be differences between urban and rural populations as well. While the development of national identity remains a difficult historical problem, several general conclusions may be offered. Although most early modern European societies did not develop national identities to the same degree as the British and the Dutch, they did readily contrast themselves with their neighbors. In the early modern mind, "nation" might primarily mean place of birth, yet it also carried cultural weight: one's nation connoted perhaps ethnicity, perhaps language, but almost certainly religion. Religious homogeneity played a vital role in the construction of national identity, not just for the cases cited above, but also for the Scandinavian states and for Russia and much of Eastern Europe. One can state with fair certainty that most people saw themselves as part of a wider community, one that was occasionally national in scope, and that religion, language, and local political structures played prominent roles in determining that identity.