Religion in Human Life

Religion in Human Life ROBERT H. LOWIE* University of California the S INCE this article is concerned with own moot matter of religion, I should perhaps begin by making clear my point of view and my reasons for coming to the conclusions that I have come to. My first awareness of religious strife came from my grandfather before I left Vienna at the age of ten; he had been an agnostic from his medical student days, and he laid the foundations for my own later attitudes. From my parents I received no religious training of any kind. By the time I was sixteen, I was already reading the philosophes and imitating their violent anti-clericalism and bitterness toward all religion. This period continued, largely under the stimulus of and acquaintance with Ernst Haeckel, until I was about 25. At this point I was already going into the field as an ethnologist. It did not take long to discover that to the primitive mind religion was of paramount importance. If I wanted to understand the Indians of that period I simply had to study its values for them. Moreover, my constant field trips brought me into contact with dedicated men of all faiths who were certainly deriving neither money nor renown by being missionaries to a group of Indians on a remote reservation. They lived as other members of the community did, in poverty, and they remained with their charges through pestilence and famine. One day it occurred to me that both the Indians and the hardy souls who were trying to convert them to Christianity had some inner strength that I lacked. Nor was I unique in this lack. I began to wonder how many scientists would undergo for their science the years of poverty that the priests and ministers willingly accepted for their religion. Here clearly was a phenomenon of both primitive and civilized life that war­ ranted study. So I began to collect information about native religions on the same objective basis upon which I assembled data on basket-weaving, social organization, hunting, or any other aspect of primitive life. Moreover, through my reading I discovered that no group of people had ever been found who did not have a religion of some kind. Since religion is a universal manifestation, it must have some value. I found also that despite the immense variations in the outward observances, the inner glow and the function of religion in the group were identical from one form to another. The Catholic priest, the Mormon missionary, the Eskimo shaman, the African witch-doctor, and the Protestant clergyman were all alike in their sense of inner conviction, in their intense desire to help others, and in their dependence upon some force outside themselves that gave them courage. Fanatic, ignorant, or rigid they might be, but they were men of faith. I cannot say that I have become a religious man as the result of my study, but I have become an informed one; and I have seen too Professor Lowie died on September 21, 1957. This article was found among his papers.