Here is the fifth and final installment in my series on a case study of prayer beads as used (and interpreted) in multiple religious contexts. If you missed earlier installments, you can begin with the first section here.
Summing Up
Following this moment of consideration, let’s briefly revisit the thrust of this series. The spiritual practice of prayer beads is ancient with origins that extend back into the dim mists of pre-history. Practically every global world religion, and several regionally-bound ones, has utilized the practice and successfully integrated it into their theology. Evidence for this movement exists historically in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and even Judaism to a small extent. Each religion employs a very similar practice with regard to behavior, but the beliefs attached to the practice vary with respect to the theological standpoint of each religion, although some overlap in purpose among religions is evident. Moving into the present, the sociological study of an intra-religious example of borrowing prayer beads gives further insight into source, use, and purpose of spiritual borrowing. Then, on the basis of this specific instance, I have outlined some directions in which these insights inform spiritual borrowing more generally. With this framework in mind, let me connect these threads a little more explicitly to draw my argument to a close.
The abstract implications of spiritual borrowing loom large in this discussion, and they tend to hide the greatest practical benefit of any insights gained from examination of this process. Spiritual practices borrowed from one religion to another form a link among the religions. Once this basic empirical point is delineated, it is very tempting to jump into the subjunctive realm of should and ought. We start asking questions like “Should religions borrow practices from each other?”; “Ought the boundaries of individual religions be permeable?”; “What do permeable religious boundaries say about ultimate reality or God?” These questions are a natural extension of the argument, and they should be asked, but they serve to circumvent an important value of the discussion. When we move to talking theoretically about “ultimate reality,” we have moved to consider the impact of borrowing theologically, but what about the impact of borrowing anthropologically? Rather than jumping ahead to consider what spiritual borrowing is saying about God – which we could debate endlessly – what about spending some time considering what spiritual borrowing is saying about humanity? The links among religions are our links. They concretely display a unifying agent among all, or nearly all, humans. That is no small thing! On an anthropological basis, religion has the power to unify humanity, if we decide to look at the question of should that way.
If I may be allowed one more metaphor in closing, then my case might come through more clearly. Looking at the concept of “Manifest Destiny,” we find a very difficult historical problem. On one side, the concept of Manifest Destiny was deplorable, racist, and death-dealing for many individuals and people groups as the United States spread across the American frontier. It is easy to see this side from the lofty perspective of hindsight. On the other side, this idea provided a galvanizing influence for many in the United States to develop technologically, politically, socially – it gave them an idea that was larger than themselves in which to believe. It even allowed for the western spread of the country to create territories untouched by the deep divisions of the eastern states which led to the U.S. Civil War. Who’s to say, without some areas of the country untouched by civil war, the United States might not have recovered as a unified country from that conflict? There was great power for good and evil in Manifest Destiny. We can look back at Manifest Destiny and wonder whether it should have happened. It is tempting to look at spiritual borrowing the same way. Should it have occurred? We could endlessly spin our wheels in abstract theory at this point, but let’s push the metaphor forward.
We cannot undo Manifest Destiny, so we cannot really do anything on the basis of the question, “Should Manifest Destiny have occurred?” We have to be honest and ask the question, “Since Manifest Destiny did occur, what ought we to do now, learning from it?” My argument is that spiritual borrowing should be treated similarly. Borrowing of spiritual practices from religion to religion does occur – prayer beads are only one small example – and theology follows after to reinterpret. On this basis, the question shifts from a theological focus to an anthropological focus: “Since spiritual borrowing does link humans from all religions together, what should we do on the basis of our common link?” Our theological interpretations can begin in earnest once we’ve dealt with this primal, human question first.