What is it about?
People use symbols to appresent, or make present what is absent, and hence a religious symbol, such as the Torah, announces to others the God whose law calls for ethical, responsible treatment of others, or a ritual makes present the God people experience as absent outside of the ritual. Religions help their adherents to participate in such activity in such a way that way beyond the confines of their religions, they find symbols making present the transcendent they find in their religions. Hence, as Jonathan Edwards remarked, in the presence of a flower, a sunset, even the thunder he feared--after his religious conversion--he experienced the presence of the transcendent.
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Why is it important?
This approach develops Alfred Schutz's notion of symbolic behavior as it fits within a finite province of meaning. It shows how such symbolic activity does not rely on rational inference, but rather depends on syntheses that occur between the symbol and the transcendent it makes present. And these conscious syntheses take place beneath the controlling ego.
Perspectives
This paper is a development out of my recently published book, Religion and Humor as Emancipative Provinces of Meaning, and it is the first attempt to use Schutz's whole idea of "multiple realities" to describe religious practice.
Michael Barber
Saint Louis University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Religion and the Appresentative Mindset, Open Theology, August 2017, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/opth-2017-0031.
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