Religion as Imagination

"Musn't the ability and the will to adopt a religious standpoint be present prior to the ritual performance" (Asad 1993:50)

Since I started in religious studies I have abhorred the idea that religion needed to be defined. Coming from literary studies, deeply influenced by post-colonial critiques of power-knowledge, I found that definitions are instruments of control that attempt to limit phenomenon by explaining them. I think that this attempts to reduce mystery to something consumable. That is to say that I think religion, while a very basic concept of our world, in the end, remains mysterious. But I have come to see the advantages of having a provisional definition of religion, one that remains "always-already" partial, yet orienting. So with out further ado...

My always-already partial definition of religion:
Religion is a product of the imagination. A religion is a social-imaginary, an object created by multiple imaginations coming together for the hope of a common purpose. Religion also includes an element of bodily action; however, this element is secondary to the imaginative possibility of action. Imagination is primary because one must have a glimpse of possible action before purposeful action can take place. When Abraham leaves his known locality of Ur to search for the city of God, he must have a image of this city in his mind before his pilgrimage can be undertaken. This image need not be accurate, but it must exceed his immanent knowledge. It must push him beyond.

This is to say that the possibility of action must exist before action takes place. Religious action always takes place in the space created by the free play of the imagination. This is the case when someone innovates, and also when someone conforms to pre-imagined constructs of religion (as is the case with tradition).
Habits are fostered which reform life-worlds, subjectivities and bodies, yet the ability to form habits is contingent on one's potential to imagine ways of conforming to habit. Conformity, in the creation of habitus, is imaginative activity.

One might say that this concept of religion is a theory of subjectivity that can be applied to any human capacity: politics, culture, economics, travel. To this I say yes. I claim that imagination is religious because it is mysterious (as the history of psychoanalysis in the 20th century will testify to, along with surrealism, and post-modern attempts to negate the imagination - Zizek), yet not so mysterious that it is unknowable in entirety. The totality of the imagination may not be understood, but certain process can be approached in part. As with the subject, so with the social: the social element of religion can have a symbolic shape, yet the this symbolic shape will never represent the sum of religious possibility, because of the mysterious excess of its parts (constitutive subjectivities). Without such subjectivities, religion would not exist. Thus a theory of subjectivity is the basic starting point of a definition of religion.

The symbolic "structure" of religion, embodied in buildings, texts, and selves is real, yet created (note: This is not to align the "real" with the "true"). It is fashionable to claim that products of the imagination are abstractions, as say Benedict Anderson claims regarding the nation; I assert that imagined products are real: I drive one everyday; I am using one to write this blog. Both the car and the computer are imagined products, as are movies, literature and theatrical performances. Cathedrals and the texts which inspired them are equally real. Temples and sutras are as real as the monks and nuns that use them.

Still the question remains: what makes Mahayana Buddhism different then a cultural product, say the film "Spring, Summer Fall, Winter, Spring" (a Korean film about a Mahayana monk and a young boy)? I would say that this question (which tries to get at the distinction between religion and culture), is conceptually problematic. The film is religious, yet the form is modern. We like to think that modern cultural products are areligious, however this idea is false. Is there a difference between religion and culture? Yes, but it exists in the interplay of transcendence and immanence. We imagine culture to be constrained by the immanent (the given), while religion keeps the immanent and transcendent in tension. We call things religious for many reason:
A) because they privilege this tension of the immanent and transcendent
B) because they are traditional
C) because they are routine
(feel free to add to this list)

Faith is the actuality of synthesizing a transcendent vision with the immanent. Bad faith is unsuccessful because one's vision is shoddy. Good faith is successful because the object of vision has fidelity with the real.

Because the imagination is mysterious we never limit agency to the human. There is a possibility that something other then human interacts with imagination, just as the same possibility exists that the world is founded on something we cannot conceptualize in total. Whether we can speak about this other intelligently is still out there...