Thanks for the kind words about the blog, and I’m eager to hear your comments on previous posts! I’ve tried to index tags and categories heavily, to help people find posts of interest. Do let me know whether it’s useful to you or there are ways to improve it.

I will certainly be back, and I’ve added Love of All Wisdom to my blogroll. I’m going to keep digging through your archives, but I am already feeling invigorated from what I have encountered here. I am impressed with both the catholicity and the depth of the posts.

As to the difference or lack thereof betw. “religious” and “secular”… I don’t wish to pull the comment thread very far astray, but one might note that it’s perfectly possible to be both of these simultaneously, depending on how one spins the words… For instance, some would claim that most contemporary American religion is secular through and through, if one means by this that the religious is a sort of ‘option’ *within* the secular. Similarly, I can imagine Kierkegaard saying that his Copenhagen was both sec. and rel., (though not perhaps in his specialized sense of “religious” as a Stage on Life’s Way). Of course there is a current Christian trope that tries to argue that Christianity is “not religious”; and I have some sympathy with this take on things, but again, I always want to ask “compared to what…?” And I am deeply suspicious of contemporary “explanations” (=reductions) of religion-in-general (e.g. Pascal Boyer, Daniel Dennett), though I have certainly learned somethings from them.

I agree that there are a number of different lessons one can take from the article; that’s part of its genius. At the time of writing, the point may likely have been to undercut smug ideas of Western superiority (as suggested in the last sentences). That’s less of an issue these days, at least among the kind of people who read anthropology articles, and yet I think the article remains as powerful as ever.

I agree with you 100% about “religion” as well. One of the problems the term poses is that it makes us think that “secular” and “religious” questions (or answers) are different in kind. But suffering and mindfulness were problems for
the avowedly atheistic Epicureans as well as the effectively atheistic Theravāda Buddhists; practices to change our cognitive approaches in ways that reduce suffering are as important for psychoanalysts as for Buddhists. There are so many questions out there more important and interesting than this perplexing term “religion.”

I am also suspicious of the uses of idea of “religion;” it works well enough for some things, but too often it’s a kind of leveler. I think it’s especially unhelpful in cross-religious dialogue. As a Christian, I don’t want to know what Buddhism can show me about “being religious;” I want to know about suffering, mindfulness, discipleship. Religion is (for these purposes) too ‘thin’ a concept.

But it strikes me that the Miner article sort of cuts both ways: you can read it as saying “we really are all more or less similar from a few steps back,” or (on the other hand) as saying, “you’ve got to step up close in order to see what things mean.” My sense is, to every distance, there is a season.