When introducing himself during Wednesday’s All-School Meeting (ASM), Reza Aslan described his moderately religious upbringing as well as his background as an Iranian immigrant. With the exception of his father, a “robust atheist,” Aslan considered his family to be a “lukewarm Muslim family.”
Despite the moderation of his family’s religious beliefs, Aslan decided at a young age that he wanted to study religion. At ASM, Aslan spoke about the nature of religion in modern times and how it operates in both personal and communal experiences. Based on his his decades of study, Aslan presented three key aspects of humanity’s relationship with religion.
First, Aslan shared his belief that religion and faith are separate concepts, related but not synonymous. Aslan explained how faith is emotionally based, whereas religion is used to outwardly articulate that feeling.
“See, faith is an emotion more than anything else. It is part of the human tradition. In many ways, it’s how we function as human beings. I’ve done an enormous amount of studies about how the idea of faith, the religious impulse arose in human evolution. And it turns out that the consensus to that question is that faith will be the impulse towards religious belief,” said Aslan.
Aslan continued, “Religion is the language we use in order to express that thing. It’s a language made up primarily of symbols and metaphors, and really all languages are. And those symbols and metaphors give us a means of communicating to ourselves and to like-minded people the ineffable experience of faith. It’s a way of expressing what is fundamentally inexpressible.”
Aslan then spoke about the common misconception that values are derived from one’s religion. According to Aslan, the opposite is true. Using the example of how a single piece of scripture may be interpreted differently by different people, Aslan argued that individual morals and values give religion meaning.
“The second thing that I learned, also kind of obvious but a little bit counterintuitive, is that people don’t necessarily derive their values from their religion. That’s kind of what we assume, right? That if you’re a religious person, your morals, your values, the very way that you see the world is given to you by your religion. That’s not the case, actually. People don’t derive their values from their religion, they more often than not insert their values into their religion,” said Aslan.
For his third point, Aslan emphasized religion as less of a fixed, immutable set of beliefs and practices, and more as a facet of identity.
“Religion — and it doesn’t matter what religion you’re talking about, it doesn’t matter where in the world you’re talking about — religion is often far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. Obviously, beliefs and practices are important. They’re just not as important as identity. When someone says, ‘I am a Muslim,’ ‘I am a Jew,’ ‘I am a Christian,’ ‘I am a Hindu,’ they are more often than not making an identity statement, not a faith statement.” said Aslan.
Aslan’s point resonated with Mia Levy ’21, who explained how her family’s Judaism is more an expression of their background than a religious imperative.
“My family is Jewish, and I really, really, enjoyed what he was talking about — how faith and religion are two different things. My family views Judaism more as a recognition of our heritage rather than the faith that we follow. I really thought that he portrayed the difference between religion and faith in a really good way. And I also thought that him going into different cultures and accepting and learning the language of their religion is really cool and something that I really admire,” said Levy.
Tyler Yung ’20 said he found Aslan’s separate definitions of religion and faith especially relatable when viewing the distinctions through the lens of today’s society.
Yung said, “I found his talk about how religion and faith are really distinct to be very relatable. I realized that these days, when someone says, ‘I’m Christian,’ I immediately relate their religion to a part of their identity and what they believe in, but Reza Aslan’s talk helped me clearly understand that faith also plays a role.”
Other students like Lindsay Rosenberg ’19 spoke to Aslan’s emphasis on religion as a means to connect with or understand others.
Rosenberg said, “I am incredibly interested in studying religion, as it has the power to unite or divide people across the globe. I loved the ASM speaker’s message. I really enjoyed what he said about religion being a language that we should all attempt to learn in order to better understand one another.”
