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Let’s imagine that a group of Protestants took a time machine back to Medieval Europe to see what their religion was like when it first started. What would they see? Would their church services look the same? Would they see God in the same way? How much did their pastor focus on the community?
Chances are that the group of time-travelling Protestants would be appalled. Perhaps they may not even recognize their own religion. The preacher would have focused more on the “fire and brimstone God” as opposed to the loving God that is taught in most churches today.
So how do religions with the same beliefs change so drastically over the years? Many scholars believe that it is due to the concept of “modernity.”
I had an opportunity to sit down with Dr. Antoinette DeNapoli, an Assistant Professor of Religion Studies at the University of Wyoming. As an expert of Hinduism and Buddhism, Dr. DeNapoli is beginning her research on modernity and its application to Sadhus in India.
What is Modernity?
“Modernity is the academic study in which forms of the modern shape a cultural consciousness. It’s the reactions to those forms when it comes to either reinterpreting (social and religious issues) and thinking about ways in which forms of the modern interface with religion.”
So how does it apply to religion?
“Religion may be seen as a network of relationships between humans and the powers they see as sacred and how, in the formation of saving, challenging, and leaving behind those relationships mean about the cosmos and how forms of the modern and it’s theorization relate to and speak to religion.”
How does Technology change religion?
“Humans are using forms of the modern (like technology) to reinterpret tradition and to make their religion very much relatable and relevant in a society where religion and its relevancy is being questioned… in a time where capitalistic human based influences that are geared towards in need of instant gratification… today we see Sadhu’s (Hindu holy people) who are traditionally isolated and leave everything behind who are on Facebook and Twitter.”
Does Modernity change the way people view their religion?
“I’m seeing that there is a point in which practitioners are rejecting the idea that somehow technology and modernity is anti-tradition. You find more and more religious people, both clergy and lay alike, rethinking the relationship between religion and modernity.”
Our society will change and our technology will change with it. It’s these byproducts of modernity that will continue to shape religion. I do not feel as if modernity and our constantly changing world will destroy religion, but merely alter it. My guess is that 500 years from now, religious believers will look back on their own beliefs and how it was practiced today and notice how strange it is.
