The study of the origin or evolution of religion usually attracts those who are antagonistic to religion – those who assume or hope to prove that religion is nothing more than a man-made phenomenon. For such individuals, no matter what the evidence reveals, the existence of God is rejected. If the religions studied are in conflict, then they must all be wrong. If they are similar, then they must merely be human inventions.

Rodney Stark refuses to begin with this secular assumption. He suggests that the study of the origin and evolution of religion may result in an authentic “discovery” of God. It is for this reason that his book is titled, Discovering God.

Studying the evolution of religion differs from studying evolution. Unlike biological evolution, cultural evolution is the product of conscious choices. The principle of the survival of the fittest in cultural evolution means that “those cultures and/or cultural elements better suited to human needs will survive and those less suited will tend to die out” (9).

Social scientists studying the origin and evolution of religion in the twentieth century agreed on two points: “religion is a universal feature of human cultures, albeit primitive religions were very crude” (23). On the first point they were dead right. Contemporary scholarship proves their second assumption to be dead wrong.

The most fundamental question concerning the universal expression of religion is simply: Why? Why is religion such a universal phenomenon?

It is axiomatic that “universal phenomenon can only be explained by other universal phenomenon” (38). What then, are the potential universal factors behind religion?

Some suggest that the universal factor is simply biological. Religion is a product of the primitive mind or a survival strategy. But religion is more than a primitive instinct (and we are certainly more than our instincts).

Some suggest that the universal factor is cultural. Since all cultural innovations begin with an individual (inventor or prophet) and then spread into a culture, all religions arise from “very gifted individuals who appear from time to time and introduce new religious culture” (44). The similar aspects of various religions may then be understood as a product of our shared human predicament, or more provocatively, “they are similar because each [innovator] is responding to a revelation from the same divine source” (44).

Religion has to do with explanations of existence and ultimate meaning. Thus, “one key to the universality of religion” may be “its capacity to overcome the generic limitations of human power by invoking entities or forces that transcend nature” (45).

The religious innovator usually claims to have received his or her message through inspiration or revelation. Though some who hear voices or receive revelations are certainly crazy or fraudulent, the most prominent innovators do not evidence these characteristics: “most showed no indications whatever of mental illness, and most made personal sacrifices utterly incompatible with fraud” (48).

Tragically, few sociologists consider the factor behind the universality of religion to be theological. The concept of “universal revelation” is not antithetical to Christianity. In the early twentieth century, theologian Hugh R. Mackintosh wrote, “revelation has been going on in all places and at all times—in nature, in history, and specially in the history of religions. ... It is not possible ... to believe ... that God the father ... seduously hid himself from all but Jews and Christians. ... That God has spoken to the world through prophets, seers, saints in every clime, is no reason why he should not have spoken finally in his Son” (54). Stark concludes, “Hence, it can be argued that if religions have much in common, that is to be expected because each is based on revelations, variously accommodated and interpreted, from the One True God” (54). Unfortunately, this view did not take hold, because many academic theologians were rejecting “revelation” and “exploring psychological or philosophical foundations for a kind of post-Christian religiousness” (54).

What if “[t]he many similarities of religions around the world are not evidence that they all are human inventions, but reflect a ‘universal revelation’ dating from earliest times”? What if, “at the dawn of humanity all religions were alike; everyone knew the same God [and] [i]t is the variations from one religion to another that reveal the insertion of human inventions, of misunderstanding, and of faulty transitions across generations”? (62)

Quotes excerpted from Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief by Rodney Stark
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007