Faith in one's own spiritual community and a creative, free religion or spirituality
Today, I’m going to finish walking through the Japanese twentieth-century advocate of a creative, free religion or spirituality, Imaoka Shin’ichiro’s “My Principles of Living,” by taking together his final three statements of faith, 6, 7, and 8. My previous three pieces, being an introduction and two further pieces on statements 1 and 2, and then 3, 4, and 5, can be found at these links:
Introduction:
A gentle call to adopt Imaoka Shin’ichirō’s creative, free spirituality found in his “My Principles of Living”
Statements 1 and 2:
Faith in ourselves, our neighbours, and ourselves as neighbours
Statements 3, 4, 5:
Faith in a universal cooperative society
But before I get to statements 6, 7 and 8. I must start by looking at two, very tricky words, “church” and “religion.”
Whether we like it or not, not only the word, but the whole idea of “church” is becoming increasingly problematic in our own time and place. Although it is far from always being true, for too many of us today, the word “church” is now associated with countless illiberal and, frankly nasty and dysfunctional things, that most of us intensely dislike and want wholly to be rid of, none of which I will list here. Can the word “church” be salvaged? I really don’t know. Now, sometimes considering the etymology of a word can help but in this case I’m not sure it does because it seems to be derived from the Greek, “kyriakon dōma,” meaning “the Lord’s,” i.e. “God’s house.” In a liberal religious tradition such as our own, that values a certain type of individual freedom and critical, evidence-led inquiry, the idea of regularly attending a “house” belonging to an omnipotent, ruling Lord is, by and large, a deeply unattractive proposition.
So I’m not sure I can do a great deal to salvage the word “church” myself, but what I can do is point you and others to the Japanese word that Imaoka sensei used, which has conventionally been translated as “church.” The word is kyōkai ( 教会 or, sometimes, as on the noticeboard in Tokyo, 教會 ).
The first character of this, 教 (kyō), means “teach” or “teaching.” So, in connection with religion, it refers to the kind of teaching, about how the world is and our place in it, that is on offer. I’ll briefly return to this word again in connection with the word “religion.”
The second character, kai ( 会 or 會 ), simply means “assembly,” “meeting,” “association,” or “gathering.” Indeed, when you look at the character itself, and over time Imaoka sensei used two characters for it, but in both you can see that it is a little drawing of a building, a meeting-house or assembly-room.
Now, although in Japanese the term kyokai is most often used in connection with Christian churches it can also be used in a broader sense to indicate any kind of association within which a particular kind of philosophy, religion or spiritual practice is taught and encouraged. In English we simply don’t have a single catch-all word for this broad phenomenon and, although I fully expect to lose the argument, I think there is good reason simply to borrow the word kyōkai, something which, I might remind you, is what we did over a thousand years ago with kyriakon doma.
Anyway, Imaoka sensei’s 6th statement needs to be heard with this broad understanding of kyōkai in mind, i.e. the idea of a gathering place in which we both teach and learn with others about how to best to become a free and creative human being:
6. “I have faith in the [ideal of the] church. The church is the prototype/archetype and driving force of the cooperative society. I can only be myself by being a member of the church.”
In short, he’s saying we can only be a genuinely individual self when we join with others and uderstand ourselves as belonging to some wider community. Properly to understand this trinity of self, others and community, I refer you back to Imaoka sensei’s first five statements.
As we head now towards statements 7 and 8, let’s turn to the word “religion.” Again it’s a word that resonates problematically, so much so that, again and again, we hear many people today talking about being “spiritual but not religious.” However, unlike with the word “church” it is, I think, helpful to consider the possible etymologies for the word “religion.”
The first, and most popular, opinion is that it derives from “religare,” which means “to bind fast,” in the sense of placing an obligation on, or making a bond between, humans and god/s. However, some have argued that this “binding” should be understood with the more positive sense of making a strong “reconnections” with something perceived to be good and necessary.
The second possibility is that it derives from “relegere” meaning something like “to go through again,” just as one critically reviews one’s own thoughts or re-reads (re-legere) a book.
The third possibility, not often mentioned, is that it comes from “religiens” meaning, “careful.” In this sense it’s the opposite of “negligens”, as in negligent.
As I hope you can see, all three senses have something positive about them. But, alas, the problem with the word’s modern, negative associations, connected with the idea that religion is something restrictive or controlling remains in play, and this is why, in the early 20th-century, Imaoka sensei needed to add the adjective, “free”, to “religion” in order to create a deliberate, creative tension with the sense of “binding.” Imaoka sensei coined this new, Japanese, term in an attempt to speak of something which, by binding people together in community in the right kinds of ways, is something that actually freed them to grow into more better, more creative and loving people.
The word he coined was “jiyū shūkyō” ( 自由宗教 ) which in the literature so far has consistently been translated as “free religion.” For what it’s worth, I’m increasingly feeling that it’s best written in English as a single, hyphenated word: “free-religion.”
In order better to understand its true meaning, it helps to break down Imaoka sensei’s two words into their constituent characters.
So let’s start with “jiyū” meaning “free”:
“Ji” ( 自 ) has the fundamental meaning of “self.” In various contexts, it can speak of the spontaneous or natural expression of self, and so is used in words that relate to the individual or to autonomy, such as “jibun” ( 自分 oneself) or “jidōsha” ( 自動車 automobile, literally a ‘self-moving car’).
and
“Yū” ( 由 ) means “reason,” “cause,” or “freedom.” And when it’s combined with “ji,” such as in the word “jiju” ( 自由 ), it particularly emphasizes the concept of freedom or liberty.
And now let’s look at “shūkyō” meaning “religion”:
“Shū” ( 宗 ) means a “religion” or “denomination” (sometimes the word “sect” is used in translation) and it is used to describe a particular tradition or group within a larger religious or philosophical framework. So, for example, “Zen-shū” ( 禅宗 ) refers to the Zen tradition within Mahayana Buddhism.
And, as you have already heard in connection with “kyōkai,” “kyō” ( 教 ) means “teach” or “teaching.”
In consequence, when combined as jiyū shūkyō ( 自由宗教 ) we have a term which refers to a collective, creative, educationally orientated, philosophy or spirituality, that is characterized by an emphasis on freedom and an appropriate understanding and outplaying of the self. So, here we are talking about something in which, together, in community, people are able freely to interpret critically, various religious beliefs and claims, can find freedom from rigid, authoritarian hierarchies, can freely incorporate diverse religious elements into their own and the community’s faith and practise and, as I so often talk about, can claim the all important freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today.
Despite the negative association with the word “religion” this is what the hyphenated word free-religion means, and it is about this that Imaoka sensei’s final two statements are concerned. As before, I wholly recommend them to you for consideration as being part of your own, and perhaps your own community's creative, free, spiritual community’s understanding of who and what we are:
7. I have faith in a specific religion ( 教会 kyōkai). In other words, I am a member of the Tokyo Kiitsu Kyokai [sometimes translated as the Tokyo Unitarian Church or, better, as the Tokyo Unity Fellowship]. However, a specific religion (including the Tokyo Kiitsu Kyokai) neither monopolizes religious truth nor is it the ultimate embodiment of it.
8. I have faith in jiyū shūkyō (自由宗教 free-religion, or a creative, free spirituality). While having faith in a specific religion, the endless pursuit and improvement towards universal and ultimate truth is the core of religious life. Such a dynamic religion is called jiyū shūkyō.
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