Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [13]
We must also consider the history of European misperceptions about the religions of the world. Europeans misperceived the religion of native Africans in South Africa for centuries, thinking that the Hottentots, Bechuana, and Besuto, for example, had no religion because they had no churches, religious hierarchy, liturgy, nor exact dogmas about salvation and the afterlife.29 They often felt these cultures practiced a degraded form of Islam or Judaism because they circumcised and followed food laws. This gave the Europeans an excuse to impose their own religion upon the Africans. The European standard for religion was deeply involved in notions of afterlife and tended to judge all others by their own notions.
Most, if not all, of the world’s cultures maintain some sort of belief in life after death. Perhaps this is simply because no one can escape the difficult question of what happens to our loved ones when they die. However strong religious faith is, it can never fully overcome the feeling of loss of those who loved the departed. In some societies these beliefs have a guardian and intercessary role. In other societies the ancestors, ghosts, and spirits of the dead are malevolent creatures. But almost every society uses these practices as a way of enforcing proper funeral and postmortem proprieties. The rites must not be left undone, lest the children prove unworthy of the love the parents and grandparents bore them when they were young. The transformed dead may support a system of justice; they may help support a particular priesthood, class of prophets, healers, or kingship; or the dead may help support the integrity of the family.
Because notions of life after death help us conquer our ultimate fears of mortality in important ways, they also help society or culture organize and maintain itself. The same results can be attained whether the dead are malevolent or benevolent, though the kind of rite necessary and the kind of offices to perform them will differ markedly. We all know that notions of life after death differ widely from culture to culture and from major religion to major religion. Indeed, even a quick study of the major religions of the world reveals differing and sometimes conflicting or contradictory notions of life after death. But the fact that these views differ radically does not mean that they are invalid or ridiculous. Behind these notions lie a limited number of functions and structures. Beneath the visions of paradise expressed in countless different cultural idioms, there are a certain number of universal functions: Primary among them are the reification and legitimation of a society’s moral and social system; but one could just as easily argue that there is something fundamental to human life in them and that without them we would be totally lost in the world.
The Afterlife Is Sacred
THERE IS ONE more issue that needs to be addressed. That is the sensitivity many people feel when their notions of the afterlife are challenged. Professor Krister Stendahl reflects on his earlier work on resurrection and immortality, stating that he received more unhappy letters on this subject than on any other subject that he has ever undertaken.30 If his edited and circumspect work-an admirable volume created under the supervision of both a well-educated, rational man and a man of faith-was subject to unfair and sometimes hateful criticism, perhaps I should expect a torrent for my more unorthodox treatment of the subject. But I will not broach the issue of religious truth and certainty until the very end of this project and hope the reader will have the patience to wait until then for my conclusions.
We are in a field where both the faithful and the disbelieving legitimately have their doubts and where strong argumentation is