Jodi Picoult is known for writing great beach reading. Her books lie somewhere between the style of Twilight or The DaVinci Code in their literary quality, but also, because of their subject matter, prompt one to rethink aspects of the world. It's an interesting combination and makes for excellent plane reading, which is why every time I go into an airport I buy another one of her books.
While flying back up to Appleton from my Spring Break I read one of her newer books, Change of Heart, which, interestingly enough, has a lot to say about what we as a RLST class are talking about right now - how to define a religion.
Her stories are always pretty convoluted, with each chapter being from the perspective of a different character, but the basic story is this -
- A guy who has been convicted of a double murder sits on death row and begins exhibiting characteristics of being Jesus Christ (healing the sick, raising the dead, turning water into wine, etc. Think: Green Mile).
- He wants to donate his heart to a girl who is related to the people he killed.
- Donating his heart isn't possible if he's killed by lethal injection, so he goes to court and uses the argument that organ donation is part of his religion (a one-man religion) and that killing him that way would violate his first amendment right to freedom of religion.
- Meanwhile there's a priest, a rabbi, and some lawyers. Sounds like the making of a great joke, but actually it's an exciting read.
Naturally, part of this book has to do with defining faith. It asks - What is religion? Can this man's one-man spirituality be classified as a religion? If so, then can anyone have their own religion? What are the social, political, and legal consequences of that choice?
Picoult's journey in answering those questions involves (like many of her books do) often complicated and convoluted personal relationships between the characters, profanity, sex, and twists in the storyline that make it a great page-turner.
But along the way she does a surprisingly serious examination of these issues. I found it ironic that I finished this book the day before class started. I was reminded of it today while we were struggling to say what "is" religion and what "is not", using the debate over of Science as our focus.
In justifying that this man does indeed have his own legitimate religion, Picoult uses the example of the Gnostics. She (through one of her characters who is an agnostic academic and religious expert) describes Gnosticism as a movement in which the most important thing was to put one's own take on religion and spirituality, thereby having an individualized religion. Along the way she takes a page out of Dan Brown's book (The DaVinci Code) in talking about the emergence of Christianity as a major world religion and where their "rules" came from, especially involving the choosing of the four Biblical gospels over the supposedly hundreds more, including what are known now as the Gnostic Gospels.
This got me thinking - well, by the Geertz definition then Maybe. If we take the definition literally and read it as Geertz meaning by "men" that more than one person needs to agree with or believe in those "conceptions", then No. But if he means "men" in the more general sense of referring to mankind as a whole, then maybe Yes, religion could apply on an individual level. And certainly those inidividual ideas, by their nature, would be "uniquely realistic".
This is where it can get complicated, and potentially dangerous. What does it mean for our laws, our conceptions of what religion means, and how we treat other people if suddenly everyone can have their own religion? What does that mean about the clout that individual people hold as compared to organized religions?
Maybe after a few weeks in this class I should pick up Picoult's book again. Who knows what I might read into it this time...
This was a fun post. Neat to think about a book you have just finished and re-evaluate it in the light of class!
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