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2007

Religion, Religious Fervour and the Universalist
Education
Noemi Gal-Or
Kwantlen Polytechnic University

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Original Publication Citation
Gal-Or, N. (2007). Religion, Religious Fervour, and Universalist Education (2007). Journal of Religious Culture/Journal fuer
Religionskultur, 86. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2238798

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________________________________________________________________________

Journal of Religious Culture
Journal für Religionskultur

Ed. by / Hrsg. von Edmund Weber
in Association with / in Zusammenarbeit mit Matthias Benad
Institute for Irenics / Institut für Wissenschaftliche Irenik
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
ISSN 1434-5935- © E.Weber – E-mail: irenik@em.uni-frankfurt.de
________________________________________________________________________

No. 86 (2007)
Religion, Religious Fervour, and Universalist Education♣
By
Noemi Gal-Or1
This paper is conceived from a secular2 perspective, and designed to address three
elements identified in the call for papers: “Pluralistic tendencies”, their counter-part of
“exclusivist attitudes”, and “creating an ethos of inter-religious harmony”. I choose to
tackle these aspects by (a) exploring the meaning of religion, (b) addressing a specific
attitude often corresponding to religion, namely religious fervour, and (c) assessing the
validity and instrumentality of facilitating a universalist education as a tool to de-fuse
“mistrust and hatred among various faith-communities”. The following paper is intended
to serve only as a preliminary discussion guidance paper.
♣

Paper delivered at the International Seminar: Towards Building a Peaceful Society: Role of Religion.
The Punjabi University and the International Interfaith Centre, Oxford (U.K.), Patiala, India, 19-21
February 2007.
I am greatly indebted to my good friend Dr. Dan Roseman currently student at St. Paul University in
Ottawa, for the enlightening discussions in this matter, and to Prof. Bernhard Kitous, Institut d’études
politiques, Université de Rennes, for his useful comments.
1
Ph.D., LL.B., Director, Institute for Transborder Studies & Professor, Department of Political Science
Kwantlen University College, 12666-72nd Ave., Surrey, B.C., Canada V3W 2M8. Email: noemi.galor@kwantlen.ca. Tel. 604-599-2554 (o), 604-222-2416 (h).
2
As much as a secular stand can be divorced from religious/faith bias. From a socio-anthropological
perspective, I am a non-practising Jew; my secularism should be understood as atheism at the private
individual level.
Absolutely nothing in this paper should be taken as heresy or disrespect for religious beliefs.

1

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2238798

What is religion?
Religion may mean different things to different people. To me, two closest definitions –
albeit with crucial reservations – are that of religion as “5. Recognition on the part of man
of some higher unseen power as having control of his destiny, and as being entitled to
obedience, reverence, and worship;…”,3 and of faith as “2.c. The spiritual apprehension
of divine truths. Often ascribed to the exercise of a special faculty in man, or to
supernatural illumination.”4 Following the main line of these definitions, my
understanding of religion can be paraphrased as “recognition on the part of human beings
of some higher and external being harbouring the explanation for the universe’s
existence, and reflecting the spiritual humility of humans and the recognition of their
ephemeral and comparative diminutiveness”. Other, but not fundamentally different,
ways to define5 religion include, for instance, Haldane’s understanding of religion as “a
way of life and attitude to the universe”6 and as a form of art.
Religion7 is of a dual character. On the one hand, I consider religion as a state of
individual self-awareness. It is therefore intrinsically a private matter. On the other hand,
and at the same time, because individuals co-exist in groups, and have no existence in
isolation from each other, religion has also a public dimension. Extrapolated from the
private, and transformed into the public in a process of social, political, and cultural
institutionalization, religion acquires this additional, separate and culturally specific
identity. Support of the contention that religion emanates from the personal private
experience and percolates into the public space can be found in the three monotheistic
religions - in the missionary and revelatory roles played by central figures such as Moses,
Jesus, and Mohammed. In polytheistic religions, the mirroring of a social, in the divine,
family circumstance also suggests that the public notion of religion nourishes on the
private experience. In brief, religion as a private matter responds to the human person’s
spiritual quest for determinism regarding the meaning of one’s own existence. Religion
as a public matter is the social organizational embodiment of this quest. It is here where
religion is becoming a way of satisfying human (not only spiritual) needs, legitimizing
ethical categories, and consequently enhancing and securing political structures so as to
install order and coherence to human society. In its public dimension, religion and its
core – i.e. God(s) – become, at least partly, subservient to the needs of humans.8
In his novel The Double,9 Saramago elaborates on the private quest for explanation of the
human behaviour. The dialogues between Common Sense (public) and the individual
character in the novel can be seen to echoing this religious dualism, the eternal tension
3

“Religion”. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 3d Ed., 1968, p. 1697.
“Faith”. Ibid., p. 670.
5
Or – for the lack of scientifically exact definitions – characterise religion.
6
Haldane, John, Burdon, Sanderson. “Science and Technology as Art Forms.” Possible Worlds and Other
Papers. Harper, 1927 [hereafter: Haldane (a)].
7
I am using religion and faith interchangeably, and will note when they are to be distinguished.
8
For this interpretation, see writings by and about the controversial Yesha’ayahu Leibowitz, e.g. excerpt by
Hartman, David. "Jewish philosophy in Modern Age", reproduced at
http://tpeople.co.il/leibowitz/ArielBrosh/www.atheist.org.il/www.atheist.org.il/mem/hartman.html retrieved
January 9, 2007.
9
Saramago, José. The Double, New York: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc., 2005.
4

2

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2238798

between the individual’s temporal (related to the public sphere) versus the general and
eternal human (related to the private sphere) conditions. From a secular perspective,
Common Sense stands to represent the “pluralistic tendencies” in all human societies.10
Thus, Common Sense reveals the traps into which individuals let themselves fall when
ascertaining their place in organized society as, for instance, when it cautions the main
character that “[y]ou know perfectly well that being of one mind doesn’t always mean
being in the right, what tends to happen is that people gather together under an opinion as
if it were an umbrella”.11 This perceptivity leads me to the next subject of this paper, to
the discussion of a particular attitude corollary to religion, namely religious fervour.
Religious fervour
For the “common”12 individual person, facing religion or faith (not unlike facing
challenges of a moral, ethical, spiritual, social, and physical nature) alone, by oneself, is
overly strenuous. Institutionalized public religion therefore offers the life-vest which
comes to the individual’s rescue. It offers comfort and alleviates the psychologically
disturbing by-products of the quest to understand that which despite reason and science
remains ungraspable. When religion becomes the only saviour, it produces the religious
zeal, which is cause to many consequences, good or bad – depending on the judge. In this
section, I refer to religious fervour as demonstrated in actions driven by fanaticism, a
state of being possessed or obsessed with an idea unto the loss of independent moral and
ethical judgment. Indeed, this negative manifestation of religious zeal is alluded to in the
conference’s call for papers, which reflects a state of perturbance:
As you know, religious plurality is an existential reality of the contemporary social order.
Different faith-communities live side by side acting and interacting on daily basis, but
unfortunately they tend to consider one another aliens and inferiors. This causes
unwanted mistrust and hatred in inter-community relations. The resultant violence is
tearing asunder the fabric of human society the world over. It requires a sincere and
serious effort on our part to work towards rectifying the situation.
One factor responsible for this mistrust and hatred among various faith-communities is
the exclusivistic attitude adopted by some faith-communities towards others, considering
other religions invalid and other faith-communities pagans.
Since the 20th century, and particularly after World War II, the passionate clinging to
religion, abdicating personal individual judgment, and shaking off one’s own
responsibility, have been attributed to a sense of malaise and deep disappointment from
Western civilization, and particularly, the failure of its science to explain existence.13 In
fact, corrects Leibowitz, the so-called “disappointment from science” does not reflect
distrust in science itself, but rather disappointment regarding the expectations, false ab
initio, of the instrumentality of science in determining and choosing values. Science has
absolutely nothing to do with providing answers to spiritual and psychological questions
10

And perhaps all faiths. This position is, of course, biased by the Judeo-Christian pre-disposition of
Saramago and the author of this paper.
11
Saramago, p. 52.
12
“Common” in the sense of a-political.
13
Leibowitz, Yesha’ayahu. “Religion and Science in this Generation’s Scholarship” Haaretz, July 14,
1972, http://tpeople.co.il/leibowitz/leibarticles.asp?id=66, in Hebrew [hereafter: Leibowitz (a)].

3

of the human person; and nature - the relationships of which the scientific methods is
designed to expose, is indifferent to purpose and values.14 Moreover, the scientific
observation and recognition of reality does not entail any respective personal obligation
to adjust or adapt. For instance, argues Leibowitz, democracy (which is so much
cherished in many quarters of the world) is not based on the belief in the natural equality
of humans but rather on their equality in human and civil rights.15 Hence, democracy is
independent from science.
One of the outcomes arising from this mistaken and ungrounded disappointment from
science and the modern Western civilization is religious zeal. Fanatic fervour reduces the
personal quest for explanation16 by abandoning science17 in fervour of a fuzzy sense of
belonging to a collectivity which is imagined to being lead and empowered by extraneous
forces only. Religious zeal then comes very close to the notion of fate, or
predestination.18 However, as Saramago advises, “all fate’s reasons are human, purely
human, and anyone who, basing themselves on the lessons of the past, says otherwise, be
it in prose or in verse, doesn’t know what he or she is talking about, if you’ll forgive such
bold opinion”.19
Fervour, which is not unique to religious believers, is an attitude adopted also by those
loyal to a certain ideology. This transpires from the discourse on human rights, which is
intimately related to this conference’s goal as described in the call for papers: “If we wish
to make human life in the world, which has now been transformed into a global village,
peaceful and harmonious, we must learn to live with people of other faiths, to accept and
appreciate the otherness of the others”. Not unlike faith communities, in the largely
secular international human rights movement, practices and positions have recently been
criticized even by its most vocal adherents. In his work The Dark Side of Virtue:
Reassessing International Humanitarism,20 David Kennedy presents an ordered summary
of his “pragmatic worries” regarding the exigencies of the international human rights
movement.21 Similar to the theologians’ concern about the side-effects of religious
fervour, Kennedy is troubled by, among other things, the legal regime of human rights,
which “taken as a whole, does more to produce and excuse violations than to prevent and
remedy them”; the professionalisation of human rights; the resources allocated to human
politics; and “the way context affects the opportunity of human rights promotion by
allowing the defence of repressive initiatives” and hence should be an object of
scrutiny”.22 This is not far fetched from Haldane’s criticism of religion when its believers
insist that “it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence”.23
14

Ibid.
Ibid.
16
And salvation, which I am not addressing here for lack of space.
17
Which can co-exist with religious faith.
18
Often exploited by the politics of fascism.
19
Saramago, p. 251 [emphasis added].
20
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
21
De la Rasilla del Moral, Ignacio. “Kennedy, David. The Dark Side of Virtue: Reassessing International
Humanitarism. Book Review”. European Journal of International Law, 17 (2006), p. 866.
22
Ibid., p. 867.
23
Haldane, J.B.S. quoted in Haught, James. A. (Ed.) 2000 Years of Disbelief. Just as a side note, this
attitude is very different from Leibowitz’s for whom the essence of religious faith is worship almost to the
extent of submission.
15

4

In the 21st Century, religion once again, and humanitarism - as a new ideology replacing
the competing “isms” of the 20th Century - have acquired, in their public manifestation,
positions of power. Juxtaposing religion with humanitarism as two ideational frameworks
is important because it is in their posture of power that they tend to be exploited in
fervour.24 Zeal in the service of power is routed to what the organizers of this conference
identify as religious exclusionism, which devalues the other, and operates as the divisive
force, foreign to religion because it “is not a theologically proper attitude”. This is echoed
in Kennedy’s worry that the “identification of human rights ideology with the Western
liberal tradition compromises both the internal dimension of the human rights’
prominence in the first world and its integration as discourse in the developing world.”25
And Saramago specifies the mechanics of zeal in the service of power when cautioning
against the lure of faith, ideology, or as he puts it – fate; when identifying necessity as
“one of the names adopted by fate when it suits it to go in disguise”. 26 Necessity thus
grants permission to do the non-permissible, i.e. fanatic religious fervour.
How, in practice, does fervour operate as an instrument of power? The most elementary
activation of zeal occurs through the word.27
… what a lot of work was involved in creating those words, it was necessary, in the first
place, to realize that there was a need for them, which may, who knows, have been the
most difficult thing of all, then to reach a consensus on the significance of their
immediate effects, and finally, a task that will never fully be completed, to imagine the
consequences that might ensue, in the medium and long term, from these effects and from
these words.28
Kennedy agrees that language and its use are critical to the human cause and effect
relationship. He warns against “human rights’ newspeak”,29 and the humanitarists’
Gramscian hegemonic bend, the fervour of which finds expression in “’a policy-making
vocabulary [which] can dominate thinking in a given field for years at a time’”,30 and
“merge[s] the vocabularies of humanitarian restraint into the strategic calculations of
military strategists.”31
Power, its by-product of fervour, and fervour’s tendency to term and use words to cement
power, are key characteristics common and corollary to all faiths, whether in religion or
secular ideology, deliberate or accidental. Therefore, it is at this universality, which
enables the excesses of faith, that the efforts to rein them in must be directed. The
extremes of fervour, namely when words translate into violent deeds, can be countered
only by words themselves. Religious establishments must therefore put their power to the
service of the “counter-word”: Turning freedom of expression into a counter-hegemonic
tool against zealous religious intolerance.
Towards a universalist education
24

Ibid., p. 868.
Ibid. p., 867.
26
Saramago, p. 289. This discussion leads to the questions of human’s freedom of choice, ability of
controlling destiny, and cause and effect, which are beyond the scope of this paper.
27
“Necessity” is one example.
28
Ibid., p. 55.
29
De la Rasilla del Moral, p. 866.
30
Ibid., p. 867.
31
Ibid. pp. 867-868.
25

5

In a recent article,32 Ayaan Hirsi Ali urges the Muslim countries to teach the Holocaust.
Against the backdrop of the recent Holocaust denial conference hosted by the Iranian
President Ahmadenijad, she recounts her experiences in Africa and the Middle East,
where development assistance to places of worship, hospitals and other charitable
initiatives were accompanied by systematic insults toward the Jews. This direct and
deliberate hate has been reinforced by the silence of the many international organisations
and NGOs providing development assistance, secular as well as religious, and marred
their benevolent work by messages of hate. She concludes by calling on the Western and
Christian NGOs to rise to the duty of approaching the caritative and anti-Semitism
fomenting Muslim organisations and inform both Muslims and non-Muslims of the
Holocaust. Similar to Kennedy and Saramago, Hirsi Ali’s concrete experiences lead her
to see the core of peace – or mutual understanding, tolerance, and non-violent coexistence, in the word and its message.
One way towards achieving the goal of this conference to “creat[e] an ethos wherein all
inter-religious tensions will cease to exist giving way to love and harmony in intercommunity relations” runs through education in its most rudimentary sense – namely the
dissemination of factual knowledge. Knowledge of facts consistent with reality should
not be mistaken for truth, particularly truth in the theological context, which incorporates
that which in a more general sense is considered to be “[o]f the right kind, such as it
should be, proper. […] That is rightly or lawfully such; rightful, legitimate…”.33 The
distinction between factual and “other”34 knowledge has been recognized by both
scientists and believers. Haldane maintains that “[s]tatements of fact made in its
[science’s] name are generally right in detail, but can only reveal the form and not the
real nature of existence.”35 Leibowitz adds that the scientific method is intended to
answer only the “how” question, and does not even recognize the “what?”.36 Moreover,
knowledge of the fact represents only the stage of learning and should not be confused
with education. For learned knowledge to transform into education, guidance and
direction towards a specific purpose are required. This demands planning, which is
informed by values.37
Universalist education therefore represents a specific plan based on the belief in a certain
value as well as the intention to create a reality reflecting this value. In the case of this
conference, the value is expressed in the call for paper to “creat[e] an ethos wherein all
inter-religious tensions will cease to exist giving way to love and harmony in intercommunity relations”. This value is the common ground bringing the participants at this
conference together and reflecting their acceptance of the existence of religions as a fact
whether the objects of their faiths can be demonstrated empirically or not. Universalist
education could therefore become a moral plan for this conference participants.
For the believer, there may exist no relationship at all between terrestrial facts and truth
of faith. Leibowitz, for instance, maintains that from the perspective of the believer, there
32

Global Viewpoint, 20 December, 2006 (received by e-mail).
“True. 4. b. & c.”. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, p. 2255 [emphasis added].
34
I use “other” as a neutral term. For believers, the word “truth” would apply here; for Haldane, for
instance, it is “myth” and “miracle”.
35
Haldane (a).
36
Leibowitz (a).
37
Ibid.
33

6

is no conflict between religion and science as the two never meet.38 This however is of
little consequence to the non-believer, and perhaps also to the believer who worships
faith differently than Leibowitz. To the latter, freedom of choice may be crucially
important, and determinism (cause and effect) offers the gallery of choices.39 Therefore,
to gain the attention of the latter, universalist education must distinguish between two
consecutive and necessary paths leading to the accomplishment of its objectives, living
up to its value.
First is the stage whereby the material facts of reality are disseminated to all learners (all
of human society during each person’s entire life cycle). It requires the transmission of
the facts in the most “neutral” way possible: Genuine, fair, and honest. Second, and only
after and concurrent (which refer to the past and immediate past/present, but not future)
with the communication of the facts can education venture into offering an interpretation,
assessment, judgment, evaluation, and prognosis of the facts, i.e. translate them into truth
of faith. In order to remain loyal to the distinction between facts and interpretation,
knowledge40 and theological truth these two paths must be carried out in separation of
each other as much as possible. This separation is crucial if the dualist character of
religion – the private, which involves freedom of choice, and the public, which pertains
to social programming, are to be respected. To me, this respect is vital in order to
promote growth of “love and harmony”.
A pre-requisite for engaging in the first path of factual knowledge dissemination is good
faith and good will in separating the facts from their interpretive truth. In Baudolino,41
Umberto Eco suggests that inter-faith cooperation, even partnership in friendship, are
possible at this first stage of knowledge sharing. In Chapter Eight “Baudolino in the
Earthly Paradise”, the main character Baudolino42 is described studying in Paris where he
befriends his Muslim co-sophomore Abdul, the Christian cleric Boron, (and later in the
book) the Jew Rabbi Solomon. Certainly, such entreprise requires leadership, mentoring,
and role modeling43 within each faith community. Shedding further light on the
conditions for the materialization of the first path, is Kennedy who warns against the
political abuses of vocabulary and the “mantra-like” promotion of ideas, and proposes “to
use the first person in their [humanitarians] policy proposals instead of relying on an
invisible ‘them’”. 44 Arguably, use of the plural person, which often implies authority, is
misleading where no such authority is recognized to exist. This certainly applies to the
first path of learning factual knowledge. The plural person, which offers anonymity and
refuge from responsibility to the individual person, consequently often operates to the
detriment of the dissemination of factual knowledge. Saramago hits the nail on its head
when distinguishing factual from interpretive knowledge: “The wheel was invented and
stayed invented forever and ever, whereas words, those and all the others, came into the

38

Leibowitz, Yesha’ayahu. “Science or bible – Who Is Right?” A personal letter dated March, 1972,
http://tpeople.co.il/leibowitz/letters.asp?id=2, retrieved January 8, 2007.
39
I will not elaborate on these ideas for lack of space.
40
By knowledge I mean simple, “common sensically” observable, knowledge, not necessarily academic
scientifically valid knowledge.
41
New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2002.
42
Native of the early 13th Century Northern Italian town of Frescheta.
43
Not unlike the recent and so common practice adopted by many women professional organisations.
44
Ibid., pp. 867 and 868, respectively.

7

world with a vague, diffuse destiny, as highly provisional phonetic and morphological
clusters…”.45
The second path in the universalist education, namely proposing interpretations of facts,
and the ensuing “bidding of truth”46 by the faith communities, requires mutual respect for
the various convictions that distinguish the faiths from each other. At the same time, it
also demands to acknowledge and accept that what binds all faiths at the most
fundamental level is their rivaling confidence in owning the absolute truth. Indeed, this is
precisely the intersection from where love and harmony versus fervour are branching out
in opposite directions. Eco describes this tension when the friends embark on the journey
to unknown lands in search of Prester John. The time spent in studies in Paris represents
the stage of sharing factual knowledge (first path of the universalist education), and
which lays the ground to the forming of the interpretive knowledge (second path of the
universalist education):
In Paris we worked very hard. For example, after the first years, we were already taking
part in debates, and in debate you learn to posit objections and to move on to the
determination, that is, to the final solution of a question. And you mustn’t think that the
lessons are the most important things for a student, or that the tavern is only a place
where they waste time. The good thing about the studium is that you learn from your
teachers, true, but even more from your fellows, especially those older than you, when
they tell you what they have read, and you discover that the world must be full of
wondrous things and to know them all – since a life time will not be enough for you to
travel through the whole world – you can only read all the books.47
It is during the second path (and stage) of education that Baudolino’s and his friends’
common journey gets often marred by fervour leading to lies, distrust, and mutual harm.
This becomes plain in chapter 17 “Baudolino discovers that Prester John wrote to too
many people”, when even Baudolino – himself the skilled and eternal liar - is scandalized
by the idea that believers’ loyalty to their faith is subject to abuse by their religious
guides.48 To forestall such branching out of the second path of the universalist education
requires to acknowledge that one may not have the absolute truth, and that there may be
multiple legitimate ways to the truth. I leave this discussion for another time.
As a political scientist and jurist, my practical recommendation regarding the translation
of the first path in universalist education into real deeds is twofold: All faith
communities, down to their lowest organizational hierarchical level, will prepare written
statements of acknowledgment whereby they recognize that the disseminating of factual
knowledge is of vital importance to the integrity of the faith. This should also be reiterated in verbal communications. In addition, all faith communities, must (a) include in
their religious schools libraries (and establish libraries where there are none) housing the
factual knowledge pertaining to all peoples and faiths, and (b) include a representative
sample of this information in all of their religious school teachings. This will include the
story of the storming of the Temple of Amritsar, the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide,
and the Golden Age in Muslim Spain, to name just a very and non-representative, few.
45

Saramago, p. 55.
For the sake of facilitating an ethos of love and harmony, it is important to leave to each learner the
individual choice of which truth to adopt, if at all.
47
Eco, pp. 67-68.
48
Ibid., p. 224.
46

8

I hope that the participants of this conference will debate, and perhaps agree, on the first
path to universalist education.

9