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What is it to be "religious"?

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 This means that our basic faith involves (1) a basic supposition that life is ultimately meaningful; (2) a basic question as to how, exactly, we are to understand the meaning of ultimate reality for us so as to understand it authentically and truly, as it really is; and (3) an open commitment to obey – which obey—which is to say, to understand ourselves authentically and truly, because realistically, in accordance with – whatever —whatever we are then given to understand explicitly of the meaning of ultimate reality for us and to lead our lives accordingly. (The three italicized terms are William A. Christian's in Meaning and Truth in Religion .) Taken together with a basic interest in pursuing the basic religious question, these three factors are constitutive both of religious inquiry and of theological inquiry, strictly and properly so-called – the first being the inquiry constituted at the primary level of living understandingly, of self-understanding and life-praxis; the second being the same inquiry at the secondary level of living understandingly, of critical reflection and proper theory. 

But if all this is necessary to to be "religious," is it sufficient?

Given a definition of "religion" as the primary form of culture, or "cultural system" (Clifford Geertz), i.e., the concepts/symbols, in which the basic religious question is not only asked but also somehow answered, and the open religious commitment somehow achieves closure accordingly, the answer can only be negative. One can be "religious," according to the standard set by this definition, if, and only if, one understands oneself and others in the all-encompassing whole of reality in some determinate way, and in the concepts/ symbols of some particular cultural system. But if the standard for answering the question is not some such definition of "religion," but rather whether, on the basis of a certain basic interest, together with a certain basic supposition, one asks a certain basic question and lives by a certain open commitment-namelycommitment—namely, those just clarified above---thenabove—then, of course, the answer can very well be affirmative.

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This is reasonable for the very good reason that religious answers, like answers to basic questions of other logical types, are the kind of answers they are only because they presuppose asking a certain kind of basic question, and a basic interest in pursuing it, together with making the basic supposition and the open commitment necessarily involved in doing so. And what all religious answers thus necessarily presuppose is itself "religious" in the sense of belonging to any such answer as what distinguishes it as the logical kind of answer it is---as is—as precisely a "religious" kind of answer. This may also be put by saying that, although particular answers to the basic religious question may be different from one another-in substance as well as in form-the basic religious question, together with all that is necessarily involved in actually pursuing it, is also a logically different kind of question from the other basic questions that we as human beings typically ask and seek to answer.

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