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To cite this Article Jindra, Michael(2003) 'Natural/supernatural conceptions in Western cultural contexts', Anthropological
Forum, 13: 2, 159 — 166
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/0066467032000129824
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0066467032000129824
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Anthropological Forum, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2003
MICHAEL JINDRA*
vocabulary. One can make a better case that the term ‘religion’ should be
eliminated as an artefact of Western categorisation, as Timothy Fitzgerald (2000)
argues. ‘Supernatural’ as a term does seem to allow people, especially in the
West, to communicate some things about their experience of the world. The use
of the term, however, comes out of a specific historical/theological context (Saler
1977). My intention is to show that the distinction between the natural and
supernatural breaks down in a number of contexts, especially in ‘new religious
movements’ and other practices that are commonly thought to be on the (non-
existent) border between the ‘religious’ and the non-’religious’.
A little history first: as Louis Dumont (1986) has argued, a distinctive ‘modern
ideology’ has been constructed over the centuries in the West. A chief feature of
this ideology is a separation between the realm of relative values, or religion,
and the realm of the factual, neutral, rational and secular. Religion becomes
separated from its obverse: the ‘natural’ world of objective facts, markets, and
individuals that underlies much of Western social science. Is the natural/
supernatural distinction also implicated in the historically particular construction
of the ‘modern ideology’ that Dumont discusses, a reflection of our construction
of categories (going back at least to Kant) into natural (facts defined as rational
and universal) and relative (values defined as beliefs and particular), or, in other
words, the fact/value distinction (Dumont 1986:227–233; MacIntyre 1984:77ff.;
Taylor 1989:54–57)?
Yes, to a large extent it is. Hindu, Japanese, Indonesian, Native North
American, and many African cosmologies all contain notions of beings that are
essentially ‘natural’, but have extraordinary powers, sometimes at different
gradations, which serve to violate any boundary we might construct between
the natural and supernatural (Aragon 2000:18; Chilver 1990; Fitzgerald 2000:81,
*Michael Jindra, Department of Sociology, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI 49283, USA.
pers. comm.). In Africa, for instance, notions of ancestors and elders can overlap,
since both can have extraordinary power (Kopytoff 1971).
In early Christianity, as Benson Saler (1977) has argued, there is a basis for
making the distinction, given assumptions about the creator and creation.
Natural law, as distinct from revelation, posits that God created a world with
universal rules, though God is also capable of intervening—and one cannot often
be sure which is happening, since even the Catholic Church takes a long time
to certify miracles and saints. One thus has the basis for conceptions of a law-
like natural and a supernatural. This conception was important for the early
scientists, and to a large extent led to the scientific revolution in the West
(Braudel 1994). The premise of God was largely dropped by many later scholars,
and we now find Western academia, though not the public as a whole, dominated
by a secularist framework that had its roots in theistic conceptions of the
universe (Stewart 2001:325). Thus, secularists largely hold this distinction, but
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for many they personify one’s highest hopes and dreams. Anthropomorphism
utilises themes ‘continuously from religious to secular’, according to Guthrie
(p. 139), while an examination of state mottos shows us the same thing: beliefs
are expressed, alternatively, in God, the people, providence, progress, liberty,
growth, freedom and a number of other ideals unique to Western civilisation
(Shearer & Shearer 1994). For example, on top of the Capitol dome in Wisconsin,
a female figure, representing the state motto, ‘Forward’, points east, the direction
of progress in the late nineteenth-century Midwest. One could certainly argue
that passionate secular notions such as progress and liberty take on a religious-
like intensity. It is certainly a stretch to categorise them simply as ‘natural’.
Whether one calls them (invisible, implicit, civil) religions, ideologies or symbolic
universes, faith-based viewpoints that elude definition as natural or supernatural
permeate contemporary society.
Why do we have this situation in the supposedly scientific West? Science is
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wedded to a naturalism that philosopher Charles Taylor (1989) has pointed out
is not fundamentally plausible as a way of life. Most of us desire something
beyond scientific explanation, something that gives us some orientation to the
world, a moral space in which to differentiate right and wrong, make judgments,
and construct meaning in our lives. Thus, we have a continual ferment of new
religious movements and other identity-transforming organisations that not only
dissemble the categories of religion and non-religion but also leave the observer
wondering whether they assume natural or supernatural forces in their
ontologies.
the difference between the natural and supernatural. Some can be regarded as
an inevitable effect of the rise of science and modernity as dominant worldviews.
Even the most intense users of high technology, and believers in the efficacy
of scientific engineering, find themselves reaching beyond the natural and
rational when looking for meaning in life. Macintosh computer enthusiasts have
adopted Eastern and Western spiritual forms (Lam 2001) to forge a sense of the
transcendent, which involves a mystical bond between human and computer
and among Mac users themselves, and is expressed in a way of life that has
gnostic and utopian implications.
Star Trek fandom presents another interesting case. From research I did in the
1990s ( Jindra 1994), I reported the way Star Trek stimulated an immense number
of fans over the last 30 years, some of whom have taken this cultural production
as an expression of their deepest views on the nature of the universe and the
destiny of humanity. For a significant portion of these fans, Star Trek is thoroughly
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stubbornly persist. Thus, we turn to magic after science fails to do the job. In
fact, many exhibit a faith in science rather than knowledge of the scientific
method (Hexham 1994:312), and attempt to utilise science well beyond its
capability to solve problems of meaning. The ‘triumph of the therapeutic’ can
also be seen in this light (Rieff 1966). In a society where science has become so
dominant, it takes on mythological functions. The ‘natural’ slides into the
‘supernatural’.
More broadly, many new religious movements cannot reliably be categorised
as pre-modern, modern or post-modern, precisely because of the pragmatic
mixture of elements that could be described as both supernatural and natural
(Dawson 1998). Many new religious movements, such as those broadly categ-
orised as ‘New Age’, attempt to harness the techniques of instrumental rational-
ity to advance ends. The new sources of power—spiritual energy derived from
the mind, crystals, and so on—are directed to practical applications, such as
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improved health, the environment, human rights or peace. Many of them have
a preference for pragmatism that seeks to reconcile the religious and scientific
worldview. In essence, the new spirituality focuses not so much on the super-
natural ‘great transcendences’ of the world religions, as on the ‘little transcend-
ences’ of the mundane world (Dawson 1998:148 citing Beckford 1992).
In some organisations, one finds contrasts between what might be called
naturalists and rationalists on the one hand, and spiritualists on the other.
The current situation in Unitarian Universalism (UU), which was born in the
nineteenth century out of a belief in reason as the ultimate arbiter of religion,
is a good example (Lee 1995). Although UU adherents quickly rejected the
supernaturalism of orthodox Protestantism, this also resulted in continual ten-
sions between the rationalists, on the one hand, and the transcendentalists
(including Ralph Waldo Emerson, who later dropped out) and spiritualists who
attempted to communicate with the dead, on the other. In the early twentieth
century, the conflict became one between humanists or atheists on the one hand
and theists on the other, and, by the 1950s, it was clear the humanists had won.
Anti-supernaturalism became dominant in the denomination, which reflected
the 1950s and 1960s domination of modernism and rationalism in high culture
and academia, the sectors of society in which many adherents of UU were found.
By the 1980s, however, after declines in membership, leaders called for spiritual
revitalisation and, again reflecting trends in broader high culture, a new spiritual-
ity began to take hold, involving meditation, healing rituals, and religio-therapy.
The interdependence of the bodily, spiritual, and material dimensions was
stressed. A common conception of human beings is that they ‘embody a spark
of the divine, therefore, each person is sacred’ (Lee 1995:387). If humans are said
to be divine, and divinity is equated with the supernatural, then the very
definition of humanity involves the supernatural, at least in some New Age and
other conceptions.
164 ANTHROPOLOGICAL FORUM
Conclusion
From earlier work (Klass 1995; Pouillon 1982:6–7; Saler 1977), we have seen that
the term ‘supernatural’ is problematic, especially in non-Western contexts. Even
in the West, however, an examination of contemporary movements and practices
makes the term problematic, since spirituality may only be vaguely connected
with a higher power, and many non-scientific beliefs and practices attempt to
be scientific. The reverse is also often true. Even mainstream scientists such as
Einstein and Hawking often cannot avoid, explicitly or implicitly, reaching
beyond science to theology in order to find some meaning and purpose in the
universe. A ‘reflexive spirituality’ (Besecke 2001; Roof 1999) that combines
rationality and science with the pursuit of transcendent meaning is increasingly
popular, and incorporates diverse practices that simply cannot be categorised as
natural or supernatural. Parascience is a common theme, as seen in Scientology,
New Age groups and even amongst some Star Trek fans. New Age practices and
other religious experiences give people a sense of the transcendent, which may
or may not be described as supernatural by practitioners. Some may see elements
as supernatural, while others may view the same elements as natural.
This dichotomy of supernatural and natural is more relevant in the context
of institutional faiths with doctrines and creeds (as Fitzgerald 2000 argues for
the term ‘religion’; Raverty this issue, provides an example of this, as does
Griffin 2001), and in the related context of a secular and scientific rationality that
can be an impediment to anthropological research (Kapferer 2001; Stewart 2001).1
Since anthropology ought to avoid culturally particular categories, it should
desist from using the terminology of either of these unique (sub)cultures.2 In
NATURAL/SUPERNATURAL CONCEPTIONS 165
other words, the distinction can be used in specific emic contexts that have the
distinction as part of their worldview, but should not be used in supposedly
neutral etic contexts. A better term is ‘superempirical’ (Yinger 1970:15; see also
Smith 2003:ch. 5), which is more tightly defined than ‘natural’, is based more in
methods than assumptions, and allows that many people understand both seen
and unseen forces as natural. Superempirical has been used to describe the
increased popularity of the ‘paranormal’ in Sweden (Sjödin 2002), and could be
applied in Europe and elsewhere where diverse spiritualisms are growing.
In other words, for anthropologists seeking to understand contemporary life,
the supernatural/natural dichotomy is less appropriate in situations of religious
pluralism and individualism. Faith may be put in the individual, humanity,
ancestors, spirits, an all-powerful being, or a combination of many of these
forces. Science and supernaturalism are often intertwined. As a number of
theorists argue (Bellah 1970:242; Taylor 1989), the construction of meaning is
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NOTES
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank all of the participants for their feedback, and
Roger Lohmann for herding us through the process.
1. In fact, the reason the dichotomy became popular in the first place is because of
the Western and Christian traditions (Saler 1977).
2. There is some question, however, as to whether social science can be, in the long
run, anything other than the expression of deeply held narratives or theological discourse
(Milbank 1990; Postman 1988; Smith 2003:ch. 4).
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