Detachment and Faith
The two, detachment and faith, seem contradictory, and yet theologians know that every one of us lives parallel existences, contributing not to the dilemma of compulsory choice, but engaging with co-existence as a principle of rationality. This relativism is something that sociologists have accepte as compartment alisation. The debate goes back in Indian Sociology, at least to the work of M.N. Srinivas (1996) and Milton Singer (1972), and fore grounded by Robert Redfield and his classic work on Mexico (1973). In the 60s of the last century, it was understood that when scientists went to the laboratory, they took off their traditional identities and put on their scientific roles, and nothing was lost. Renny Thomas, in a recent work, has argued that the scientists in India see no disjunction between their acceptance of religious beliefs and the practice of them, as these are cultural idioms of the society in which they live (Thomas 2015). Existentially, how do human beings live in disparate worlds, and come to terms with the many different codes of culture without creating schism in themselves? I ask this question primarily because co-existence is accompanied by adaptation, but this adaptation is dependent on a mutual dialogue, which premises the understanding of one another’s vocabulary. The Sociology of Religion has always fore grounded Comparative Religion as its most important apparatus. It is not possible to understand religious behaviour unless one accepts the axiom of the existence of the religious. Experience is personal, and yet the vocabulary of believing assures us that there are the components of ritual and myth that accompany it. This is the essential aspect of the religious. Monks and Nuns practising transcendence still assure the laity that the text and the rite are part of the daily apparatus of the believing community. Silence is possible only to those who have accepted the ultimate space of the transcended. However, to reach there, the path usually
