Religious Communication

Religion

Religion is an organized system of understanding and action based upon specific convictions about ultimate reality. Generally, religions hold that there are realities outside of nature, beyond matter and material reactions, apart from time and space. Most religious systems are distinguished from one another by differences in what they believe this reality beyond nature is like: what are its attributes and its relationships to the world of nature? To be clear, religion is not a belief in “extra dimensions” such as one finds in the theories of a multiverse; such dimensions would, in the end, be only another complex aspect of nature itself. Rather, religion is a belief that, once every aspect, force, dimension, condition, and material cause within nature is known, not everything is known.

Transcendence

Since religious claims focus on qualities outside of nature, they are claims about transcendent realities beyond human sensory experience, as religious believers themselves acknowledge. Lao Tsu, for example, opens his meditations by observing that the Tao which can be discussed is not the actual Tao. The monotheistic religions also portray the one God as beyond all telling; this claim that the divine is beyond the scope of human intellect and language might be considered a hallmark of virtually every religious tradition.

[Page 1430]Arguably, this makes religious discourse the most extreme challenge in communication studies. What is the relationship of symbol systems to an incomprehensible reality? Can one meaningfully discuss realities that are beyond the grasp of language? Religious thinkers from Plato to Ibn-Sina to Aquinas to Zhiyi insist this is possible, and most believers follow a series of recognizable approaches to craft communication in the face of incommunicable reality.

...