Is religion about stories, or the values of those stories?

Day 9 on the Camino

The route today was the prettiest I have experienced so far. It wasn’t beautiful in the way you might expect a hike to be - there was no steep, long incline that paid off with a view off the top of a misty mountain. The picture I’m including from today is that of a field:

I loved this view so much not only because it felt ‘non-traditional,’ but also because of the duality between the broad strokes of grass in the background and the fine detail of the crops in the foreground.

It reminded me of an idea I’ve been juggling around this entire trip, related to how we formalize community. We can define community by a broad, general set of characteristics, which makes that community more inclusive but perhaps less connected. We can alternatively define community by a very specific set of criterion, rendering it more exclusive but more tight knit.

Is there a way to paint with broad stokes without obscuring fine detail, as Mother Nature does so well?

My main motivation relates to my religiosity - the Camino is traditionally a Catholic pilgrimage, but it has become more and more normal for those not abiding by this faith to walk the entire way.

I think, in accordance with the question I pose above, I will, for argument’s sake, define two different religious communities:

The first regards those who go as far as to generally believe in the basic expositional tenets of religion - existence of a higher power, afterlife, etc (bear with me, I am aware this is a huge generalization across religions).

The second regards those who may or may not believe the above, but do believe in the values of religion that can be implicated by religion’s expositional tenets. This makes the first community a subset of the second.

I would place myself only in the second bucket, insofar as I believe strongly in all the values that the act of walking the Camino emphasizes, but none of the fine detail and religious stories that lead to the emphasis of those values. These values can include:

• Submission to an experience whose exact mechanics you are oblivious to

• Sanctity of community

• Kindness towards others, providing as you are provided

• Gratitude and appreciation

• That taking time for yourself affirms your worth instead of negating it

I would posit that none of these values really are all that controversial.

The Camino community has expanded from the first to the second in recent years. This can be cause to celebrate - it’s why folks like me can take part without feeling judged for our explicit religious beliefs (seriously, haven’t felt uncomfortable once). And we get a lot out of it.

But I have to wonder whether at some point, accessibility to the second community starts to take away from the experience of the first community. As the Camino caters more to the nonreligious, with more and more hit movies being released around the experience, maybe what was once a sacred religious experience transforms into a tourist trap.

However, the truth that I am living right now is that there is nothing weak about the values implicated by religiosity, even if people share different explicit beliefs. A lot of my most meaningful conversations during the Camino have revolved around these principles, and whether the stories that brought you to those principles are from religious texts, present day experience, or both, maybe that distinction doesn’t really matter that much.

I wish the distinction didn’t matter that much outside the Camino.

But I will admit that I feel that I am not getting the ‘full’ experience because of my ignorance of religious text and because of my nonreligious upbringing. I believe the trade off I describe above does exist.

All of this makes me realize that in politics, when a party is deciding to pander to or directly address a community, they must make a deliberate choice between the two definitions of religious community I enumerate above (I know these definitions are farcical - what’s important is how they are defined in relativity. It’s ok if you feel part of the second community but don’t like the label ‘religious’ - it’s just a placeholder).

Politicians on both sides of the aisle will often include references to explicit religious beliefs in their rhetoric. Maybe their rhetoric resonates with their personal beliefs, but I tend to believe there must be strategical reasoning undergirding these decisions too.

So why don’t they just stick to referencing the implicit values that these explicit beliefs generate? What about these explicit beliefs are so profound that it is worth alienating everyone who doesn’t believe in them, as opposed to addressing the bigger second community? Surely if this is strategic there is some incredible deeper meaning only accessible to the first group that uniquely galvanizes that community, just as there probably is intense meaning to the Camino that I am simply unaware of?

This proposition makes me intensely curious. What detail lies underneath the broad stokes that look so pretty to me?