Hi, I’m John Color of My Shirt,  and welcome to Crash Course Religions.

Here’s a not-at-all controversial question:  Should religious leaders exclusively be men?

For a number of religions, throughout much of  history, the official answer has been: yes.

Including my religion of Christianity.

Many Church leaders have argued  the Bible is clear: boys only.

But in several religions, including some  Christian denominations, this is changing.

In the U.S. in the 1970s, activism from  both Christian and Jewish feminists led   several sects to begin ordaining women clergy.

And today, between a third to one half of   those entering Divinity School  Master’s programs are women.

So, the sacred texts didn’t change,  but the rules did.

How did that happen?

[THEME MUSIC] Religious texts are often a snapshot  of a particular time and place.

But, while the texts themselves usually  remain static, the world and the cultures   that spring up around them don’t, of  course, leading to new interpretations.

I mean, something written for  people three thousand years   ago is bound to look different to readers today.

But, of course even saying that is a controversial  statement because lots of people believe that the   job of a contemporary reader is to understand  the original or eternal meaning of a text.

For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh reads a little  different today than it did 3,000 years ago.

And on some level we can’t know  how it read 3000 years ago.

My book Looking for Alaska reads  differently than it did 18 years ago.

I mean, the plot revolves around a pay phone.

It’s almost as dated as Gilgamesh.

Did I just compare my book  Looking for Alaska to the   Epic of Gilgamesh and/or sacred texts?

Yes, both.

Anyway, in the case of women  clergy in Christianity,   there are Biblical passages  that can support either side.

Like, take 1 Timothy, 3:12 — and trust me,  many dudes have—“Let deacons be husbands   of one wife, and let them manage their  children and their households well.” That sounds a lot like religious  leaders are supposed to be men.

But then, Romans 16:1 talks about “Phoebe, our  sister, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae.” So, which passage is seen as more  important tends to say more about   the people reading the text than the text itself.

Now, some people will argue that the word  of God inherently cannot contradict itself,   and so our job is to interpret that word of God in the only correct way that it can be interpreted,   but I would argue that even in those  situations we are still bringing ourselves,   our culture, our world, to the text.

Now many religious texts tell the stories of gods,   goddesses, and other supernatural beings,  they’re also decidedly of the world,   emphasizing the social and political issues  of the time when they were originally written.

Consider First Thessalonians, one of  the books of the Bible’s New Testament.

It’s essentially an advice column written by  Jesus’ apostle Paul to a church community.

In other words, he wasn’t teaching  generalities to anybody who would listen.

He was responding to very specific  concerns from particular people.

Some folks at the time thought Jesus  was going to return to stop death, like,   really really soon, but, uh… some people they  knew had like, already died before his return.

So they were like, “Dear Paul… what gives?” And Paul probably had no idea that billions  of people would read his words someday.

Which reminds me, I should delete my Tumblr.

Did I just compare myself to  the apostle Paul?

Apparently.

On the other hand, many Christians  consider the Bible divinely inspired   and eternal, with God’s eternal word  revealed anew to each generation.

So there is more than one way  to approach a sacred text.

In fact, there are almost as many ways  as there are people who approach them.

Another great example is Confucius’s Analects.

The book is widely believed to be composed of   quotes from the sage himself,  as recorded by his followers.

But those quotes were written during  a period of near-constant warfare in   China’s late Zhou Dynasty – not a chill  time to be seeking wisdom and morality!

Knowing that makes it easier to understand  why Confucius dropped bangers like, “While   the noble-minded cherish Integrity,  little people cherish territory”.

That’s a pretty sick burn, Confucius.

So, even though most religious  texts are deeply of their time,   they’re also timeless in a way that inspires  folks to pass them down over millennia.

Each new generation finds new meaning, new  interpretations, and new things to connect.

For example, as some Christian denominations  continue to cite the Bible to condemn the LGBTQ+   community, others are increasingly  using it to support queer folks.

And in this way, followers of religions are  always negotiating with their religious texts.

That’s actually the term scholars of  religion use, and I kind of love it.

Like, imagine a big boardroom where a  bunch of important religious leaders,   plus literally all the religious practitioners  they oversee, are talking over each other,   trying to get their voices heard on what  should be important to the religion.

And at the same time, there are a bunch  of people outside the room who are also   reading the texts and taking away  entirely different conclusions.

That’s the difficulty that religious communities  face when negotiating their sacred texts.

Like, recently Hindu environmental activists have  looked to their sacred texts to support actions   against climate change and develop a distinctly  Hindu belief system around the environment.

Sacred texts like the Ramayana, the Vedas, the  Upanishads, the Mahabharata, and mention the   holiness of the earth and natural world, which  activists can tie directly to climate justice.

For example, the Chipko movement  emerged in the 1970s in response   to commercial logging in the  Himalayan regions of India.

Protesters would read passages from  the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu texts   about the value of forests and their  role in the Indian natural landscape.

And because different people are always  going to interpret texts in different ways,   the truth of any religion can’t really  be boiled down to its religious texts.

Like, after the September 11th, 2001,  terrorist attacks on the World Trade   Center and the Pentagon, Muslims and scholars  of Islam were asked constantly about what the   Qur’an says about this action, or about  how Muslims should treat non-Muslims.

But I would argue that this  was the wrong question.

Because no passages from the Qur’an  could explain the actions of Al-Qaeda.

Extremist interpretations can be found across  all faiths but that doesn’t mean their texts,   or specific religions, are dangerous.

Unfortunately, it tends to  be people who are dangerous.

People, and the ways they negotiate with ideas.

But, of course, the way people negotiate  with these ideas can also be quite beautiful.

Like, people of the Baha’i faith believe  that the Bible, the Qu’ran, and indeed most   religious texts offer us paths to equality and  peace because they were all divinely inspired.

Now, different religions have different  logics for how their texts function,   how they’re used, and how they came into being.

We learned back in episode two  that early Europeans tended to   judge a belief by how closely  it aligned with Christianity.

And one of the things that gained you major  points was a religious text that was kind of similar to the Bible.

Even today we’re prone to talk about  religious, and even secular, texts that way.

Like, you might hear Stephen King’s “On  Writing” referred to as “The Bible for writers.” Or “The Joy of Cooking” as the “Bible for cooks.” Stan, what would my books be  the Bible of?

Doomed love?

And it may seem like we’re talking  about the Bible a lot in this episode.

That’s because many religions don’t place as much  emphasis on sacred texts – and the ones that do,   like Christianity and Islam  – have very popular books.

But, most religious texts don’t  work the way the Bible does.

Like, it wouldn’t make sense to call  the Qur’an “The Bible for Muslims.” The Qur’an is seen as the literal words of God  as revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.

Compare that to the way Catholics  believe humans wrote scripture   with guidance or inspiration –  but not dictation – from God.

There’s a little more room for  error and interpretation there.

Though exactly how much it can be  interpreted is, of course, heavily debated.

Or, here’s another difference.

The Bible has hundreds, if not thousands,  of interpretations and translations.

For the most part, those translations  are still considered “The Bible.” But, even though the Qur’an has been translated,   most Muslims see those as adaptations  of the Qur’an, not as the Qur’an itself.

It’s sort of like owning a  print of a famous painting.

It has most of the same elements as the original,   but you can’t deny that it loses  something in the reproduction.

And you certainly wouldn’t say that a  print of the Mona Lisa is the Mona Lisa.

For the Qur’an to be the Qur’an, it has to be  the Arabic Qur’an, the language God spoke in.

In a similar way, while many Daoists read the  Daodejing, we wouldn’t call it the Daoist Bible.

The Daoist tradition has a massive canon  of texts—like, nearly 1500 of them.

And we’re not just talking about different  interpretations of the same book: some of these texts feature mythological stories,  while others are manuals for completing rituals.

There isn’t a huge push for Daoists  to read the whole canon; in fact,   there are so many texts that most people  wouldn’t even be able to scratch the surface.

Or imagine a set of books so perfect,   so important, and so core to reality  that they don’t even have an author.

That's how most Hindus interpret the  Vedas, which, unlike many religious texts,   aren’t treated like historical records because  —get this—they’re considered outside of history.

This transcendental authorship  means that the Vedas are thought   of as “without flaws” since  a human didn’t author them.

Then there are some texts that  take on a life of their own.

Nowhere is that more true than in the sacred  text for Sikhs, Guru Granth Sahib, which is   a collection of hymns and poetry – but is  also the Sikh spiritual leader, in book form.

It took on the mantle of the eleventh guru  after a lineage of ten human gurus before it.

If you think this is some kind of metaphor…  I mean, it is, but it’s also very literal:   Indian law even considers the book a legal  person, meaning it can technically hold property.

So the roles sacred texts play vary widely  among different religions—from guidelines,   to historical records, to  spiritual leaders themselves.

The negotiations between a religious  person, their wider community,   and their religious texts is a source  of ongoing vibrancy and growth.

It is also a source of tension and conflict.

We contain multitudes.

Ultimately, there may not be a  right way to read religious texts.

After all, it's up to each of us to find our  own community and our own meaning in the world.

For some, that meaning comes from a  good book – religious or otherwise.

I mean, even novels can emerge as  religious texts–just ask L. Ron Hubbard.

I don’t – I don’t need that.

I don’t need a church of The Fault in Our Stars.

In fact, just for the record  I’d like to state that I don’t   think my work has anything to do  with the work of L. Ron Hubbard.

Please don’t sue me.

In our next episode, we’re going to  explore the ins and outs of rituals.