Between Religion And Culture

Thoreau notes:

In a report on Indonesia, the Economist makes the interesting point that urban Muslims in Indonesia are actually more likely to be drawn to more austere, fundamentalist versions of Islam than their rural counterparts. The rural Muslims prefer religious practices that blend Islam with elements of Hinduism and indigenous faiths that were practiced there prior to Islam.  No generalizable point here, just an interesting observation on how complex matters of religion and culture can be.

In England, in the early modern period, Catholicism flourished in the countryside while Protestantism took hold in cities. The rural Catholicism was a wondrous blend of folklore, ritual, holidays, processions, votives, icons ... the full Shiite. It was wiped out by the end of the Elizabethan era. Religious life is religious life; it has its variations within most faiths, and sometimes the psychology and structure of faith is remarkably similar across the globe, while the doctrines are utterly different.