Walsh and "The Role of Religion in History"

Primitive religion, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, oh my!

You can’t understand human history if you don’t understand religion. And no matter how much — or how little — you now understand about religion, these four lectures on “The Role of Religion in History” by George Walsh will leave you edified.

Walsh starts with “primitive religion” — animism, magic, and beyond. Then he moves onto Indian religion — first Hinduism, then Jainism and Buddhism. (His discussion of Buddhism alone is worth the price of admission). From there, he covers Judaism and Christianity. And finally, fearlessly, he analyzes Islam.

Lecture 1: Primitive Religion

Lecture 2: Indian Religion [moderate sound problems for this lecture, unfortunately]

Lecture 3: Judaism and Christianity

Lecture 4: Islam

If you were raised in any particular religion, Walsh’s wry yet clinical lectures on comparative religion are eye-opening. And if you weren’t raised in any particular religion, I honestly think you’ll be amazed by how much you’ve been missing. To my mind, reading and rereading Marx or Hayek to find out what they “really meant” is a waste of time. If we still don’t know, it’s because they weren’t clear. In contrast, reading and rereading seminal religious works to find out what they “really meant” is revelatory. Why? Because they’re the product of a team effort that spans decades, centuries, or even millennia. Dozens of not-so-like-minded shadowy figures wrote the original texts, which were in turn compiled and heavily edited by religious and political elites with heavy-handed agendas that would have baffled the original authors.

As usual, Walsh is a joy to hear. So learned. So funny. But unlike almost all of his other lectures series, “The Role of Religion in History” was transcribed and published as a book in 1998. Still available on Amazon. (Actually, the book contain edited transcripts of not only this six-hour series, but his subsequent six hours on “The Judeo-Christian Tradition." Audio lectures coming eventually!)