one from one religious specialist to the next, a guild requires a
description of what it offers. Obviously, putting forth a doctrine
implies that there could at least in principle be several doctrines and
that one of them is valid. Even though a guild is keen to present its
concepts and norms as the only ones that really make sense, or the
only true ones, by this very claim it becomes possible to think that
there could be others. (In fact some guilds include in their presenta-
tion a detailed denunciation of other guilds and their claims, so that
the existence of alternatives becomes even more salient.) This aspect
of religion is very familiar to most of us but not necessarily present in
[278] all human groups. Those Kwaio who resisted missionaries and the
Fang before massive colonization did not think of their ancestor cults
as a special option. They just saw the cults as a (supposedly) time-
tested and obviously efficient way of interacting with the ancestors.
Literate guilds promote textsas the source of guaranteed truths.
They tend to downplay intuition, divination, personal inspiration,
orally transmitted lore and "essential" persons because all these natu-
rally fall outside the guild's control. The use of texts as authority
strengthens the notion that true descriptions of supernatural agents
come in the form of a stable and general doctrine, rather than on-the-
hoof, contextual solutions to specific problems. A typical question in
local religious activities is "Will the ancestors be satisfied with this pig
and help this child recover?" A typical one in literate religion would be
"What animals must be sacrificed for what types of illnesses?" and the
answer to that is a generalone.
Also, the use of texts tends to make religious doctrines more coher-
ent, in the sense that all the elements that compose the description of
supernatural agents can be brought together for consideration much
more efficiently than when they are stored in individual people's mem-
ories, in the form of particular episodes. Guilds offer an account of
gods and spirits that is generally integrated (most elements hang
together and cross-reference each other), apparently deductive(you can
infer the guild's position on a whole variety of situations by consider-
ing the general principles) and stable(you get the same message from
all members of the guild). This last feature is particularly important
for diffusion; even complex concepts can gradually become more and
more familiar to the illiterate masses through consistent sermons and
recitations.
Obviously, the work of religious scholars not only creates coherent
doctrines but often spawns abstruse and paradoxical theology as
RELIGION EXPLAINED