"Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown"
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A cool scalpel of a definition, meant less to describe religion than to demystify it. Frances Wright frames faith as a two-step transaction: belief in what cannot be verified, followed by homage that institutionalizes that belief. The wording is deliberately antiseptic. No talk of salvation, beauty, community, or moral law - just "existences unseen and causes unknown", a phrase that pushes religion toward the realm of epistemic gap-filling. It reads like a secular Enlightenment diagnosis: when knowledge runs out, reverence moves in.
The subtext is sharper than it first appears. By pairing "unseen" with "unknown", Wright collapses the spiritual and the unexplained into the same category, suggesting that the object of worship is often whatever resists human understanding. "Homage rendered" lands like a legal or economic term, implying payment, duty, submission. Worship becomes behavior society can demand, not merely private feeling. In one sentence, she hints that religion is less revelation than social practice built atop uncertainty.
Context matters: Wright was a radical public intellectual in a young republic where religious revivalism and political power were increasingly intertwined. As an advocate of free thought, women's rights, and social reform, she had reason to challenge clerical authority without getting bogged down in theology. This definition is strategic: broad enough to cover multiple traditions, pointed enough to expose a mechanism. It works rhetorically because it refuses believers the comfort of exceptionalism. Faith is not singled out as sacred knowledge; it's named as a human response to darkness - and the moment you name it that way, it becomes debatable.
The subtext is sharper than it first appears. By pairing "unseen" with "unknown", Wright collapses the spiritual and the unexplained into the same category, suggesting that the object of worship is often whatever resists human understanding. "Homage rendered" lands like a legal or economic term, implying payment, duty, submission. Worship becomes behavior society can demand, not merely private feeling. In one sentence, she hints that religion is less revelation than social practice built atop uncertainty.
Context matters: Wright was a radical public intellectual in a young republic where religious revivalism and political power were increasingly intertwined. As an advocate of free thought, women's rights, and social reform, she had reason to challenge clerical authority without getting bogged down in theology. This definition is strategic: broad enough to cover multiple traditions, pointed enough to expose a mechanism. It works rhetorically because it refuses believers the comfort of exceptionalism. Faith is not singled out as sacred knowledge; it's named as a human response to darkness - and the moment you name it that way, it becomes debatable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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