The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Canterbury S 73

to powder, and put in drinks. This was said to protect the victors against attacks by the souls of the deceased, and also to be a way of acquiring their energy. Other tribesmen have disapproved of the practice but claimed it is done by witches and sorcerers in order to gain magical power. In still other societies, such as some in New Guinea, parts of the bodies of relatives, who had died naturally, were eaten as a benign way of expressing kinship and assuring their REINCARNATION within the tribe. Cannibalism has also sometimes been a part of religious sacrifice. In Fiji the communal eating of cannibal victims who had been sacrificed to a major god was said to be a way of cementing an alliance between chiefs. Among the Aztecs of Mex ico ( see A ZTEC RELIGION ) reports have alleged that the bodies of the victims whose hearts and blood were regularly offered to nourish the sun were then eaten by priests and nobility. To eat offerings, human, animal, or plant, presented to the gods is widely considered a means of having communion with that god and with other worshippers. Recently some scholars have argued that accounts of the practice of cannibalism, repellent to most people, are greatly sensationalized. Can nibalism has rarely if ever been reliably observed firsthand, it is said, and accusations of human-eat ing have come from informants whose real motive was to slander rival tribes, or from tellers of tall tales who enjoyed shocking their listeners. The stories were then still more exaggerated by West ern colonialists to smear their “native” subjects as barbaric and depraved, and so justify white rule. Doubtless there is much truth to this. The majority of anthropologists and religion scholars, however, still believe that cannibalism has some times been engaged in for religious reasons, though probably not as often as was once thought. Canterbury A town in England roughly 50 miles southeast of London. In 597 C . E . Pope Gregory I sent a missionary named Augustine (not A UGUSTINE OF H IPPO ) to the Anglo-Saxons in England. Augustine was the first missionary to the English. He settled in Canterbury and became bishop there. The line

represented, and Canadians also included some 600,000 Muslims, 400,000 Jews, 300,000 Hindus, 300,000 Sikhs, and 250,000 Buddhists. Many Cana dians were nonreligious. In the latter half of the 20th century, religious life in Canada seemed to be in decline. It appeared to be at a midpoint between most of Europe, where church attendance has fallen precipitously since the end of World War II, and the United States, where it has remained at a high level. All major denominations had decreased in membership except Pentecostalism, which has increased. The Roman Catholic Church, while growing in abso lute numbers, has seen attendance decline signifi cantly. Québec, once a stronghold of traditional French Catholicism, is now no more religious than anywhere else. It seems clear that Canada has a distinct religious culture that is finding a middle way between Europe and the United States. Further reading: Reginald Bibby, Fragmented Gods: The Poverty and Potency of Religion in Canada (Toronto: Irwin, 1987); Stewart Crysdale and Les Wheatcroft, eds., Religion in Canadian Society (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976); W. E. Hewitt, ed., The Sociology of Religion: A Canadian Focus (Toronto: Butterworth, 1993). cannibalism and religion The eating of human flesh by other humans. It has been practiced in a variety of places throughout human history for many reasons, only some of which can be con sidered religious. In extreme circumstances it has been done just to survive. In some cultures parts of the bodies of defeated enemies have been eaten simply to degrade them and demonstrate the com pleteness of the victory. In other instances, though, elements of religious or at least spiritist belief have come in, through the association of canni balism with war, sacrifice, and kinship or alliance between the living and the dead and between dif ferent tribes. Among certain South American and African tribes, for example, the bodies of killed foes were reportedly cooked and eaten, or burned, reduced