Zuraida Thamrin

Religion and culture are two different things that really necessary for human being in their life. Religion is necessary needed for people represent their disposition as God’s weak creature. Culture is necessary needed for people indicating human as ‘thinking’ creature that always think and do some efforts in solving and living their life. But then a problem exist, a great question always appear related to those two things. That is, which one appeared and grew first in human being life, religion or culture? This question had been forced a lot of scientist to study deeply and finally had been made a lot of theories related to the relationship between religion and culture. The answer will be really determined culture and religion’s position in priority needed of human being.

One of the theories by Cliffort Geertz mentioned that religion is a part of a cultural system. It means that culture should be existed first and created religion as one of its symbol system in human life. His theory came from his interpretation method for his examinations that applied in Javanese religion, Balinese belief and Moslem in Maroko. This theory also influenced by Weber’s thinking.

Other theory opposite Geertz, disagree with him. Mukti Ali, Faisal Ismail and others believe that there are two kinds of religion in world. These are earth religion and God religion (samawi religion). They believed that God religion appeared a long time ago before human being thinking for the first time and even live on earth. And earth religion existed as the result of human creation, intention and work. According to their thinking, actually earth religion only mentioned as a sacred culture not as a religion. It means that earth religion is equal with the culture. On the other hand, they mentioned that God religion should not included as a part of cultural system, because it can create its own cultural system.

From the two contradictive theories above, the conclusion is religion and culture are two things that can not be separated from human being in their life and really relative. Talking about religion and culture has no limit and could be different depend on perspective. For the substance, religion and culture needed of each other. Religion needs cultural process to be known by human and culture needs religion for coloring human being’s activities and reaching their purpose in this life.