Religion, Habit, and Custom

: In this chapter, Tirres revisits John Dewey’s A Common Faith (1934) through the lens of Human Nature and Conduct (1922), highlighting Dewey’s evolving understanding of habit, custom, and social transformation. While A Common Faith offers a dynamic view of spirituality, its stark division between “the religious” and institutional religion often proves rigid and incomplete. Human Nature and Conduct provides a more nuanced perspective, emphasizing how habits and customs shape moral and social life, sometimes restricting but also enabling intelligent growth. Dewey’s time in China helped him see how custom, often dismissed as conservative, can be a site of meaningful reconstruction. Yet, in A Common Faith , Dewey is preoccupied with rejecting supernaturalism, overlooking the potential for religious customs to foster ethical and social progress. Tirres argues that had Dewey integrated insights from Human Nature and Conduct , he might have offered a richer account of religion’s social dimensions. By reconstructing Dewey’s approach, Tirres suggests that religious traditions, rather than being inherently stifling, can be intelligently reshaped to promote communal and social transformation, aligning with contemporary movements like liberation theology and engaged Buddhism.