On May 15 of any given year in the town of Gubbio in Italy, sixty men, sweating and swearing, carry three quarter-ton pillars to a basilica on the side of a mountain just as their pre-Christian ancestors had carried sacrificial animals up the same slope. Their ancestors ended the ascent with sacrifice lest the blood shed by soldiers defile the town and things go badly wrong.

A spring named Munlochy Clootie, east of the Modern town of Tore Scotland has for centuries supported a legend concerning healing. The legend suggests that if one who has need spills water three times on the ground, ties a rag torn from her clothing onto a nearby tree, makes the sign of the cross and drinks from the well, her need will be met. The thousands of pieces of cloth tied to the trees surrounding the well testify to the fact that for many people, something has gone badly wrong and needs correction.

In 2004, crowds gathered at theatres throughout the United States to watch and weep as Mel Gibson vividly portrayed the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. Perhaps like the visitors to Munlochy Clootie, in the emotional aftermath of the events on September 11th three years prior the moviegoers believed that something had gone horribly wrong and needed to be set right again.

Are the Corsa dei Ceri festivals of Gubbio, the cloths tied to the Munlochy Clootie trees, and the phenomenal box-office success of The Passion somehow related? In a post-graduate thesis, I analyzed beliefs and practices from a variety of world religions. I argued that practices such as these have a common root in a human felt need for atonement. Vasistha, an Indian seer of the 15th century BCE gave voice to that need. He wrote, "Talking to myself, alone, I ask: How may Varuna and I be united? What gift of mine will he accept in joy, not anger? When may I calmly look on Him and find Him gracious?" Vasistha's words reveal his need to engage in an activity that will restore harmony with his deity. The desire to "calmly look and find him gracious" in turn expresses a need to set right what is wrong in material as well as spiritual terms.

William James thought Vasistha's quest the heart of religion. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, he posited "an uneasiness" and "its solution" common to all religions. By uneasiness, he meant that, "There is something wrong about us as we naturally stand." He explained that people recognize a "MORE" (italics and caps are his) in the universe which corresponds to their higher selves. By solution, James meant a "deliverance" that puts an individual in touch with the "MORE" of the universe allowing her to transcend her lower self. It is precisely in this sense -- a quest for something to bring James' "MORE" to bear on life that I use the word atonement.

Some might think that the topic of atonement is passé. It is after all, the twenty-first century. Yet when I searched Amazon.com I found more than forty titles related to atonement published or republished in the first five years of this century. Indeed, atonement needs seem to have intensified rather than diminished in the last decades. Sharon Thornton finds in modern society "multiple losses of hope, holiness, and finally, our selves. At the same time," she writes, "there is an almost palpable sense of longing for something that we cannot easily name." She continues, "Fearing the magnitude of our loss, we begin to trivialize the symbols...[or] we raise the symbols and traditions to the level of unalterable truths." Whether or not atonement is a topic of cocktail conversations, then, it remains apropos to the twenty-first century psyche. Moreover, concepts concerning atonement have very real consequences in behavior. If people believe that their god requires or condones warfare, then warfare will occur. When people believe that their god requires the separation of individuals thought deviant, then separation will occur.

In the articles that follow, I propose exploring the concept of atonement with you. In the next two articles, I will undertake to demonstrate the ubiquity of atonement ideas by sampling beliefs and practices from each of the five major world religions. In subsequent articles, we will look at psychological and sociological theories in an attempt to uncover the color and texture of humanity's felt need for atonement. We will see that atonement beliefs and practices address not one, but several psychological and social functions. People inevitably seek rationalization for their behavior, whatever their psychological and sociological motivations; and for several millennia theologians from a variety of religious traditions have advanced theories to explain atonement rituals and beliefs. In later articles we will see that, just as no single psychological or sociological need lies at the roots of these beliefs and practices, none of the historical theories is individually adequate. Such theories offer at best only partial answers to the questions raised by believers.

Despite their individual inadequacy, theories that seek to explain atonement beliefs and practices may serve as useful models for understanding these rituals and beliefs. Like computer models of a physical phenomenon, atonement models aid the understanding by approximating one or more dimensions of beliefs and practices. In conversation with the psychological and sociological theories, we will examine them for healthy and unhealthy characteristics; and from each of the theoretical models considered, we will identify ideas that contribute toward a healthy, modern model of atonement as well as those that do not. We will consider healthy, those ideas that promote psychologically well adjusted individuals and just and peaceful societies. On the other hand, we will consider ideas concerning atonement that work at cross-purposes to psychological and social health unhealthy. Since we will consider atonement from a variety of religious traditions, I will not claim validity for any single model. Rather, in the final installments we will evaluate a relatively novel atonement model from the Christian tradition based on the color and shape of the psychological and social needs we have identified as well as the criticisms that we have leveled at the theories in earlier articles. In next month's article, we will begin our exploration by considering Buddhist, Judaic, and Christian atonement beliefs and practices.