Were Most Human Cultures Originally Monotheistic? Startling Evidence from "Eternity in Their Hearts."

For more than half a decade, I've been encouraged to read the late Don Richardson's groundbreaking anthropological thesis "Eternity in their Hearts," which suggests that many traditional cultures, from East Asia to Africa to the Americas, originally had monotheistic belief systems. In 2023, I finally read this work and found it both insightful and compelling. This article is a critical book review.

How did humanity's religious beliefs begin?

According to standard 20th century anthropological theories, it started with polytheism - worship of many deities, often representing the various forces of nature. In time, as mankind progressed, these beliefs gave way to monotheism - the worship of a single God. Modern tendencies toward agnosticism and atheism are the latest step in humanity's spiritual evolution.

This theory, however, is challenged by primary and secondary research into the traditional cultures of the world.

From the Incan culture of the South American Andes to Ancient China to the Karen people of rural Burma, a longstanding tradition of monotheism, which developed in the distant past rather than inculcated by modern missionary movements, has been discovered by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, theologians and others across the disciplinary spectrum.

The late Don Richardson (1935-2018), a Canadian-born anthropologist and missionary who spent 15 years among some of the world's most remote people groups in New Guinea, gathered global findings of traditional monotheistic beliefs in his 1981 book Eternity in Their Hearts. (An updated PDF version is available for online reading).

Sure to challenge both the atheist and the believer, this monumental work of social science, theology and history is a must-read for anyone wanting to better understand our shared humanity, the accomplishments of the world's cultures, and what religious faith is at its root.

Searching for the Unknown God

The title for Richardson's book is based on Ecclesiastes 3:11, traditionally written by the Israelite King Solomon: "God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end."

This verse suggests a certain level of spiritual revelation inherent in all human societies.

As Richardson's first example, he points to the Greek legends of Epimenides, who pointed the people of 7th or 6th century B.C. Athens to an unknown deity, an encounter memorialized on Mars Hill in Ancient Greece. More than half a millennia later, the Apostle Paul used this incident to introduce the Athenians to the God of Judeo-Christianity, as recorded in Acts 17.

The experience of the Athenians is far from singular.

"90 percent of the world's folk religions are permeated with monotheistic presuppositions," writes Richardson.

Perhaps most fascinating is the theology of Pachacuti, the 15th century Incan emperor who built the incredible Peruvian city of Machu Picchu on the eve of the Spanish conquests.

At first committed to the worship of the sun god Inti, this emperor became convinced that the true God must exist beyond His creation.

"Pachacuti took the testimony he himself had derived directly from creation and aligned it with his own culture's almost extinct memory of Viracocha - the Lord, the omnipotent Creator of all things," relates Richardson.

"A God who created all things, Pachacuti concluded, deserves worship! And it would be inconsistent at the same time to worship part of His creation as if it were Him!"

At least among upper-class Incans, Pachacuti revived monotheism.

Richardson writes the following:

"Let's place Pachacuti's reformation in historical perspective. Compare him for a moment with Akhenaten, an Egyptian pharaoh who also attempted religious reform. Egyptologists acclaim Akhenaten as a rare genius because he attempted - unsuccessfully - to replace the grossly confused idolatry of ancient Egypt with sun worship. Yet Pachacuti stands leagues ahead of Akhenaten for his realization that the sun, which could merely blind human eyes, was no match for a God too great to be seen by human eyes! How strange then that scholars widely publicized Akhenaten's reform and virtually ignore Pachacuti's!"

Shang Ti and Chinese Monotheism

In most people's minds, East Asia is the bastion of non-monotheistic religion.

But history records that before Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism, monotheism was the norm in the world's most populated region.

The Chinese called God Shang Ti, the God of Heaven. Some scholars even speculate an etymological relationship with the Hebrew El Shaddai. The Korean form is Hananim, the Great One.

"Worshippers throughout both China and Korea seem to have understood from the beginning that Shang Ti/Hananim must never be represented by idols," explains Richardson. "Chinese people, for their part, appear to have paid homage to Shang Ti quite freely until the dawn of the Zhou Dynasty. By that time, Chinese religious leaders - zealous to emphasize Shang Ti's majesty and holiness - gradually lost sight of His love and mercy toward men. Soon they worked themselves into a corner so constricted that only the emperor was deemed 'good enough' to worship Shang Ti - and that only once a year!"

Richardson sees a tragic parallel between this elitism and Pachacuti's ultimate decision to restrict monotheism to the upper classes.

"Cutting the masses off from their customary obeisance to Shang Ti created a spiritual vacuum in China," writes Richardson. "That vacuum could not exist for long without something rushing in to fill it. Surely it must be significant that within a mere three centuries of the end of the Zhou Dynasty, three entirely new religions materialized out of nowhere and rushed in to try to fill that vacuum."

Those faiths would be, in order of appearance, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.

Still, memories of Shang Ti remained in East Asian popular culture, which later opened doors for monotheistic expressions to make inroads.

The Chinese writing system, dependent on pictographs, has also raised questions about possible ties to early monotheism.

Popularized in the 1979 book by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson, The Discovery of Genesis, missionaries and linguists have speculated that a primeval history similar to the Judeo-Christian Genesis account is preserved in Chinese ideographs.

For instance, the word for a "large boat" literally means an "eight person boat," as expressed in this character: 船. Which reminds some of the Biblical story in which Noah was one of eight people on board the ark that saved humanity from the Great Flood.

"Not all researchers agree on the exact interpretation of each and every symbol. Nevertheless, Chinese people themselves (and many Japanese, for Japan uses virtually the same writing system) have been intrigued by interpretations which missionaries have suggested to them," writes Richardson. "Even when theories are non-conclusive, the mere discussion of them may be sufficient to communicate spiritual truth to unbelievers."

A Critical Review

Richardson's book is clearly related to Christian missions (though not overtly denominational). The author seeks a middle road between universalism and narrow understandings that limit salvation to the theologically initiated.

While his generally non-sectarian but Christian approach is likely to please readers of many denominations, from Baptists to Roman Catholics, it is sure to be questioned by agnostics, atheists or those of no religion. It is also likely to run afoul of the ultra-conservative mindset. In fact, an opposing book has even been written by those uneasy with the thought that folk religionists around the world might at their root have had knowledge of the same God as Judeo-Christianity apart from missionaries.

Tales of remote tribes in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia claiming visions telling them to await the arrival of white or other foreign visitors for further enlightenment might smack of colonialism. Though Richardson does himself qualify these accounts by clarifying that these visions were reported by the tribal peoples themselves and are not normative for how faith should be spread. He is just sharing the facts of the encounters as he was made aware of them.

Some anecdotes from Richardson's work seem a bit too specific to constitute a general revelation. For instance, he relates the cities of refuge under the Hawaiian monarchy designed as a place of safety for those at risk and out of favor but innocent of true wrongdoing. The connection with the Jewish system of cities of refuge for the accidental manslayer as recorded in the Book of Joshua is a clear comparison. Could it be that the Israelite system was somehow known in other parts of the world? If so, we might need to give our ancestors more credit in international communication. (The discovery of Roman coinage in Brazil and Vietnam does raise the reasonable possibility).

A large portion of Richardson's book is spent debunking the theories of Edward B. Taylor, the "father of anthropology," whose evolutionary views on the origin of religion were used by communist and fascist demagogues in the 20th century to persecute believers, resulting in millions of deaths and terrible atrocities such as the Holocaust.

Richardson writes, "the science of anthropology, due to the anti-God mindset of its founders, unwittingly serve as midwife at the birth of two of history's most brutal aberrations through the very first theory it offered! If nuclear physics has killed its tens of thousands with atomic weapons, anthropology has killed tens of millions through stubborn anti-God biases."

Even today, the human rights abuses so rampant in communist China, the world's largest officially atheistic nation, counter common Western perceptions that irreligion results in a more egalitarian society.

Still, as a writer myself, I feel this argument, as laudable as it is, would be best expounded in a companion volume. An academic-style work needs one unifying thesis to avoid rambling and becoming harder to follow.

I would suggest organizing the accounts of various cultures by region. The Americas, East Asia and Africa would make for good chapter divisions, rather than being sprinkled throughout the book.

But despite the large scope covered in Richardson's book, I believe it to be an invaluable resource for everyone in understanding indigenous and traditional cultures as well as our shared human consciousness.

Any honest and novel argument is sure to make almost everyone a bit uncomfortable, and Richardson surely does that in his book.

He writes, "both evolutionists and theologians feel threatened by the same set of data!"

In our polarized times, perhaps theories that make both sides of the ideological spectrum nervous might be of benefit in helping us learn the reality of our world apart from the biases that are defining our modern times.

Humans are the only known beings with an innate desire - and even need - to worship. And that worship seems to have originally and ultimately been directed to a single Creator God.