Özet:

It is a known fact that authors of Western literature, from the most devout Christian to the most ardent anti-Christian, frequently include religious phenomena in their works. Written by Aldous Huxley, one of the most important dystopian writers of the 20th century, Brave New World is a fiction that draws attention with its religious references, both overtly and skillfully hidden in the subtext. Meanwhile, although Brave New World is been referred as a dystopia, it can also be considered as a utopia from the point of view of the members of the society, because the members of the society living in it are extremely happy. Set in a World State in 632 A.F. (After Ford), the novel predicts scientific advances in psychological manipulation, sleep learning, classical conditioning, reproductive technologies. In the society, where the family is completely eliminated, individuals who are reproduced in laboratories by reproductive technologies are divided into classes such as alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon similar to the Hindu caste system and are employed according to their classes. The society, in which religion, science, art, literature and philosophy are long lost in the dusty pages of history, has taken on a completely hedonistic identity with individuals who have random intercourse in pursuit of sheer pleasure and use a drug called soma. The World State was divided into ten separate regions and an administrator similar to the governor was appointed to the head of each region. The region outside the World State is called the Savage Reservation and the people in this region still live tribal life. Through a character he fictionalised, Huxley expresses that God manifests himself as an absence. Instead of a traditional God, Henry Ford shows up as a divine and Messianic figure. Solidarity rites are held in the World State in order to worship Ford and allow him to manifest among the congregation. These rites share common phenomena with actual religious beliefs and rites such as Jewish Merkava mysticism, ancient Greek and Anatolian orgy rituals, Christian Eucharist and the Vedic narcotic soma. In common with all these rites, the phenomenon of "numinous", which the famous German theologian and philosopher Rudolf Otto defines as "experience of the sacred", and "mysterium tremendum" (trembling mystery), which is the object to which numinous consciousness is directed are seen. Huxley, envisaged a system in which there is no religion in the traditional sense, but still replaces religion. This system ensures the continuation of social order and security, strengthens the bonds of solidarity and brotherhood between people who pursue the common ideal which is to be as one with Ford, the god and also the Messiah of the World State. This system was actually the religion of the Brave New World because it performs the social and psychological function of religion. Huxley refers to the Bible and some other books about religion. In a world in which all religions were abolished, the Bible appears as an ancient religious text known only to the governors of the World State. They keep the Bible in a safe and share it with nobody. He also refers to The Varieties of Religious Experience written by remarkable philosopher and psychologist William James. Another work he referred is De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ) which was composed by Thomas à Kempis and being read by Christians in order to develop themselves personally and spiritually. In this study, the most remarkable of the religious phenomena that Aldous Huxley includes explicitly and implicitly in his fiction will be put forward and these phenomena will be examined in the context of the methods of comparative history of religions and the hermeneutic phenomenology. This study will be an exemplary one for theologians in reading the subtexts of dystopian, utopian and anti-utopian works in which phenomena such as world religion, deus otiosus (static god), savior/Christ have an important place.

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