Intro to religion - Lecture notes Unit 1 PDF

Preview

Summary

Unit 1, Online, Brian Neely...

Description

Intro to religion Chapter 1 Discerning patterns of religion Each religion has a distinctive pattern of beliefs, values, ideas, symbols, practices and traditions that is meaningful, and provides guidance for living. Define religion as: a system of meaning embodied in a pattern of life, a community of faith, and a worldwide view that articulates conception of the sacred and what ultimately matters. Three ways religions resemble each other: 1.) a pattern of life or ethos, a way of living including moods attitudes and rituals. 2.) a community of faith, social structures and institutions. 3.) a worldview, a view of what is real and what ultimately matters. Sacred is a general term devised to speak about the perception of a transcendent and enduring order of things. A symbol of what is ultimately real. Absolute, eternal, incomparable, unsurpassable. Can’t be defined because it is different in every religion. Religion focuses on the deliverance from life now, to salvation. Religious language: Symbols, metaphors(symbols that make a likeness to what they symbolize), sacraments(symbols that make present what they are, like praying), Sacred stories, myths(not so much true or false, but a story to live by (eschatologies are myths about the end of times)). Forms of religious expression: Belief, morality, ritual, scripture, community. Definitions of religion: Monothetic definition identifies a single decisive trait that all members of a class invariably have. Polythetic definition uses the proposition that a class consists of a set of features or properties. Each member possess some or the other, but not all. No single feature is shared by every member. Functional definitions there is no definition of religion that is right. Religion is based on human need to interpret and understand the world. Classifying religions: Theistic, the sacred is primarily conceived as a divine being or beings with whom humans interact with. Nontheistic, sacred is thought to be a power or a knowledge, or a truth. Indigenous, bind people together by ancestry and culture. Universal, seek converts across borders and kinship to bring them into the religious community on the basis of doctrine. Secularism: separation of religion from other aspects of life. Religious pluralism: the presence of different religious groups within a nation-state. Myth: speech of the sacred, form of story, not historical fact

Ancient Spirituality

Paleolithic: hunting and gathering societies, scavenging. Old stone age. Neolithic: farmers primarily, hunting gathering secondarily. New Stone age. If religion is a social institution, prehistoric people were religious, but did not have a religion. Religion was not separate from other aspects of life. Micera Eliade labelled unity of spiritual/divine, natural, and human aspects Cosmic religion. Burial of the dead can be linked to religion. Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human qualities and features to divinities. Totemic Spirits: spirits of animal or nature associated with the origin of families or clans. Theriomorphic divinities: divinities with part human part nature or animal bodies) Ancestral spirits: spirits of ancestors Shahmanism: a type of religious leadership associated with hunting and gathering and nomadic pastoralists. Paleolithic age Shahman: human intermediaries between humans and spirit beings Sacrifices and offerings were widely practiced in the paleolithic age, even human sacrifice. Axis mundi: the sacred center of the cosmos 550 BCE-650 BCE: period of growth of buddhism, confucianism, christianity, and islam. Initiation cults also grew in this period. Henotheism: worshiping one god exclusively without the denying the existence of others Agnosticism: neither believing nor denying in a god or gods. Atheism: denying any existence of a god or gods. Sacred kings: the symbolic center of most ancient urban societies. Chief intermediary between the people and the god and the nexus that united all elements of society. Diviners: masters of the magical arts Oracles: mediums Blood offerings and bloodless offerings are both forms of sacrifice. Modernist: those whose understanding is shaped by modern science. Animism: belief that everything has a spirit Totemism: stated to be first form of religion by Durkheim and Freud.

Spirituality can be considered a fundamental feature of human existence. Assimilation: the absorption of indigenous peoples into dominant states. Acculturation: blending of cultures Revitalization movements: sustaining and reviving of traditions Restoration movements: seeking to restore traditional ways and expel alien elements Accommodation movements: responses to challenges that dominant culture poses to traditional ways. Tribal societies: were characterized by preliterate languages, not characterized by this in modern times Chapter 4: Lecture New religions 19th century and forward Modern religions are a sub-product of the religion they came out of. NRM: new religious movement All members are converts when it begins, converts are notoriously more enthusiastic and committed than those born into the religion. Founding leaders are usually charismatic individuals, given a lot of power. Building rules and traditions, makes for unpredictability. Appeal to an atypical view of the population. Often have a unquestionably true opinion of their religion (not universal) Greeted with suspicion fear or hatred from others who see them as a threat or an alternative. New ideas tend to rub people the wrong way. They are likely to change more fundamentally and rapidly than traditional religions. Stark and Bainbridge argue that the best way to classify religions is through their religious identity or tension in the culture which they reside. Religious institutions have low tensions with their host cultures and tend to accept their environment. Religious movements tend to have higher tensions because they wish to promote or resist social change. Sects are schismatic, separational, movements that are typically born out of reforming impulse.

Often criticize their parent religions Cults typically born out of impulse of innovation. Innovations are rejected by wider culture. Mary Baker Eddy founder of christian science...