CH 13 Review

Question 1

Religion is an organized system of ideas about the spiritual sphere or the supernatural, and it is a key part of every culture’s worldview.

Answer 1

Like religion, spirituality is concerned with sacred matters, but it is often individual rather than collective and does not require a distinctive format or traditional organization.

Question 2

Among food-foraging peoples, religion is intertwined with everyday life.

Answer 2

As societies become more complex, it may be restricted to particular occasions.

Question 3

Spiritual and religious beliefs and practices fulfill numerous psychological and emotional needs, such as

Answer 3

Reducing anxiety by providing an orderly view of the universe and answering existential questions.

Question 4

Myths are narratives that explain the fundamentals of human existence

Answer 4

Where we and everything in our world came from, why we are here, and where we are going.

Question 5

A traditional religion reinforces group norms and provides moral sanctions for individual conduct. Its narratives and rituals confirm the existing social order, but it may also provide vehicles for challenging that order.

Answer 5

People often turn to religion or spirituality in the hope of reaching a specific goal such as restoring health.

Question 6

Religion is characterized by a belief in supernatural beings and forces that can be appealed to for aid through prayer, sacrifice, and other rituals.

Answer 6

Supernatural beings include major deities (gods and goddesses), ancestral spirits, and other sorts of spirit beings.

Question 7

Gods and goddesses are great but remote beings that control the universe.

Answer 7

Whether people recognize gods, goddesses, or both has to do with how men and women relate to each other in everyday life.

Question 8

Monotheism holds that there is one supreme divinity

Answer 8

Polytheism acknowledges more than one deity.

Question 9

Belief in ancestral spirits is based on the dualistic idea that human beings consist of a body and

Answer 9

A soul or vital spirit that continues to participate in human affairs after death.

Question 10

Animism, the belief that nature is enlivened by distinct personalized spirit beings separable from bodies

Answer 10

Is common among peoples who see themselves as part of nature rather than superior to it.

Question 11

Animatism, often found alongside animism, is a belief that nature is enlivened by an impersonal spiritual force

Answer 11

Which may make itself manifest in any special place, thing, or living creature.

Question 12

Priests and priestesses are full-time religious specialists authorized to perform sacred rituals and

Answer 12

Mediate with supernatural powers on behalf of others.

Question 13

Priests and priestesses typically hold their position by way of spiritual lineage in which

Answer 13

Divine authority is passed down from a spiritual founder to a chain of successors.

Question 14

There are four major forms of spiritual lineage: Biological Descent, Training.

Answer 14

Appointment by religious leaders, Election, and Recognition of a reincarnated saint.

Question 15

Shamans are individuals skilled at entering an altered state of consciousness to contact and utilize an ordinarily hidden reality

Answer 15

In order to acquire knowledge and supernatural power to help other people.

Question 16

A religious ritual is a culturally symbolic act or procedure designed to guide members of a community in an orderly way through personal and collective transitions.

Answer 16

It is religion in action—the means through which people relate to the supernatural.

Question 17

Rites of purification are rituals performed to establish or

Answer 17

Restore purity when someone has violated a taboo or is otherwise unclean.

Question 18

Rites of passage are rituals marking an important stage in an individual’s life cycle, such as birth, marriage, and death.

Answer 18

They feature three phases: separation, transition, and incorporation.

Question 19

Rites of intensification are rituals that ease anxiety and bind people together when they face a collective crisis or change.

Answer 19

Such rituals may also be staged to mark seasonal changes and subsistence cycles.

Question 20

People in many cultures believe in magic

Answer 20

The idea that supernatural powers can be compelled to act in certain ways for good or evil purposes through specified formulas.

Question 21

Divination is a magical procedure or spiritual ritual designed to find out what is not knowable by ordinary means

Answer 21

Particularly through signs foretelling fate or destiny.

Question 22

Witchcraft—magical ritual intended to cause misfortune or inflict harm and often referred to as sorcery

Answer 22

Is believed to be practiced by people who embody evil spirit power or collaborate with malevolent supernatural beings.

Question 23

Belief in witchcraft is widespread, takes many forms

Answer 23

Is especially common during periods of uncertainty.

Question 24

Sacred sites may be places where ordinary people experienced something extraordinary or places associated with a holy person

Answer 24

Or they may be exceptional natural places, especially mountaintops.

Question 25

A pilgrimage is a devotion in motion—a journey, often on foot, to a sacred site by individuals reaching for enlightenment, proving devotion, and/or hoping to experience a miracle.

Answer 25

Among the largest pilgrimages is the hajj made by 1.8 million Muslims traveling to Mecca in Saudi Arabia each year from all around the world.

Question 26

Many pilgrimages center on cults of the Virgin Mary. These include Black Madonnas—dark-colored statues or painted images representing the virgin mother

Answer 26

Such as the Virgin of Guadalupe whose shrine in Mexico City draws 6 million pilgrims a year.

Question 27

Sacred sites are potential targets of desecration

Answer 27

Ideological violation of a sacred site aimed at harming, if only symbolically, people judged to have impure, false, or evil beliefs and ritual practices.

Question 28

Revitalization movements arise when people seek radical cultural reform in response to

Answer 28

Widespread social disruption and collective feelings of anxiety and despair.

Question 29

Revitalization examples include Mormonism in the United States, ecospiritualism in many Western nations

Answer 29

Such as the rise of Druidry in England, and the revival of traditional American Indian ceremonies.

Question 30

Syncretism, the creative blending of indigenous and foreign beliefs and practices into new cultural forms, can be found worldwide.

Answer 30

It includes the practice of Vodou among former slaves in Haiti, which features elements of Roman Catholicism and traditional African beliefs such as spirit possession.

Question 31

Secularization is a process of cultural change in which a population tends toward a nonreligious worldview

Answer 31

Ignoring or rejecting institutionalized spiritual beliefs and rituals.

Question 32

Fairly common in wealthy countries, secularization has become especially prevalent in

Answer 32

Western Europe.