Final Flashcards
What is Religion?
Religion > Religio (Latin)
(1) Religio > Relega[e]re > Re-tracing the Customs of our ancestors (Cicero)
(2) Religio > Religare > Re-linking or re-binding the relationship between humanity and God (Lactantius)
Religion and Theology
The academic study of religion is “an anthropological enterprise”
The study of religion is not confessional
The study of religion does not make “normative judgments”
The study of religion originated as the comparative religion
The study of religion recognizes “religious” beliefs, behaviors, and institutions as observable, historical events and phenomena
Religions include…
Practices (Rituals) Beliefs (Faith) (usually about a deity) Texts (Scriptures) Sacred Places (Pilgrimage) Ethics (behavior) Social Groups (communities)
The Comparative Method
Identify both Similarity and Difference(s)
Requires a “point” of comparison (in relation to what?)
(1) respect for all religious facts as “phenomena”
(2) synthesizing facts through the analysis of patterns
(3) religious expressions understood in their historical/cultural contexts
The Problem of Primitivism
The fallacy of an evolutionary development of religion
Animism
The belief in spirits & the idea that there is a non-physical, invisible, or transcendent realm of “spirits” or “gods” that parallels, sometimes intersects, influences this world and can be accessed
Shamanism
The term “shaman” originally referred to ritual specialists among Siberian hunting tribes
Appropriated by Western intellectuals, cultural anthropologists, and scholars of religion as a cross-cultural “type” of “primitive” religious specialist
“Shamans” are said to communicate with spirits, prophesize, heal, find lost objects, manifest non-ordinary powers, and travel to the spirit world
An “outsider” term of categorization (not used by tribal practitioners)
Mysticism
A cross-cultural category in the study of religion
Generally refers to individuals who (are thought or claimed to) have had direct experience of the divine, union with God, or transcendent Reality
Sacrifice
Sacrifice as ancient Religio (ancestral customs)
Sacrifice (sacrificium) = “to make sacred” (by offering)
Sacrifice as Reciprocity (gift-giving)
Sacrifice as Sacred Meals (shared with [the] god(s))
Sacrifice as economic institution benefiting a priestly class of elites
Sacrificial (Biblical) “Burnt Offerings”:
Unblemished male first-born animals, incense, grain, wine, oil
Sacrifice for Prayer, Thanksgiving, Purification, and Atonement
Martyrdom as self-sacrifice
Insiders and Outsiders
Emic = insider/descriptive term(s) Etic = outsider/analytical term(s)
Indigenous Religion[s]
Defined by location, kinship, and language
Location: a place where people “belong”
Kinship refers to family, community relations, as well as the role(s) of ancestor spirits
Indigenous Rites
Rites of Birth, Puberty, Courtship, Marriage, Death, and Mourning
- Boys’ Puberty Ceremony: ritual death and rebirth as a man with sacred knowledge and acquiring a “guardian spirit”
-Girls’ Puberty Ceremony: preparation for roles as wives, mothers through ritual seclusion and purification
Seasonal Rituals
-Summer and Winter Solstice
-Harvest Celebration
-Annual Mourning [of the dead])
The Eagle Rite
-a sequence of rituals in which an eagle was ceremonially sacrificed and its feathers used to make a ceremonial skirt worn by shamans
Catholicism
Papacy Catholic Sacraments Penance and “Indulgences” Bible + Apocrypha Scripture and Tradition Papal Infallibility (1860) The Immaculate Conception of Mary The Assumption of Mary The Cult of the Saints
Protestantism
No Papacy Baptism and Eucharist Criticism of “Indulgences” Bible (- Apocrypha) Sola Scriptura Biblical Inerrancy (1978) No Mary cult No Assumption of Mary No Cult of the Saints
Tongva
Indigenous Ethno-religious Animism Shamanistic Ritualistic Land as “mother” Hunting/Gathering No “original sin” No Devil/Hell
What is “Evangelicalism?”
Trans-denominational Protestant Christian movement(s) intent on “sharing the Gospel”
Based on the Greek word for “Gospel” (“good news”)
Major Characteristics:
(1) Born again: conversion experience
(2) Biblicism: high regard for biblical authority, inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility
(3) Cross-centered: focus on the substitutionary atoning death of Jesus “for our sins”
(4) Activism: missionary outreach
The Rise of Fundamentalism
Protestant movement in reaction to “liberal” theology, biblical (“higher”) criticism, and scientific (Darwinian) naturalism (atheism)
The Fundamentals
(1) the infallibility of scripture;
(2) the virgin birth of Jesus;
(3) atonement theology;
(4) the bodily resurrection of Jesus;
(5) the historicity of the miracles of Jesus
the deity (divinity) of Jesus;
the Second Coming
Pentecostalism: Historical Origins
The Azusa Street Revival
1900: Charles Fox Parham begins “speaking in tongues”
1906-1915: William J. Seymour begins meetings;
testimonials of healing miracles and “speaking in tongues”
1906 - Seymour arrives in Los Angeles to preach at her church & soon relocate to a private home on North Bonnie Brae Street, and then move to 312 Azusa Street in downtown LA
People of all races and genders assume roles as leaders
Meetings are frequent & spontaneous
Miracles are reported (miracles, “tongues”)
Pentecostalism Beliefs and Practices
A revival movement within Protestant Christianity
“Born again” (receiving the grace of God)
Being adopted into the family of God
Initiating the process of sanctification (a Spirit-filled life)
Direct personal experience of God through baptism w/HS
Speaking in tongues as evidence of being “received” HS
Encountering the Other
Religious Domination - invalidation of an other religion (as false, inferior, and/or superstitious) and imposition of “true” religion
Religious Isolation - segregation of religious groups in mutual isolation
Religious Toleration - secular acknowledgement of religious diversity, often described as a “melting pot” which strives to diminish cultural distinctions
Religious Perennialism - religious affirmation of all religious traditions as similar paths to the same “goal” (but too often denies difference)
Religious Pluralism - social and religious equality across and between traditions
Politics of the Spirit
A USC/UCSB-led report on religion in LA following the Rodney King trial/uprising (April, 1992)
Studied efforts toward achieving “peaceful co-existence” and “multiethnic justice”
Combating inner city powerlessness and racism
“A theological coming-together of religious communities around liberationist themes”
Promotes the use of media to “counteract the fragmentation of the city”
Regional inter-cultural coalitions
Religion as resource for civic harmony
What/Who is a Jew?
The Patriarch Judah
The Land of Judah = Judea
The Ancestral Customs (Religio) of Judea = Judaism
A Judean: one who practices the religion of Judea
Judean > Jew > “(The) Jews”
A Jew = an Ethnos = A People
The People of Judea = Ethnographic definition
Haskalah: The Jewish Enlightenment
An intellectual movement in Europe (1770s)
To preserve collective Jewish identity and regenerate its cultural and ethical foundations
To reform education, culture, and political life through integration (not assimilation)
To promote nationalism, the revived use of Hebrew as a literary language, free thought
Positive evaluation of secular education; changes in language, manners, and dress; relaxed religious observance
Prioritized the rational in religion
Haskalah: The Effects
Secular Judaism
Jewish emancipation
Struggle for equal rights in European society
The challenge(s) of assimilation/integration
Jewish political movements (Socialism/Marxism)
Jewish Nationalism (Zionism)
Denominations
Three Branches of Judaism
Orthodox
-Jews who rejected Reform, but still saw value in embracing some aspects of Haskalah, developed Modern Orthodox Judaism (and so sought to preserve and perpetuate rabbinical tradition)
-Orthodox Jews who opposed Haskalah became Haredi Jews (more isolationist, less secular, ambivalent about the state of Israel) (“Ultra-Orthodox” Judaism)
Conservative
-Reform Jews thought the movement went too far created Conservative Judaism
Reform
-Jews who embraced Haskalah developed Reform Judaism (seeing the Torah’s halakhic rules as non-binding in the modern context)
Orthodox Judaism
A conservative reaction to Reform Judaism
Meticulous observance of Jewish laws and customs
Mandates a single path (deviation is transgression)
Judaism invented by Abraham
Orthodox Judaism is Judaism
Torah is binding
Kabbalah is part of Orthodox Judaism (and rejects the “trendy” non-Jewish form)
Torah is divinely inspired
The Jews are the “Chosen People” (they chose the Torah)
Orthodox Judaism
A conservative reaction to Reform Judaism
Meticulous observance of Jewish laws and customs
Mandates a single path (deviation is transgression)
Judaism invented by Abraham
Orthodox Judaism is Judaism
Torah is binding
Torah is divinely inspired
The Jews are the “Chosen People” (they chose the Torah)
Orthodox
Torah is binding
Torah written by Moses
Supernatural revelation
Only men rabbis
Reform
Torah is not binding
Torah written by many human authors
Revelation as myth
Women can be rabbis
Jewish Law (Halakhah) (“The Way one walks”)
Torah Commandments (Mitzvot)
Rabbinical Law (Mishnah and Talmud)
Customary observances
Teffilin
Jewish male practice commanded in Torah
The passages include the Shema
Black leather boxes bound to the bicep facing the heart and to the forehead between the eyes (of Jewish males) that contain passages from books of Moses
Worn during prayer in the a.m.
Symbolizes binding the arm, behavior, and intellect to scripture, tradition, and God
The Structure of Religious Experience(according to William James)
The “healthy-minded” tend to ignore the evil in the world and focus on the positive and optimistic
(2) The “sick-souled” are unable to ignore evil and suffering and tends toward the pessimistic
The “Divided Self”: the experience of inner struggle that shifts the “center” of one’s self, and produces the experience of a sense of “higher control,” release from anxiety, and deep intuitive feelings that all is well
The structure of “religious experience” is a two-part sequence of repairing the self, and restoring divided being to wholeness
