Grasping the true meaning of the Sacred may be a challenge for some due to the fact that it is ever-changing in the many religions of the world. Livingston mentions that almost all scholars today agree that religion is a system of activities and beliefs that are centered around something considered to be sacred or of ultimate value and power. These things, which could be spiritual beings, cosmic laws, geographic places, people, ideas, or ideologies, are set apart as sacred. Since the Sacred is considered to be of ultimate significance, Rudolf Otto believes the Sacred is essentially a nonrational and indescribable event of human experience. Mircea Eliade builds on Otto’s view, stating that the Sacred always establishes itself as something nonordinary. Eliade points out that both natural objects and human artifacts are capable of and have been transformed from a common use to a sacred presence. Since Otto and Eliade have a somewhat different view of the Sacred, they seem to have a different view on the experience a human has when encountering the Sacred.
Rudolf Otto believes that an encounter with the Sacred is the deepest and most essential element in all strong and honestly felt religious emotion. He explains this type of experience in terms of a Latin phrase, mysterium
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Nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without a previous orientation-and any orientation implies obtaining a fixed point. The discovery or prediction of a fixed point is equivalent to the creation of the world. The imago mundi is another central tendency that Mircea Eliade presents as fundamental to religious beliefs. The imago mundi can exist on any mass of gauges without conflict. It replicates the choice to create a world and the disorder around it. A temple is a great example of an imago mundi. The temple was initially thought of as a home for the gods whose presence maintained the holiness of the surrounding
Pickering, W. S. F. 1990. “The Eternality of the Sacred: Durkheim's Error?” Archives de Sciences
Smart, Ninian. "Blackboard, Religion 100." 6 March 2014. Seven Dimensions of Religion. Electronic Document. 6 March 2014.
Peterson, Michael - Hasker, Reichenbach and Basinger. Philosophy of Religion - Selected Readings, Fourth Edition. 2010. Oxford University Press, NY.
The vastly different traditions of religion forms in the United States show that how diversity of worldwide people merged into one society and formed separate traditions all while dealing boundaries between religions in America. The mystery of religious belief beyond the definition is still and will always be a much-debated topic. Regardless of whether these arguments are ever resolved, it is important to bear in mind about the powers from Albanese‘s theory, which is a system of symbols by means of which people orient themselves in a world with reference to both ordinary and extraordinary powers, meanings, and values (Albanese). She also identified
The crux of Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life lies in the concept of collective effervescence, or the feelings of mutually shared emotions. Through a hermeneutical approach, Durkheim investigates the reflexiveness of social organization, the balance between form and content, and the immense cooperation in collective representations. In his work, society is the framework of humanity and gives it meaning, whereas religion acts as the tool to explain it. Since society existed prior to the individual, the collective mind must be understood before the concept of the individual can be grasped. However, one component seems missing from his social theory – what underlies society in terms of rituals and rites? Only when this element is fleshed out can the individual be comprehended with respect to the collective conscience. One, out of many, possibilities is the often-overlooked influence of emotions. What is the connection between social functions and emotions? Perhaps emotions reify social solidarity by means of a collective conscience. Durkheim posits the notion that society shares a bilateral relationship with emotional experiences, for the emotions of collective effervescence derive from society but also produce and maintain the social construct.
Geertz defines religion as ‘(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.’ In this essay, I will focus on the Geertz’s idea, and Asad’s subsequent critique, of symbols. (Geertz, Clifford, and Michael Banton. "Religion as a cultural system." (1966).)
Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.
Eastman, Roger. The Ways of Religion: An Introduction to the Major Traditions. Third Edition. Oxford University Press. N.Y. 1999
At last I arrived, unmolested except for the rain, at the hefty decaying doors of the church. I pushed the door and it obediently opened, then I slid inside closing it surreptitiously behind me. No point in alerting others to my presence. As I turned my shoulder, my gaze was held by the magnificence of the architecture. It never fails to move me. My eyes begin by looking at the ceiling, and then they roam from side to side and finally along the walls drinking in the beauty of the stained glass windows which glowed in the candle light, finally coming to rest on the altar. I slipped into the nearest pew with the intention of saying a few prayers when I noticed him. His eyes were fixated upon me. I stared at the floor, but it was too late, because I was already aware that he wasn’t one of the priests, his clothes were all wrong and his face! It seemed lifeless. I felt so heavy. My eyes didn’t want to obey me. Neither did my legs. Too late I realised the danger! Mesmerised, I fell asleep.
Ludwig, Theodore M. The Sacred Paths: Understanding the Religions of the World (4th Edition). 4 ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2005.
Throughout the ancient world, religions and ideologies have developed into forms and practices that influence the very essence of civilizations. Religions could pose as a form of foundation for the beliefs, ideas, social organizations, and economic structures of a certain group of people. They provided a means of justification and form of unity between people and they helped establish and infuse new ideas into a culture. Religions were used as source to explain the misconcepted beliefs in nature and science as well as natural phenomina and it was also used to provide a source of motivation, control, and stability in a civilization.
Religion is an organized collection of beliefs and cultural systems that entail the worship of a supernatural and metaphysical being. “Religion just like other belief systems, when held onto so much, can stop one from making significant progress in life”. Together with religion come traditions that provide the people with ways to tackle life’s complexities. A subscription to the school of thought of great scholars
The book “The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion”, written by Mircea Eliade, investigates four aspects of the sacred universe: space, time, nature, and self. Eliade splits each aspect into two forms of perception, the sacred and profane. Religious men, specifically the ancient, traditional men, view the universe as sacred. In other words, they acknowledge a distinct qualitative difference between a sacred and profane (non-sacred) universe; whereas, nonreligious, specifically modern men, are unable to understand such differences in the world. This claim rests on the on the concept of heirophanies or manifestations of the sacred. A hierophany is the religious man’s source of absolute reality and it illuminates the glory and power of God. This manifestation of divine glory charges a site with special significance, thereby losing a sense of homogeneity throughout the universe. Eliade’s underlying thesis is that due to the human experience of both the sacred and profane in day to day life, the transitional zones between the two are exceptionally illuminated and charged with the divine glory of the sacred.
Spirituality can be defined as ‘‘ways of relating to the sacred’’ (Shults and Sandage 2006, p. 161) that involve the experience of significance (Zinnbauer and Pargament 2005)”. (Jankowski and Vaughn, 2009, p.82).
Harvey, B. (2012). The emotions of Jesus. The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought & Practice, 19(1), 19-23.