RELIGION AND THE SEARCH FOR ULTIMATE MEANING
Learning Objectives
At the end of this lesson, the students are expected to:
• discuss the significant role of religion in society;
• distinguish religion from other social institutions;
• define and explain the meaning of religion;
• explain the various religious group;
• connect temporary religious movements with globalization; and
• conduct participant observation (e.g, attend, describe, and reflect on a religious ritual of a different
group).
People to Remember
√Peter L. Berger
√Jaime Bulatao
√Pope Francis
√Sigmund Freud
√Felix Manalo
√Karl Marx
√Sun Myong Moon
√Mike Velarde
The Nature of Religion and it's Meaning
The English word religion is from the Laten verb religare, which means “to tie” or “to bind fast”.
Religion is a powerful institution that connects human beings, both as individuals and collectively, to
a transcendent reality. A scholar studying the importance of religions in world history and in the
evolution of humanity observes. As people rely more and more on scientific reason and method to
explain natural event and so-called miracles, supernatural occurrences, and mysteries, many critics of
religion such as Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and Karl Marx, the father of scientific
socialism, believed that religion will gradually disappear. This view is called secularization (from the
Latin word saeculum, whicheans “worldly”).
Substantive definition is a religion limits, religion to the belief I'm supernatural or divi e forces.
Edward Tylor, the founder of British social anthropology, presented the earliest substantive definition
of religion as “a belief in spiritual beings.”
Tylor's (1903) theory it that human beings develop religious belief in order to explain dream, visions,
unconsciousness, and death.
Some social scientific prefer a functional definition of religion that does not necessarily refer to a
belief in a supernatural being (god or force). In the funtional definition, religion is anything that
provides an individual with the ultimate meaning that organizes his/her entire life and world view.
Berger further adds that religion provides an all-encompassing explanation for the negative
experiences in this world. For Berger (1973) religion “maintains the socially defined reality by
legitimation g marginal situation in terms of all-encompassing sacred reality.
Types of Religious Organizations
CHURCH is a religious organization that claims to possess the truth about salvation exclusively. A
classic example is the Roman Catholic Church. The church includes everybody or virtually everybody
us a society. Membership is by childbirth; bee generation are born into the church and are formally
inducted through baptism.
CULT are often concedered as deviant groups within society. In the 1960s,when series of unusual
religious groups emerged to challenge the dominant religious institutions, the member were
considered as cultists. They were considered as “braibwashed” by their religious organization.
“Braibwashed” means that cult member were forces to belief in the doctrine of the group by force.
SECT also perceive it self asa unique owner of the Truth. However ,it constitutes a minority in a
given society. Recruitment takes place through conscious individual choice. A gtiis example is the
resurgence of “borb again” Christianity that recruits members by asking them to accept Jesus Christ
in their lives.
DENOMINATION is in contract to the church and sect, the denomination is oriented towards
cooperation, at least as it relates to other similar denomination. People join through individual and
voluntary choice, although the most important form of recruitment in established denominations
takes place through childbirth.
New Religious Movement(NRMs) and Indigenous Religious Groups
The term "new religious movement" came into use among social scientists in the 1960s. It was an
alternative label for cults that have been negatively portrayed by mass media and some social
scientists. New age group are considered part of these new religious movements.
The proliferation of new religious movements may be explained partly by globalization. With the
rapid and accelerated movement of people, culture, and information across national borders,
religious ideas also rapidly transfer from one place to another.
Religious Syncretism
Hence, globalization promotes syncretism or the mixing of different religious and cultural belief and
practices. Syncretism promotes the growth of popular religion or folk religion that is different from
the original parent religion or mainstream orthodoxy.
Religion and Women
Traditionally, women have been equated with religion and with the role of transmitting religious
belief and practices to the children (Argyle 1958, 2006, p.51). Men are considered as the leader of
the religious organization. However, it must be born in mind that some feminist scholars of religion
argue that before the birth of the “male god”, there was matriarchy. Under matriarchy or the rule
and dominance of women in political and social life, religion was also dominated by women. Hence,
many feminist scholars argue for covering the “goddest religion ”
Goddest feminist arose out of goddest religion in the United States in the late 1960s and was
inspired by the countercultural ferment of the period.
Today, many feminist within mainstream religious organization are lobbying for equal right within
their respective religious organizations. Among Catholic feminists, they advocate for the ordination of
women as priests.
TO BE CONTINUE....
