Professor Introvigne Conversion

There are many different meanings to the word spirituality. Spirituality can be defined in several different ways, as it pertains to different worldviews. Throughout this paper we will look at and discuss worldview as it related to pluralism, scientism, and postmodernism. Worldviews have been known to be a matter of the heart. Every person has a world view, “A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false)

Masuzawa analyzes the different characteristics of a religion that have influenced its placement in the national or universal religion categories. In order to be identified as a world religion, criteria such as “the naming of an extraordinary yet historically genuine person as the founder and initiator or the tradition (Masuzawa, 132)” had to be met. This criterion fits all of the religions that achieved the status of a world religion by the twentieth century other than Hinduism and Shinto (Masuzawa, 133). Another principle was the “recognition of certain texts that could be claimed to hold a

Since the beginning of time humans have endeavoured to explain the causes and reasons behind their existence. As a result of this thirst for knowledge many different beliefs and values have been formulated with the aim of explaining this age-old question. Most of these beliefs are prevalent today in the form of institutionalised religions. In order to gain an understanding of the word 'religion', we need to fully analyse and compare the components of religions in order to gain a more cultivated understanding of this enigmatic term. An extremely valuable way of classifying religion and its many aspects is through the Seven Dimensions, developed by Ninian Smart. (See Appendix 1) These dimensions explore the many aspects of religion in a

Document 4 expands the concept of religion being the best revival form, claiming, “revival breaks the power of the world and sin over Christians” and “The worst part of human society is softened and reclaimed…appear as lovely specimens of the beauty of holiness”. The common belief of religion providing an answer to the horrid parts of life is apparent in the document, suggesting that accepting the Christian faith will provide more peaceful relationships between citizens by believing in the same creator. From the point of view of document 4 being that revival and salvation towards god will solve relations with others, it is evident religious ideas shaped social reform movements. In this case, transcendentalism is the key reform, improving on one’s self through religion will in return benefit the society as a

Another framework was proposed by Batson and Ventis (1982). They argued that a therapist’s need to understand the different ways of being religious in order to understand the impact that religion may or may not have on their patient. They created their framework around 3 dimensions, each of which has it’s own continuum. The 3 dimensions are quest, ends and means.

“A Worldviews give faith-based answers to a set of ultimate and ground- ing questions. Everyone operates on the basis of some worldview or faith-based understanding of the universe and persons— examined, or unexamined, implicit or explicit, simplistic or sophisticated. One way or

The conversation of assimilation into a discourse community has been a long standing presence in academic conversation. Especially if a religious community is given the title of a discourse community. Typical methods of assimilating new members into a desired religion usually standout. For example, representatives of a religious organization go door to door to give out information about the religion is common practice, it a simply direct. Daniel Olson states in his research that smaller religious groups find more committed members through leaving and joining the group, compared to larger religious groups (359). Although Rahsaan Maxwell and Erik Bleich uses Muslims as his topic, presents relatable assimilation reasoning that Muslims who were

Then and now religions shared common dimensions that provide society with a doctrine, narrative, ethics, ritual, experience and a social institution. These six dimensions that Ninian Smart derived spell out the framework for comparative study of religions1. The six dimensions hold true when comparing the daily routine Roman religious thought to modern Christianity. Interwoven into the core of both cultures is a strong unifying spirit that built a strong communal bond for its people.

During times of terrible trajedy, a person’s belief in religious faith may be shaken. Some people may not believe in a religion as strongly after they learn the truth or the story of that religion.

“The minute we have taken the backward step to an intangible view of our whole system of beliefs, proof, and rationalization, and seen that it works only, in spite of its pretensions, by taking the world mainly for granted, we are not in a place to contrast all these forms with an alternative reality. We cannot shed our normal responses, and if we could it would leave us with no means of conceiving a reality of any kind (Nagel, 1971; p. 723).”

Finally, the third section will dwell on the controversial topic of faith, and human’s need for belief. Religion has done an excellent job in manipulating human’s need for trust. Therefore, the combination of these three sections should compel the reader to better understand why such a false belief, such as religion has had such success throughout history.

In the article, The Meaning and End of Religion, by Wilfred Cantwell Smith writes about his idea of the concept of religion explaining it to be a universally valid category as it is theorized but is truly a European creation. Throughout the article Smith conveys his ideas of religion. In his piece, there are several interesting ideas and most important thoughts that he tries to communicate to the reader. In response, the reader can respond to some of the important questions posited by Smith.

In this essay I will be looking at the theories of Edward Burnett Tylor and Émile Durkheim, and comparing them to see which theory I think gives a better explanation about what religion is, or whether religion is actually definable. On the one hand we have Tylor’s theory that tells us that religion is belief in spiritual beings and that religion is just a step on the way to reaching full evolutionary potential. Durkheim’s theory, however, says that religion is very much a social aspect of life, and something can only be religious or “sacred” if it is something public (Durkheim 1965:52). Ultimately these theories do not give us an outright explanation about what ‘religion’ is, but there are aspects of the theory that can be used to gain an understanding or idea.

There has also been a decline in spiritual enrichment in churches to its followers which has allowed new religions and new age innovations to come up. Christians convert to these religions trying to look for spiritual enrichment and fulfillment. “Christian knowledge is being challenged with scientific and worldly knowledge. There is no longer the idea of one truth, one correct body of knowledge,” (Bruce, 1996). In a world based on facts, Christians are continually looking for facts of God’s existence and they forget that faith believes in the unseen.

However, there is another side to religion, one that is quite contrary to idea of unification and acceptance. When looking through the scope of history, we can also see religion as an exclusionary tool, often used to differentiate groups of people on an innate level. As many of these idealogies attempt to assert