preview

The Four Components Of Religion, Beliefs And Practices

Decent Essays

According to Emile Durkheim, “A Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single community called a church, all those who adhere to them,” (Brodd, Jeffrey, et al. 9). Durkheim based this definition off of four crucial components: “a Church beliefs, practices, and the sacred,” with the sacred being deemed as the most important or held in the highest regard (Orru and Wang, 48). A church is where the people who follow or believe in a religion come together to socialize, worship, and practice the religion together. Beliefs are physical, emotional, and mental “representations” of what those in the religious community believe in. While practices, on the other hand, are the representations made real in the form of “rituals” to “celebrate” or strengthen the beliefs (Orru and Wang, 49). These two things known as practices and beliefs are brought together through the sacred because without it practices and beliefs would have no meaning making them purposeless to religion.
Buddhism all began when a king’s son was predicted to either be a great ruler or a great philosopher. Trying to prevent his son from becoming a philosopher the king gave his son a lavish room with everything he wanted so that he would never leave. This all came to an end however when the prince Siddhartha Gautama grew curious of the outside world. When he saw the many tragedies that befell

Get Access