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PART II: Universal Forms of Religious Experience and Expression
Chapter 3: The Sacred and the Holy
Chapter 3 discusses the sacred or holy as the root of religious experience and practice. ... It also touches on the psychological or personal experience uniquely associated with the encounter with the holy, and how the sacred, or holy, is manifested in special places and times. ... Human beings either do not have direct access to the sacred or we cannot describe or communicate our experience of the scared directly. We use human language, images, and gestures, that is, symbolic means of communicating our experience. The chapter begins with a discussion of our uniquely human capacity for symbolic expression and then proceeds to explain different kinds of symbolic communication. This is followed by a number of illustrations of the ways in which religious symbols can bridge or bring together the profane and the sacred. The chapter then explores several forms of symbolic communication such as metaphor, parable, and story. This is followed by a discussion of religious myth and its characteristics, and why it is considered and indispensable form of human expression. The chapter concludes with a discussion on religious doctrine. ...
Chapter 5: Sacred Ritual
This chapter continues to explore forms of human expression of the sacred. The chapter begins with a definition of religious ritual and then gives reasons why ritual has played such an essential role in religious life. ... These rituals often reflect a distinctive structure that is analyzed and illustrated in rites associated with birth, puberty and initiation into a religious vocation. ... Over the years, sacrifice has been an extremely important part of religions role in maintaining peace within a religious community. ... An important feature of the great religions of the world is the fact that they all possess sacred texts, and that these are set apart from other religious literature as especially normative for worship, teaching and doctrine, and as a guide for daily life. ...
Chapter 7: Society and the Sacred: Social Formations of religion
The focus of this chapter is the analysis of a variety of types of religious societies and the social and religious dynamics of their development, change, and dissolution. One basic type of religious society is the natural community, that is, one based on kinship ties, race, nationality, or geography. A second type is the voluntary religious group whose membership is based on common beliefs, special functions, or sacred powers that extend beyond the natural ties of kinship or geography. ... The “founded” religious community faces unique problems on the death of its founder, and the means that the religion survives and expands are also explained in this chapter. Succession is also discussed within the religious community. Sometimes, groups of people in a religious community feel that others are not practicing their faith with enough dedication so they form a “religion within a religion.
Approximate Word count = 2311
Approximate Pages = 9.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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