Religion in a

Different
Light
CHAPTER 1
What is Religion?
Religion and the Social
Sciences
This subject is for neither catechism nor religious instruction.
Our basic assumption is that religion is a social phenomenon,
and you will notice that the approach is social scientific.
You need to understand how religious beliefs and practices are
shaped by the wider environment in which they are embedded.
Environment
Social
Political
Historical
Physical
Religion is a socially constructed institution with specific
historical contexts.
This view goes against many religious people’s assumption that
what they believe or do is revealed by God.
Instead, we propose that people themselves are involved in
creating, developing and transmitting what they consider as
acceptable and unacceptable beliefs and practices.
This subject helps unravel the complexity of religious
tradition.
The beliefs and practices of a religion have consequences for
its followers and the wider society that it is part of.
Values and beliefs can inform religious group’s behaviour in
the public sphere.
The shape of religion as an institution with beliefs,
moral codes, practices, texts, hierarchy, and
personalities is contingent upon the interaction of its
human agents with one another and their
sociohistorical contexts and to put it simply, people
are involved in constructing religion.
Methodological Atheism
(the suspension of belief in the divine)

Religious beliefs and practices are collectively constructed

throughout history by different individuals who may be leaders,
followers activist, innovators and even heretics.
In this light, what we believe and how we practice what we believe
are not a result of divine revelation. Whether God exists or the Bible
is divinely inspired cannot be answered by social scientific approach.
That statement, however, does not mean that we deny
the existence of God and transcendental beings like
spirits and angels and even demons.
Other disciplines like theology and metaphysics can
help us in this regard.
Ninian Smart (1927-2011)
-a professor at the following universities:

University of Birmingham

University of Lancaster

University of California, Santa Barbara

-he was also instrumental in making religious studies an accessible

to field to a wider audience.

-published a book in 1989 The World’s Religions.

-he is also an editorial consultant of documentary TV series that

covered different world religion BBC’s The Long Search.
Ninian Smart 7 Dimensions of Religion
All regions includes 7 Ideas
Ritual Repeated actions

Material Items + Places

Social People + Roles

Experiential Experience

Mythological Stories

Ethical Rules + Guidelines

Doctrinal Beliefs + Meanings

“I like to annoy people who think that a religion can contain the
whole truth. No religion, it seems to me, contains the whole truth. I
think it’s mad to think that there is nothing to learn from other
traditions and civilization. If you accept that other religions have
some thing to offer and you learn from them, that is what you become:
a Buddhist-Episcopalian or a Hindu-Muslim or whatever.”
-Prof. Ninian Smart
Defining Religion
It is not an easy task.

It might be straightforward but how we define the concept may

in fact exclude groups that others might consider religious.

It is also contentious because a particular definition of religion

informs how we view religion change, whether it is bound to
fade away or simply evolve.

We must also be aware that the very concept of religion has its
roots in the Western experience of Christianity, which about
doctrinal assent and institutional affiliation.
Defining Religion
It is different from the way
religions such as Islam and
Taoism are deeply embedded in
the wider culture through diet,
money, and governance and
among others.
Two ways of defining Religion
1. Substantive definition – concerned with what constitutes religion that evolves
beliefs and practices that assume the presence of supernatural being.
2. Functional definition – it is more concerned with its social consequences and
it is expansive in that it includes even other seemingly non-religious phenomena
like nationalism, social-movements, and even sporting events are unified systems
with specific beliefs and practices that form individuals into a reconstituted
whole.
Emile Durkheim
A French sociologist.
Born: April 15, 1858
Died: November 15, 1917
He defined religion as a “unified system of
beliefs and practices relative to sacred things,
that is to say, things set apart forbidden-beliefs
and practices which unite into one single moral
community.”
Communal dimensions is one that resonates with the Latin
origins of the word of religion:
Religare – “to bring together”
Relegere – “to rehears painstakingly as in the case of
collective ritual”
Religion
Two broad definition:
The substantive view looks for the fundamental elements
that constitute religion such as belief in super natural beings.
The functional definition is concerned with the social
consequences of religion such as ability to unite a
community.
Religion as a Social Reality
The four respects of religion as:
1. Collective Phenomenon – an individual who professes a religion is
typically part of religion religious organization or community.
2. Sacred and/or the supernatural – its concerning with ordering
how we behave in relation to the sacred that associated with entities,
events, figures, objects and sites that are treated with reverence as
opposed to those that are taken for granted in everyday life.
3. Body of Beliefs and Moral Prescriptions – these
are guided by text rendered sacred events or figures.
4. Set of Practices – these are typically form of
individual and collective rituals involving prayer,
worship, purification, baptism and sacrifice.
Religions of the World
Activity
In SHORTSIZE bond paper, answer the activity
about the “Jehovah’s Witnesses and the
Philippine Flag” by writing a reaction paper.
Sir Edmark B. Barlintangco
Introduction to World Religions and Belief
Systems
subject teacher