Understanding Religion: Communities
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55 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Orisa | the Yoruba term for deity, often used in speaking of west africa religions in general |
| Vision Quest | in indigenous traditions, a solitary ordeal undertaken to seek spiritual guidance about one's mission |
| monotheism | believing in a single God |
| Myth | a symbolic story expressing ideas about reality or spiritual history |
| Numinous | assimilated many element of Buddhism, creating a medley of new meditation practices, divine being, rituals, scriptures, heavens, rebirth, and hell. --- a group that arose in the wake of highest Purity in the late fourth century |
| transcendent | existing outside the material universe |
| shaman | a "medicine person" ; a man or women who has undergone spiritual ordeals and can communicate with the spirit world to help the people in indigenous traditions |
| polytheism | believing in many deities |
| monism | believing in a concept of life as a unified whole, without a separate "spiritual" realm |
| symbol | visible representation of an invisible reality or concept |
| evolution | a work from Charles Darwin which demonstrates that certain genetic mutations give an organism a competitive advantage over others of its species. It shows that those carrying advantageous genes statistically produce more offspring than others, so the percentage of the new gene gradually produces more offspring than others, so the percentage of the new gene gradually increases in the gene pool. |
| Kensho | sudden enlightenment, in Zen Buddhism |
| worship | an act of religion devotion usually directed towards a deity. The word is derived from the Old English "worthscipe", meaning "worthiness" or "worth-ship" - to give, at its simplest, worth to something. e.g. Christian Worship |
| Dogma | a system of beliefs declared to be true by a religion |
| nontheistic | perceiving spiritual reality without a personal deity or deities |
| cosmogony | a model of the evolution of the universe |
| Fundamentalism | insistence on what people perceive as the historical form of their religion, in contrast to more contemporary influences. This ideal sometimes takes extreme, rigidly exclusive, or violent forms |
| Kava bowl | kava is the traditional Samoan intoxicant. Its made from the root of a pepper plant (Piper Myristhium) which is ground up and mixed with water and served from a traditional many legged kava bowl |
| world view | is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the entirety of the individual or society's knowledge and point-of-view, including natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics |
| Super ego | the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described |
| Max Weber | known as a principal architect of modern social science. Protestant Reformation. Religion is independent of economy |
| Proletariat | the labor force, workers - in Marx's Theory |
| Karl Marx | 19th century socialist philosopher, author of Communist Manifesto, argued that a culture's religion springs from its economic framework. Religion's origins lie in longing of the oppressed. |
| False consciousness | blinds the majority of people to reality and centrality of social class conflicts and to the injustice of their own economic status and situation |
| Paul Tillich | theological thinker, believer who's main question was : Credible faith in a modern world? heaven and hell are states of mind, not physical locations |
| Wakan Tanka | power/sacredness that resides in everything |
| Zion | the original site of the Jerusalem temples, often used to refer to Jerusalem itself as the heavenly city, the goal of Judaism |
| Orunmila | god of knowledge and wisdom |
| Winona LaDuke | Born 1959, Native American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer |
| Oral Tradition | the spoken relation and preservation, from one generation to the next, of a people's culture history and ancestry, often by a storyteller in narrative form |
| medicine person | an indigenous healer |
| gnosis | intuitive knowledge of spiritual realities |
| exclusivism | the idea that one's own religion is the only valid way |
| odu | the name of a pattern on a diving chain, also a story associated with each pattern |
| agnosticism | the belief that there is anything beyond this, it is impossible for humans to know |
| immanent | present in Creation; suggest that the spiritual world permeates the non-spiritual |
| Eschatology | belief about the end of the world and of humanity |
| ritual | a repeated patterned religious act |
| sacred | the realm of the extraordinary, beyond everyday perceptions, the supernatural, holy |
| profane | everyday world of seemingly random, ordinary and unimportant occurrences. Worldly, secular, as opposed to sacred |
| Sun Dance | a purification ceremony which involves sacrificing oneself for the sake of the whole; participants dance for 4 days without food or water looking at the sun and praying for blessings for the people. |
| charisma | a rare personal magnetism, often described to a founders of a religion |
| sweat lodge | a purification ceremony in a domed lodge of skins; a group of participants sit inside, while a central hole is filled with hot rocks and water is poured oven them, making steam; prayers are offered to the powers of the universe present in the earth, stone, water, and all being |
| dream time | the timeless time of creation, according to australian aboriginal belief |
| Sigmund Frued | -made a self model (id, ego, super ego) -focused on unconscious causes of behavior and personality |
| Mircea Eliade | interested in understanding sacred reality. Thought in terms of profane(worldly) vs sacred, imminent vs transcendent, theistic vs non-theistic, exclusivist vs universalist |
| Adi Perena | Main Character in the Legend of Tagimoucia -- she falls in love with a commoner but she is chief's daughter. Father promises her to someone else so she runs away. |
| ground of being | this is one way Tillich theorized God as being beyond human understanding or comprehension, an image of ultimate reality |
| heyoka | "contrary" wisdom or a person who embodies it, in some Native American spiritual traditions |
| hermeneutics | the field of theological study that attempts to interpret scripture |
| medicine power | spiritual power from the outer world transmitted through the medicine person in some indigenous religions, doesn't originate in the medicine person |
| stolen generation | generation of Aboriginal children in Australia taken away by missionaries to be "educated" by white culture - used as slaves |
| Oludumare | chief god in the Yoruba religion; the supreme being; a deity of pure spirit, without gender; too important/powerful/busy to interact with humans - cant be consulted directly |
| Ifa divination | a system of divination in traditional Yoruba culture that allows communication between gods and men in West Africa. Uses diviners to relay the word of god from olodumare to orunmila to the diviner to the worshippers |
| bourgeoisie | the social class between the lower and upper classes - (in Marxist contexts) the capitalist class who own most of society's wealth and means of production |
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