Category:Religion
Religious studies is the academic field of multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically-based, and cross-cultural perspectives.
While theologians attempt to understand the subject matter of religion from within a particular religious tradition, scholars of religion study human religious behavior and belief from outside any particular religious viewpoint. Religious studies draws upon multiple disciplines and their methodologies including anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and history of religion.
Religions studies originated in late 19th century in Europe, when scholarly and historical analysis of the Bible had flourished, and Hindu and Buddhist texts were first being translated into European languages. Early influential scholars included Friedrich Max Müller, in England, and Cornelius P. Tiele, in the Netherlands. Today religious studies is practiced by scholars worldwide.
In its early years, it was known as Comparative Religion or the Science of Religion and, in the USA, there are those who today also know the field as the History of Religion (associated with methodological traditions traced to the University of Chicago in general, and in particular Mircea Eliade, from the late 1950s through to the late 1980s). The field is known as Religionswissenschaft in Germany and Sciences de la religion in the French-speaking world.
Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one's nearness to God and the measure of one's usefulness to fellow beings. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values. Spiritual development is determined by capacity therefor and is directly proportional to the elimination of the selfish qualities of love.
Religion has to do with feeling, acting, and living, not merely with thinking. Thinking is more closely related to the material life and should be in the main, but not altogether, dominated by reason and the facts of science and, in its nonmaterial reaches toward the spirit realms, by truth. No matter how illusory and erroneous one's theology, one's religion may be wholly genuine and everlastingly true.
Subcategories
This category has the following 4 subcategories, out of 4 total.
A
C
H
T
Pages in category "Religion"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 570 total.
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I
- I AM
- Icon
- Iconoclast
- Ideal
- Idolatry
- Idols
- Immersion
- Immortal
- Incantation
- Incarnation
- Incubation
- Index to Jewish Periodicals
- Infidel
- Infinite Spirit
- InfoTrac Databases
- Iniquity
- Inner Life
- Integrity
- InteLex Past Masters
- Intercede
- Interfaith
- Intimacy
- Intimate
- Intimate Relationship as a Spiritual Crucible
- Invocation
- Iran Today: An Encyclopedia of Life in the Islamic Republic
- Islam
J
K
L
M
- Magic
- Mahdi
- Maitreya
- Making of America
- Mamre
- Manifesto
- Mantle
- Mantras
- Many Worlds: The New Universe and Its Theological Implications
- Martyr
- Matadormus
- Materialization
- Matthew, the Apostle
- Maturity
- Medieval Philosophy
- Meditation
- Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism
- Meister Eckhart
- Melchizedeks
- Mercy
- Merkabah
- Messiah
- Metatron
- Midwayer
- Mind
- Mind Control
- Mind of God
- Mindfulness
- Mindstream
- Miracles
- Mission
- Modern Cosmology as Metaphor and the Double Nature of Soul
- Monk
- Monotheism
- Morality
- Morontia
- Morontia Counselors
- Morontia Temple
- Mortal Knowlege: The Originary Event, & The Emergence of the Sacred
- Mortification
- Muhammad
- Mysticism
N
O
- Oahspe
- Occult
- Old Testament Abstracts
- Omnipotence
- Open Heart
- Open source religion
- Oracle
- Order of the Holy Cross
- Ordination
- Organized religion
- Orgy
- Origin & Proliferation of Reality
- Original Sin
- Orthodox
- Out of Body Experience
- Oxford Biblical Studies Online
- Oxford Companion to the Bible
- Oxford Companion to the Body
- Oxford Dictionary of Islam
- Oxford Dictionary of Popes
- Oxford Dictionary of Saints
- Oxford Guide to People and Places of the Bible
- Oxford Handbooks Online
P
- Pagan
- Palm Sunday
- Pantheism
- Pantheistic
- Pantheon
- Paradise
- Paradise Bestowal Son
- Paradise pattern
- Passion
- Passover
- Pathwork
- Patience
- Paul, the Apostle
- Personality
- Peter, the Apostle
- Pharisees
- Philip, the Apostle
- Philo
- Piety
- Planetary government
- Polytheism
- Post Bestowal Son
- Power personality synthesis
- Praise
- Prana
- Prayer
- Precepts
- Priests
- Prison worlds
- Prophecy
- Prophet
- Propitiation
- Proselytism
- Prostration
- Providence
- Pseudepigrapha
- Pulpit
- Pure mind
- Purgatory
- Purpose