Religion 100 Test #1

Church

A term with cognates all across European languages, for the meeting place where Christians carry out their worship ceremonies.

Modernity

Although commonly used as a synonym for 'contemporary' or 'current,' it's used to name a period in European, and later North American, history that could be said to develop from sometime in the 17th century until the late 20th century, characterized by certain intellectual, governmental, legal, economic, social, artistic, and architectural movements.

Existemtialism

Although it can be traced to earlier influences, it's primarily understood today as a mid-20th century European philosophical movement, much associated with post-World War II French intellectuals, that takes as its starting point the priority of the individual along with the assumption that, in the words of one of the best-known representatives of the movement, Jean-Paul Sartre, 'existence precedes essence'-- that is, historical human beings come before, and are thus the makers of, qualities and values.

Religious education (RE)

Although it could signify indoctrine, and thus initiation, into a particular religion or religious community, it can also mean what is practiced in a variety of European countries, where the study is taken to be a place where future public school teachers can be trained to instruct students on the descriptive facts of the world religions.

Insider/ outsider problem

Although termed a problem it is likely better understood as the situation in which people sometimes find themselves when challenged to understand others, since a translation is not to be confused with a word-for-word transcription.

First Amendment to the US Constitution

An amendment ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights that prohibited Congress from interfering with the freedom of religion, press, speech, assembly, and petition.

Sanskrit

An ancient Indo-European language that began on the Indian subcontinent; somewhat like Latin once functioned in the Roman Catholic church, it is today the ritual language used in the sacred texts of Hinduism and some of the texts of Buddhism.

Essentialism

An approach to definition that maintains that membership within a class or group is based on possessing a finite list of characteristics or traits, all of which an entity must necessarily possess to be considered a member of the group, as opposed to the merely accidental or contingent characteristics a thing might or might not possess (also known as the substantive approach). An essentialist view of religion asserts that there are many different characteristics to be found among religions, but argues that these characteristics are merely secondary and superficial; instead, there are a small number of primary characteristics, possibly only one that encompass all the religions of the world within one category.

Eusebia

Ancient Greek term for the quality one was thought to possess if one properly negotiated the various social expectations and duties required based upon factors as one's social rank, gender, birth order, generation, occupation, etc. Often translated as 'piety.'

Din

Arabic term found in Islam that is often translated into English as 'religion.'

Li

Chinese term, associated with Confucianism, that names the rules of propriety associated with carrying out ritual and which influence all social interaction.

Meaning

Common term used today in folk or popular discourse but, in a technical sense, it is generally used in two different ways by scholars. First, much as in the popular usage, many use it to name what is assumed to be a pre-linguistic feature that is conveyed by means of a sign system, such as language, from one person or item to another. Second, it's used to name a post-linguistic product that is created, as opposed to merely being carried, by means of language's rules.

Islam

In Arabic, meaning literally 'submission,' the name given to a collection of beliefs, practices, and institutions that date to the 6th and 7th centuries CE, originating in the Arabian peninsula, which places importance on the role played by the Prophet Muhammad who is believed to have received, by means of recitations granted to him by an angel, the word of Allah which is contained in their scripture, known as the Qur'an.

Dharma

Term in Hinduism that generally means one's various duties and obligations to all others in a universal, ranked world.

Taboo

Term that first entered English via Captain James Cook's voyages in the later 18th century. Variants of the term were used by people throughout this region to denote something that was specially marked, or set apart, thus translated commonly in English as sacred, and thus as naming something that was presumably venerated and respected, even feared. The term eventually comes to name a condition of something being forbidden or out of bounds.

Folk knowledge

Term used to distinguish how a group of people might talk among themselves about something in the world from the manner in which scholars, using a technical language, could talk about the same item.

Primary source

Term used to name a main object of study or datum that distinguishes it from a secondary source, which would be an item that itself discusses some primary source.

Identity

Term used to name that which is thought to define and distinguish a person, group, or thing from others; its identity.

Heathen

Term used to name those who live not just outside a dominant, developed community, but also apart from a dominant way of life.

Private

Term used today to denote a zone that is separate from the public, with private/ public forming a classic example of a binary pair.

Myth

Term whose current popular understanding can be traced back to an argument of Plato's in is ancient Greek dialogue entitled 'The Republic;' often designates fanciful, false, or fictional narrative.

Magic

Term with Latin and, before that, Greek precursors that is used today both popularly and among scholars, with the latter group being very interested to distinguish it from religion.

Culture

That portion of thought and behavior used by social groups that is learned and capable of being taught to others; culture can include: language, customs, worldviews, moral/ ethical values, and religions.

Christianity

The name given to a collection of beliefs, practices, and institutions that developed from out of the ancient Jewish, as well as the Greco-Roman, world of antiquity. Christians are followers of the one believed to be the Messiah (Jesus). Currently, Christianity involves 3 major sub-types, some of which differ significantly from others on issues of doctrine and ritual: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Greek Orthodoxy.

Nation-state

The name given to modern, large-scale social units that combine the earlier sense of an ethnic or ancestral group with the more recent political sense of a group organized around legal principles.

Hinduism

The name given to the mass social movement found originally in the sub-continent that is today known as India and dates up to 1500 years prior to the turn of the era; those who practice refer to it as Sanatana-dharma.

Religion

The precise etymology of the modern word religion is unknown. There are, however, several possible roots from which the term derives. Most commonly, the ancient Latin words religere (to be careful, mindful) and religare (to bind together) are cited as possible precursors.

Hegemony

Word derived from a term to describe one ancient Greek city-state's dominance that today is used in critical social theory to name a dominant system of thought and social organization-- sometimes of such dominance that even opposition to it serves purposes by taking specific non-threatening forms.

Willi Braun

20th and 21st century co-editor of the scholarly journal 'Method and Theory in the Study of Religion' as well as being past president of both the North American Association for the Study of Religion and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. He has exerted a significant though subtle influence on the modern study of religion through his collaborative relationships and patient engagement with international scholars from a broad range of specialties. Received his PhD in Christian origins. His interests range from social theories of origins and the socio-political function of myth and rhetoric, to theories of history as well as an emphasis on studying the tools scholars use when they go about studying religion.

Tomoko Masuzawa

20th and 21st century professor of religious studies and currently holds a joint appointment in the Department of History and the Program of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. Her research, which could be characterized as meta-theoretical, concentrates on the historical development of the 19th century and early 20th century search for the origin of religion and the history and politics of the categories 'religion' and 'world religions.'

F. Max Miller

A 19th century German born scholar of the religions of ancient India and an early historian of myth and language, often considered as one of the 19th century founders of what was then known as either comparative religion or the science of religion.

Religionwissenschaft

A German term that roughly translates as the science of religion.

Establishment Clause

A clause contained in the First Amendment of the US Constitution that prohibits Congress from 'respecting an establishment of religion.'

Correspondence theory

A common approach to understanding how truth and meaning-making works, and thus how definition works; the truth some claim (proposition) is thought to be determined by whether or not the claim fits, or corresponds, to some observable set of facts. The truth of language is therefore thought to have a direct relationship with an observable, stable reality and the judgement 'true' is therefore a confirmation of this relationship. This correspondence theory (aka referential theory) applies equally well to the production of meaning, since it is commonly thought that a word refers or corresponds to some quality a thing possesses.

Sanatana-dharma

A compound Sanskrit term meaning the eternal or cosmic system of duties, implying a universal moral order comprised of countless beings all diligently carrying out their proper social and ritual action; it's the term used by some practitioners of Hinduism to refer to their cultural practices as unchanging and divinely sanctioned.

Church/ state

A dichotomy whose origins date to about 17th century Europe, commonly used today in the U.S. to stand for the legally mandated separation between the workings of any church or religious group and the state; this notion of separation is traced to the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Ritual

A system of actions that, according to their practitioners, is used by a group of people to interact with the cosmos and/ or directly relate to superhuman beings; these actions may consist of worship, sacrifice, prayer, etc.

Comparative religion

A systematic study of the commonalities and differences among the religions of the world; this study seeks to establish a set of principles and categories that can be used systematically to understand the universal and particular features of religions and to determine whether they are sub types of religion.

Theory

A term that presupposes a distinction between reflection upon principles and causes as opposed to a form of practice; sometime used as synonymous with philosophy, viewpoint, or speculation, it can, however, be defined in a technical, scientific manner to signify a series of logically related and testable propositions that aim to account for a certain state of affairs in the observable world.

Faith

A term today commonly used alongside 'religion,' sometimes assumed to be the essential element to the religious life.

Native

In later Middle Ages the term comes to be associated with being from a particular place as well as being born into a condition of subservience, even bondage or slavery. Eventually, the term is applied to the local inhabitants of what Europeans called the "New World," in which Europeans see themselves as newly ruling.

Experience

Many humanistic scholars of religion argue that religion is grounded in a unique type of experience, conceived as an inner, personal sentiment that can only be expressed publicly by means of symbolic actions that are themselves derivative and thus flawed copies of the original.

Utility

Names the quality of being used to someone for some purpose.

Belief

Now central to the study of religion where, in distinction from faith, it names a more rational than affective state in which one claims confidence in one's position.

Superstition

Once used by earlier scholars of religion to name what they considered to be a development phase in the history of religion, today it is widely understood by scholars as a practically useful rhetorical term groups that that allows speakers and writers to name and thereby dismiss what they see as similar or competing belief systems.

Mary Douglas

One of the 20th century's most influential anthropologists and scholars of classification systems and institutions. She obtained her PhD from Oxford University. Douglas is perhaps best known for her influential 1966 book, Purity and Danger, which was a cross-cultural study of ritual systems of cleanliness, pollution, and taboo.

Greek

The Christian text commonly known as the New Testament was written in a script known as common or koine Greek. It's important to note that words/ concepts that were once prominent in the Hellenistic world of early Christianity, and therefore used in the production of these texts, eventually were translated into Latin, and then into the many languages that today comprise the text known as the Bible.

Pietas

The Latin term, from which we derive the English word 'piety,' that is commonly translated by many people today as 'religion.'

Translation

The act of aiming for an equivalence when saying or writing something in one language that had already been said or written in another.

Linguistics

The cross-cultural and comparative science of language as a human phenomenon, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and historical linguistics.

Colonialism

The economic or political control or governing influence of one nation-state over another (a dependent country, territory, or people); also, the extension of a nation's sovereignty over another outside of its boundaries to facilitate economic domination over the latter's resources and labor usually to the benefit of the controlling country. Although not limited to European nations, the rapid expansion of their influence across the globe during the 18th and 19th centuries today attracts a great deal of attention among scholars and has led to the development of a new field known as postcolonial studies, which focuses on the implications of, and local reactions to, the colonial era.

Evolution

Theory developed in the 19th century by such scholars as Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin to explain biological change in population from generation to generation by such processes such as random mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

Jonathan Z. Smith

There is perhaps no more influential scholar of religion in the mid- late 20th century than this-- a widely published essayist and respected senior scholar who is also known for his strong commitment to undergraduate teaching and the place of the liberal arts curriculum in the modern university.

Stipulate

To demand or establish conditions ahead of time, as in a contractual agreement; in the study of religion it can be used to distinguish among types of definitions: those that are descriptive, in which the definition is presumed to match/ identify traits observed in things already known to be religion versus a stipulative definition that pre-establishes the characteristics that the definer wishes to examine and thereby predetermines as constituting religion.

History

Two things: 1. A narrative about the accumulated, chronological past that either demonstrates development over time or established lineage and... 2. A more general usage that refers to the world of cause/ effect in which unanticipated events intermingle with the intentions of agents.

World religions

Used to organize information for what are arguably the most popular courses and classroom resources in the study of religion.

Classification

[From Latin, a group of division of the military, and then later French for group, as in a group of students] To name something but, more specifically, to name it as part of a group or system if relations to other items, such that an identity is derived from a series of controlled relationships of similarity and difference. Often done by implementing a taxonomy (a ranked classifactory scheme), classification could be argued to be the basis for all knowledge, inasmuch as even the most mundane claims about the world depends upon the speakers ability to identify and arrange items as well as states in terms of their distinction from other items and states.

Binary pair

[From Latin] A set of related terms that are mutually defining, such as right/ wrong, up/ down, hot/ cold, etc. Most recently the term refers to the 1 and 0 binary language of computer programming, whereby the most basic binary pair can be arranged in four ways, allowing a programmer to signify four different things by means of these two items arranged in different ways.

Anthropology

[Greek anthropos, meaning human being + Greek logos, meaning the systematic study of] The modern, comparative and cross-cultural science that deals the origins, the physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind. Practiced as a component of the human sciences, the academic study of religion is considered distinct from the discipline known as anthropology through religious studies (as it as known in North America) could be said to be anthropological in its outlook (or whats sometimes termed 'anthropocentric: centered on the study of human behavior); that is, when practiced as something other than theology, the study of religion is focused on human beings and their practices and does not study the gods and their will.