Professional Documents
Culture Documents
World Religions
A. Religion—from Latin “religio”
1. Originally seems to referred to as “fear”
or reverence for the gods—later to the rites
offered to them
2. Confusion as to where word originates
a. “relegere”--to gather things
together” or “to pass over things repeatedly”
b. “religare”--to bind things
together”—emphasize communal aspect—draws
people into religious rites, practice and belief
A. The study of religions seemingly
originated with the Greeks
1. Herodotus—father of history—took
seriously the chronology of the past
2. Epicurus—a radical critic of religion and
sought to catalog and explain the sense of the
sacred
3. Stoics—believed there was a common
denominator of sacred behind all religion
B. Romans studied religion
1. Cicero—concerned with the word “religion”
and was first to use the term
2. Seneca, Tacitus, and Julius Caesar all
interested in the study
3. After Christianity emerged study of
different religions was neglected since the
church was more concerned with its own
mission and survival
C. Confrontation with Islam
1. Islam rapid expansion
2. Crusades
D. The Modern Mission Movement
With William Carey in 1792
E. The New Empiricism and Rationalism
1. Deists and philosophers such as Hume,
Rousseau, and Voltaire discussed the problem
of “natural religion”
2. Max Mueller wrote an essay on
comparative mythology—he found the origin
of myths in natural phenomena
Criteria for the Study of World
Religions
A. Objectivity—students of religion must
observe facts as objectively as possible
1. One must consider sacred texts and
historical manifestations of the faith
2. It is important not to pre-judge another
religious perspective
B. A Thorough Grounding
1. Must have knowledge of history,
psychology, philosophy, sociology, and
theology in order to come to the essence of
different religions
2. Such facts are necessary for intelligent
comparisons and discussions
C. Proper Criteria
One must have the responsibility to establish
a criteria for judgment based on fact, not
value judgments
Distinguishing between fact and value
1. A factual judgment asserts that is or is so
2. A value judgment asserts that something
ought to be
The Study of Religion
A. Animism
Edward Tylor—founder of modern
anthropology
in a higher being
Definitions of Religion
A. Religion as a phenomenon looked on
as universal—Eliade’s concept of the
“sense of the sacred”
B. Anti-Rationalistic Definitions
1. Lucretius—an anti-rational, coercive force