World Religious Traditions

World Religious Traditions I

Religion and traditions are an important factor in people's lives. Believing in a God gives people a sense of comfort for every day challenges and a purpose. An individual who is choosing a religion depends on the person's religious traditions consist of teachings, texts, doctrine, stories, and myths. Describing the basic components of religious traditions and their sacred relationship can give an insight on the true religious traditions.

According to Molly (2010), religion is a system of belief that involves worship of a God or gods, prayer, ritual, and a moral code. Each traditions has their belief system, community, myths, ritual, ethics, characteristic, material expression, and sacredness. For example the belief system is a systematic interpretation of the universe. A community is a group of people practicing the same belief. Myths are untrue stories told from different religions. Rituals are ceremonies are held in celebration. Ethnics are guidelines humans established as a way of living on what should be done. Characteristics of emotional experiences are guilt, mystery, devotion, rebirth, conversion, inner peace, and liberation within their religion (Molly, 2010). Material expressions are chants, objects, statue, and clothing. Also flowers, architecture, and music instruments are also used as material expression to show their love, faith, and belief in their religion (Molly, 2010). Sacredness is a ceremony using different language, objects, and locations to show how much they believe and trust their religion (Molly, 2010).

The critical issues in the study of religion were limited because they could not travel. The critical issue in the study of religion is the time difference scholars had. There were advantages and disadvantages involving the time differences. The advantage was that the archeologist and anthropologist read scriptures and compared them to sacred sites and rituals that they either heard of through myths or true stories. The disadvantage was that there was very little transportation to travel to the sacred sites so that scholars could receive an accurate documentation of what was to be truly believed. Another critical issue is tradition. Oral traditions did not have written scriptures (Molly, 2010). The oral traditions consisted of artifacts and words that translated into scriptures (Molly, 2010).

Honoring the sacred, ancestors or gods, is dealt with through time and space. During the sacred time in religious tradition is recreating events during the times of the gods or ancestors in the people's current lives to show their belief and respect toward the sacred people. A sacred space is contacting the gods