Study 03/14 Key Concepts for Understanding Religion with 12 free online flashcards. Review key terms, definitions, and concepts with this interactive flashcard deck.
What does comparative religious studies examine?
Comparative religious studies examines how particular communities create meaning through stories, symbols, rituals, institutions, ethical systems, experiences, and forms of belonging without ranking traditions.
What is a myth in religious studies?
A myth is a traditional, symbolically rich narrative explaining origins, values, extraordinary events, relationships, or cosmic order; it does not simply mean a false story.
What is a religious symbol?
A symbol communicates meanings beyond its immediate physical form, connecting an object, image, action, word, or place with sacred, moral, or ultimate significance.
What does worldview mean?
A worldview is a broad pattern of assumptions about reality, knowledge, value, morality, and how people should live.
What does religious cosmology explain?
Cosmology explains the origin, structure, order, and destiny of the universe, including relationships among realms, beings, natural forces, and cosmic processes.
What is revelation?
Revelation is the disclosure of sacred or divine knowledge, guidance, or reality through sources such as visions, texts, prophetic events, nature, meditation, or spiritual insight.
How should tradition be understood?
Tradition is the active transmission, interpretation, adaptation, and contestation of inherited beliefs, practices, memories, texts, and institutions across generations.
What is religious conversion?
Conversion is a significant change in religious allegiance, practice, community, identity, or life narrative, sometimes involving formal initiation or membership.
What does religious switching include?
Religious switching describes movement into, between, or away from religions, including movement from a religion to no religion or from no religion into a tradition.
What is religious identity shaped by?
Religious identity is how individuals and communities describe, experience, perform, and negotiate belonging through factors such as conviction, practice, family, culture, ethnicity, and memory.
What does secularism concern?
Secularism concerns ideas and political arrangements governing the relationship among religion, government, and public life, such as separation, neutrality, or freedom of conscience.
How do the secular and secularization differ?
The secular refers to areas understood as nonreligious or this-worldly, while secularization refers to historical changes in religious institutions, practices, or authority.