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Essay Samples on Religion

Composing your student essay about religion, it’s essential to research your subject first and avoid controversial subjects. The trick is to provide a clear structure that will focus on theological aspects of things. When you strive to compare different religions, do not write in a biased tone and work on your compare-and-contrast essay. The body parts of your religion essay must start with a good topic sentence as you address a particular concept or the roots of some religious notions. It’s always good if you can find reliable sources to support the facts. If you are not sure about some source or an idea that must be explored, you can either talk to an academic advisor or focus on a good religion essay example that we have prepared for you. These will help you get a basic idea of how such essays must be written. See the introduction part in every essay sample provided and don’t forget to stay respectful as you work on the differences and similarities. Check your grading rubric requirements twice. Regarding a good thesis statement, religious essays should only pose assumptions or compose specific claims that are supported with another sentence to avoid misreading or confusion.

Why Is Freedom of Religion Important

Freedom of religion stands as one of the fundamental pillars of a democratic and pluralistic society. It safeguards an individual's right to practice their chosen faith without fear of discrimination or persecution. This essay delves into the resons why freedom of religion is important, exploring...

• Religious Tolerance

Who is God in Your Life: Personal Beliefs and Spiritual Connections

The concept of God holds profound significance across cultures and belief systems, shaping individuals' values, perspectives, and sense of purpose. So who is God in your life? This essay delves into the diverse ways people perceive God in their lives, whether through religious traditions, personal...

• Religious Beliefs

Should Religion Be Taught in Schools

Should religion be taught in schools? This question is a topic that evokes discussions about cultural diversity, freedom of religion, and the role of education in shaping students' worldviews. Advocates argue that including religion in the curriculum can foster understanding, promote tolerance, and provide students...

How Does Religion Affect Your Life

How does religion affect your life? Religion is a deeply personal and influential aspect of human experience, shaping beliefs, values, behaviors, and perspectives. The impact of religion extends beyond mere rituals; it permeates various dimensions of life. This essay explores the intricate ways in which...

How Are Religion and Culture Connected in Various Ways

The intricate relationship between religion and culture is a subject of immense significance, shaping the values, behaviors, and traditions of societies worldwide. While religion and culture are distinct concepts, they are profoundly interconnected, often influencing and informing one another. This essay delves into how religion...

• Culture and Communication

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Buddhism and Hinduism: Exploring Similarities and Differences

Buddhism and Hinduism, two of the world's most ancient and complex religions, share both commonalities and distinctions that have shaped the spiritual and cultural landscapes of Asia. This essay delves into Buddhism and Hinduism and the core similarities and differences between these two belief systems,...

Death is a Passage Beyond Life

Introduction In virtually every culture and religion around the world, death is not regarded as an end, but as a passage to a different form of existence. This belief, deeply rooted in human history and psyche, has shaped rituals, philosophies, and the way we perceive...

Why Should We Respect Our Parents: Exploring Islamic Arguments

What islam says about why should we respect our parents? In this essay I want to emphasize that Allah is telling us to treat our parents kindly and to make effort in pleasing them. He says that our mother most deserves our respect and service,...

• Parent-Child Relationship

Respect Your Parents and Take Care of Your Children: Ephesians 6:1-9

I chose the following passage Ephesians 6:1-9. The main reason that I chose this passage was because the other passages had already been taken. Now after researching this passage I discovered that there was more than meets the eye and I want to learn how...

The Importance of Respect and Obedience to Our Parents in Islam

DedicationI dedicate this research to God Almighty my creator, my strong pillar, my source of inspiration, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. He has been the source of my strength throughout this research and on His wings only have I soared. I also dedicate this work to...

Respect for Life: the Issue of Death Penalty in Catholic Teachings

An essential principle of a human rights is that each and every human being has an innate dignity that must be respected. Respect for one's human dignity is the original human right from which other human being had as a gift from our almighty God....

• Catholic Church
• Death Penalty

What Does Respect Mean to You: Christian Explanation

A few days ago a friend of mine asked 'what does respect mean to you?' Later this question inspired me to write this essay about the meaning of respect from christian believer's point of view.   Paradise is something that many people think they can...

• Biblical Worldview
• Christian Worldview

Implementing the Four Noble Truths in Everyday Life

Introduction One of the fundamental doctrines of Buddhism set forth by Buddha himself are the Four Noble Truths. These contain the very essence of the Buddha's pragmatic teachings. The Buddha is known to attain enlightenment only after the realization of these four truths during his...

Euthanasia and the Catholic Church in Australia

An ethical issue is a problem or dilemma that involves a person having to decide whether or not it is morally right or wrong. Euthanasia is a clear example of an ethical issue currently present in Australia. Euthanasia is a process whereby a person who...

• Assisted Suicide

Islamic Traditions and Practices: A Focus on Asian Muslims

Asia is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. Muslim population accounts for approximately 62% of the total population of Asia. Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh are Muslim-majority countries of Asia. As Muslims have different cultures, values, and histories, their...

The Divine Love: Understanding God's Love for Humanity

There is a multitude of attributes of God, what He is and that any human being can also become. Among these countless attributes or characteristics, we have love. A 'simple' characteristic present in some way in the life of all humanity, from the rich to...

• Image of God

Comparison of Islamic Religious Texts: the Quran and Hadith

The Quran is the most important text in the Islamic faith, believed to be the word of God communicated to the prophet Muhammad who spoke to his followers, and what he said was written down in the Quran years after his death. The Hadith is...

• Religious texts

The Virtue and Significance of the Quran: Exploring its Divine Revelation, Recitation, and Impact on the Muslim Community

The Quran is defined as the miraculous word of God, devoted to its recitation, the house of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by revelation by Jibril, peace be upon him, and transmitted to us in frequency. It should be noted that the Quran came down in...

Human Experience of Illness and the Key Role of the Environment

The key goal of the healthcare facility is to offer a environment where the sick will be at ease and to enable their body to regenerate. There are three principles for a healthy environment: seen, unseen, and storied environments. These ideas give us a deeper...

The Trustworthiness of the Bible: Exploration of Its Foundations

The Bible, a collection of sacred texts revered by millions around the world, has endured for centuries as a source of moral guidance, spiritual enlightenment, and historical insight. Its trustworthiness stems from a multifaceted examination of its historical, literary, and spiritual foundations, which collectively affirm...

• Personal Experience

Exploring of the Five Meanings of Science of the Quran

Sciences of the Quran are each science that is intended to serve the Holy Quran and attempt to investigate its privileged insights and uncover its puzzles, for example, the exploration in the Quranic disclosure and Quranic contents, the gathering and grouping of the Quran, the...

Exploring Invaluable Role of Jesus Christ for the World

Jesus Christ is one of the most well known historical figures that could be considered heroic and relatively important to the development of Western Civilization. The existence of Jesus and the eternal legacy he left after he sacrificed himself was one that dramatically influenced the...

• Historical Figures
• Influence of Christianity
• Jesus Christ

Is Jesus a Myth: One of the World’s Most Controversial Figures

It would be hard to find a person in history that has been met with so much controversy than Jesus of Nazareth. According to those who wrote the New Testament, Jesus is God, who was born of a virgin, who lived a sinless life, was...

• World History

Why Jesus Is a Hero: an Example of Love and Forgiveness

Is Jesus a hero or not? The meaning of a hero is someone who shows bravery, courage, determination, justice and more. A hero doesn’t need to save the world for people to say that is what a hero is, like Jesus, he reached out to...

• Influential Person

The Life and Achievemnts of Muhammad - a Founder of Islam

I chose Muhammad because he did a lot from the day he was born till the day he died. One of the many things that Muhammad did was when Muhammad founded Islam and made it the way it is now. Muhammad was born in Mecca,...

Unveiling Jesus as the Heroic Figure of True Faith and Love

A hero is someone who gives themselves, often putting their own life at great risk, for the greater good of others . A hero shows courage and is determined and dedicated to helping others in need by showing selflessness and sacrifice for the good of...

Jesus as the Greatest Hero: Being Gifted With Godlike DNA

A hero is a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. Jesus shown these quality’s in different bible readings. Jesus was not only a hero that did miracles to heal people, he was a hero that sacrificed his own life...

Personal Reflections: Three Lessons I Have Learnt From Hosea's Story

David was chosen to be king at a young age when he was only a shepherd, but wasn’t the king until he was 30 years old, David had been working for king Saul and throughout that time he had been taken to court by king...

The Menace of Terrorism Around the World: Emerging Threats and Issues

The menace of terrorism has been increasing over the years though there have been several efforts to counter it. The evils of terrorism have become widespread, and the world has become too familiar to them. There has been a lot of debate on the definition...

• Religious Conflict
• Social Problems

Understanding Islam: Beliefs, Practices, and History

What is Islam? What do they believe in? Who are they? Well continue reading and you will find out a lot about this religion. Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion teaching that there is only one God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God....

• Five Pillars of Islam

The Unique World of Buddhism: Its Origins, Beliefs, and Practices

The World is today is unique, religion being a huge part of that uniqueness. The religions shaped many of the well- known religions today. There are a lot of well-known religions today adapted some of practices of many older religions that today depending on the...

Submission to Allah: The Core Concept of Islam

The concept at the core of Islam is the intention that a Muslim follows the will of Allah as closely as possible in hopes that each moment of each day is to be lived in an attitude of complete submission to Him. Allah’s greatest revelation,...

The Increased Violence in New Terrorism: What Is Going On

The 1990s recalls a series of extremist acts that ushered a new and more violent form of terrorism. Propelled by religious motivations, decentralized organization, and technological advancement, the new terrorism distinguished itself from old terrorism with its inclination to indiscriminate killing and mass casualties. Rapoport’s...

The Sacred Mystery of Plants in Eastern Religion Cultures

Sacred plants are specific plants those are usually devoted to gods and goddess. The human relation with sacred plant stands basically on religion which is considered with Hindu, Buddhist and Jain culture. During the ancient period, the worship of sacred plants is most of the...

Understanding Islam: The Complete Submission to the Will of God

Religion is often a fundamental part of one’s identity. The word religion originates from a Latin word meaning “to tie or bind together.” As new and modern religions continue to develop, religion defines as “an organized system of beliefs and rituals centring on a spiritual...

Difference Between Islam and Christianity: Perspectives on Racism

Islam and Christianity are two of the largest religions in the world, with billions of followers combined. While there are significant difference between islam and christianity in this essay we will also analyse similarities between islam and christianity. For this paper we have interviewed several...

Postulates and Principles of Islamic Moral Economic System

In this paper we will take a short review of main principles and postulates, its subsequent objectives of the Islamic moral economic system.  Tawhid or the Unity of God is the fundamental principle of IME. It refers to the human beings being equal before the...

• Economic systems

Muhammad and the Birth of Islam: Unraveling the History and Teachings

Chapter 10 of Islam of “Living Religions” by Mary Fisher talks about how Islam is viewed by society and how Islam came about. Reading this chapter from the point of view of the author who is not Muslim made me feel like she was with...

• History of Islam

The Journey to Nirvana: The Teachings and Beliefs of Buddhism

Buddhism is among the world's biggest religions, with origins in India dating back 2,500 years. Buddhists think that human existence is full of misery, believing the way to obtain happiness, or nirvana, is via meditation, spiritual and physical effort, and moral behavior. Buddhists believe life...

Gautama and the Middle Way: The Birth of Buddhism

Although we think of Buddhism as being created by Buddha, Gautama a young prince, was the creator and he is now referred to as Buddha, also known as the enlightened one. Since Gautama was a prince that meant that his father was a king and...

The Intersection of Religion and Abortion: A Comparative Analysis

Abortion has been a hot topic for several years. People are very opinionated about the case and there's an ethical side to the subject. The abortion debate asks whether it may be morally right to terminate a pregnancy before normal childbirth. Some people believe that...

• Abortion Debate

Buddhism in Asia: A Cultural and Historical Perspective

The story of the life of Gautama Buddha According to the legend the person now commonly known as the Buddha was a prince named Siddhartha Gautama. His father, Suddhodana Gautama, was the ruler of the Shakya clan. Siddhartha’s birth was attended by many unusual events....

• Zen Buddhism

From India to China: The Spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road

Introduction The silk road spread religions, philosophies, education, goods, and people. The people who embarked for a journey on the silk road were monks from India. India, during the iron age, between the fourth and sixth centuries, began urbanization and in this process, the influence...

Exploring Buddhism at a Traditional Mon Buddhist Dharma Session

Introduction Sunday, February 16th at two-thirty, I visited the Mon Buddhist Monastery Community in Akron Ohio. This was a traditional Mon Buddhist Dharma session. I was very pleased by the turnout of the session and was able to grasp a better understanding of the Buddhism...

The Rise and Spread of Islam: History and Impact

Introduction Islam is probably the most youthful religion and has the biggest followers in the world and is predominant in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (Hopfe and Woodward 330). Islam is a significant religion in the world and has in excess of billion followers...

The Dichotomy of Annihilationism and Non-Annihilationism in Buddhism

Introduction Buddhism can be split into two distinct schools of thought: annihilationism and eternal rebirth. The argument that the state of nirvana is achieved through the blowing out of what fuels one’s self is the one generally accepted by most Buddhists and scholars. The minority...

Islam: The Role of Gender, Storytelling, and Conflict

Introduction: The emergence of the Muslim minority in Western nations has spurred discussion over which Muslim behaviors should be accepted, with many people considering certain customs a rejection. In Western countries, societies based on the Islamic belief system have wrestled with gender roles, the importance...

The Ethical Code of Islam: A Comprehensive Overview

Introduction: In Islam, there is a strict ethical code that must be followed in order to abide by Allah. This code is highlighted in the Koran and is practiced through traditions, actions, clothing, and food consumption. Furthermore, every Muslim is expected to adhere to the...

Religion and Abortion: Understanding the Pro-Life Movement

Introduction  Death sentences, guns, religion, and abortion are among the top debated subjects in conversations. These topics are discussed frequently, especially if it’s a hot topic for a political debate. There are supporters and opponents on these subjects due to their strong points of view....

Organ Donation and Brain Death from Buddhist's Perspectives 

Modern scientific and technological developments have contributed to mass production. There have arisen many issues which affect human health both physical and mental are related, regarding to ethical criteria in physical medicine. This paper will discuss brain death and organ transplantation from Buddhists perspectives. There...

• Organ Donation
• Organ Transplant

Hinduism and Buddhism as Most Popular Religions in India

Located in northern India that flows from the Himalayan Mountains to the Bay of Bengal lies the Ganges River. Known as a sacred entity, many Hindus bathe in its waters to cleanse past sins and to facilitate Moksha, liberation of reincarnation; thus, many faithful customs,...

Faith and Reason Are Compatible: Suspension of Disbelief 

Art is a platform that dares reality. It stretches the limits of reality and tends to over step these boundaries all to serve the purpose of the piece of art. This is where the suspension of disbelief comes in. One must set aside their typical...

The Baptism Experience: Passing God's Love Through Baptism

One simple act creates an endless ripple where people passes it on and pays it forward. This is due to the interconnected nature of human beings – when we are happy, we influence the people around us to have a positive outlook in life. And...

The Idea That Faith and Reason Are Compatible in Religious Texts

There are four fundamental claims of the Catholic intellectual tradition and the one I choose is, the dignity of the human being inviolable and the commitment to justice for the common good is necessary. These four fundamental claims are very important in the catholic religion...

The Baptism Experience in the Life of Children in the Medieval Ages

Of all the misconceptions of the Medieval Ages, some of the most prevalent include the life of a child during this era. During this time it is believed that many children were shown no recognition and they were treated as though they were adults as...

• Middle Ages

Hinduism and Buddhism: The Values and Purposes of Both Religions

Today there are many different religions in the world. In Asia, Buddhism and Hinduism are popular beliefs in general. Hinduism is the religion of Antigua known and very rich in literally hundreds of divinities, rituals and symbolic beliefs. Believes is that was founded around 1500...

Nacirema Culture and Buddhism Religious Practices

Religion is a topic that provokes or brings about different thoughts and ideas between people. We all have our own beliefs and traditions that make each one of our religions stand out. It is what makes us who we are. Myths and rituals are a...

The Freedom Of Religion And Why Is The First Amendment Important

First Amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of...

• American Constitution
• First Amendment

Belief In God: Relationships Between Science and Religion

The conflict between science and spirituality (religion) usually refers to an assumed conflict between science and belief in God. For the purpose of this talk “religion” refers to the monotheistic religion which is the belief in the existence of a good, personal and transcendent creator....

• Science Vs. Religion
• Spirituality

Why Do You Believe In God

Well, God can do all of these and even more. Sometimes, situations can make anyone forget or doubt God's abilities irrespective of how strong you have been in faith. Remember, no one is ever ready for hard situations to hit them, it just happens, but...

• Kingdom of God

Peter`s The Great Reforms: A Knot Between Church And State

Christians all over the world have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. Although the situation became better with time, it was still not ideal in the 18th century. Peter the Great, the first emperor of Russia, introduced the Most Holy Synod, and it changed the...

• Russian Empire

The Nature Of Confucianism and Daoism, And The Gender Roles

The story of Cui Ying Ying was composed during the late Tang dynasty and is regarded as famous romantic prose. The story explores cultural dynamics during the Tang period and displays the contrasting views of Chinese philosophy in the era. To truly comprehend the symbolism...

• Confucianism
• Gender Roles

"Paradise Lost" By John Milton: Book Review

In this review, I hope to put forward two different approaches to interpreting Milton’s Paradise Lost. I will be exploring Archie Burnett’s article ‘Sense Variously Drawn Own’ published in 2003 which examines the relation between Lineation, syntax, and meaning in Milton’s Paradise Lost. I will...

• Adam and Eve
• Paradise Lost

"Does Science Threaten Religion?" By Gerber and Macionis: A Review

The article “Controversy and Debate: Does Science Threaten Religion?” has demonstrated the changing relationship between science and religion, from apparent contradictions in the past to recognizing and accepting each other in the present (Gerber & Macionis, 2018, pp. 553). The author has incorporated a structural-functional...

The History Of The Emergence And Spread Of Christianity And Islam

Christianity is one of the most spread religions in the world. It centers its belief in the public life of Jesus Christ. The term Christianity is a derivation of the followers of Christ. Therefore, Jesus is the pioneer of this faith. Christians base their teaching...

• Spread of Christianity

The Second Coming By Yeats: Powerful Warning To Society

In a world full of hostility and loss of faith surrounded by war and technological developments, the modernist era of literature developments, the modernists era of literature arose. The sinking of the Titanic symbolized the falling of the Great Britain empire and newly invented standardized...

• The Second Coming
• William Butler Yeats

Acceptance Concepts Through the Bible Topics

I believe that God creates all of us to be good genuinely and kindhearted. God believes that we are most beautiful & unique the way he created us. So, bullies should stop their intimidating behaviors towards others, they don’t need to be so, they should...

Humble, Mainwairing and Pompous Pride

This is probably something that none of you know about me and that is I am a massive Dads Army fan, I have all the available episodes and movies on DVD. It’s been great to watch the lost episodes on Gold this week, now I...

Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Picture of Human Nature

This essay will explore Apuleius’ Metamorphoses with special regard to what picture of human nature and society it presents and whether or not the gods offer the prospect of salvation. Dealing with the tale of Lucius whose overly curious nature results in him being turned...

• Human Nature
• Metamorphoses

The Shinto Religion and the Root of Japanese Culture

Shintōism is frequently portrayed in art from all over the world, especially in Japan. The Shintō religion is at the root of Japanese culture and history and therefore has a profound impact on its popular culture today, from manga and anime to film to video...

• Personal Beliefs

Biblical Archaeology: How the Study of God Is Look Like

Archaeology is defined as the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments, and other such remains, especially those that have been excavated. (Dictionary, Archaeology) Archaeology is used throughout history and in many ways. Biblical Archaeology...

• Archaeology

The Development of Islamic Art

Islamic art is created not only for the Muslim faith, but it consists of artworks such as textiles, architecture, paintings and drawings that were produced in the regions that were once ruled by Muslim empires. Artists from various disciplines take part in collaborative projects and...

• Islamic Art

Unforgiveness Steals Away Your Joy, Peace, and Happiness

Forgiveness is one of the topics most Christians don't like to talk about especially if they were truly hurt by someone close to their heart. Sometimes, we feel it is better to carry the burden of hatred rather than forgive those that have wronged us....

• Forgiveness

Role of Cultural and Religious Pluralism

Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their own unique cultural identities. Migration is a key process that makes significant contribution to the growth of urbanism. Often immigrants belonging to particular region, language, religion ,tribe etc tend to...

• Art and Religion
• Religious Pluralism

Political Correctness and Occidental International Law

The uniformity of European political thought canon as asserted by postcolonialists has created a ‘residual sense that the Christian faith is an expression of white Western privilege ’. This deficit in postcolonial theory, to account for Grotius and theorists who argued for the separation of...

• Political Correctness

The Portrayal of the Culture of Death and Afterlife in Art

Throughout history, different cultures dealt with the concept of death and afterlife according to their beliefs, and developed different perspectives about what happens after the body dies. These ideas were often reflected in their art, literature, and their lifestyle as well. Most cultures produce art...

The Tattoo of Cherry Blossom Bracelets in China

The armband tattoos were a popular excitement 10 to 15 years ago. Today, however, it is gradually becoming a hot trend again. These types of tattoos are appealing because they are easy to show and can be quickly hidden in the sleeve. What do bracelet...

• Chinese Culture
• Christianity

Amazon's Upload is All About the Digital Afterlife

Take Black Mirror's dystopian tech analysis, The Good Place's thoughtful investigation of the afterlife, and the workplace pranks of The Office, squeeze them together, and you have Amazon’s Upload. It takes place in a world that could simply be 10 years from now. You can...

Hagia Sophia and Eastern Roman Empire

Hagia Sophia is the great rich remain and an important monument for the Eastern Roman Empire commonly known as the Byzantine Empire. It remain the Centre for Orthodox Church for nearly a thousand years. The current version was built in the year 532. This iconic...

• Ancient Rome
• Byzantine Empire
• Hagia Sophia

Life After Death for the One Whose Heart Is Light

Built in the 27th century BC for the burial of Pharaoh Djoser by his vizier; architect and later known as the God of Medicine, Imhotep. Pyramids were built for religious purposes and the Egyptian civilization were one of the first to believe in an afterlife....

Insurance Regarding the Existence of an Individual’s Afterlife

Under the rational choice model, decisions individuals make are based on perfect information. This implies that people do not undergo any risks or uncertainties when making a choice. However, religious choices of individuals cannot be based on perfect information, for there are no verified sources...

Johann Christoph Blumhardt and Christology

Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) was a Lutheran pastor in Württemberg. He was known among the Lutheran Pietists who built the relation between Southwest Germany [then] with the Basel University of Switzerland mission Society. Certain authors consider this relationship as fostering the trans-Atlantic faith healing movement....

• Christology
• Martin Luther King

Finding What Is The Biblical Purpose Of Govenrment

One day a man was walking down the streets of his city, headed to the capitol, and then he saw a car wreck right in front of him. His first instinct is to go help, so he rushes over and sees the scene. Now with...

• Role of Government

The Creation Myth And Human Evolution: The Everlasting Debate

Every generation of people, young and old as well, come to ask questions about the origin of the universe: Where did it come from? When did it start? or How did it come into existence? Scientists, philosophers or religious believers have all tried to explain...

• Creation Myth
• Human Evolution

Considering Religious Beliefs And Freedom Of Expression

Whether you believe in something or not, the idea of religion has probably crossed your mind. Some people see it as a way to make sense of the world around us and some see it as way of life. the idea that a higher power,...

The Foundational Beliefs Of The Biblical Worldview

To build a biblical framework, or foundational beliefs about God, His character, His world, and His plan one must go to Scripture, for these are His words. Here answers are found to life’s questions; why are we here, good and evil, our purpose, and where...

The Truths About Real Life In The Biblical Worldview

Introduction Every person has a worldview that is either biblical or secular (humanistic). A person’s worldview is the lens through which they view the world. It dictates the decisions they make, the way they treat themselves and others, and their ideas of life after death....

The Perception Of The World In The Christian Worldview

A worldview, this is easy to say its self-explanatory, but it’s much more than that. A worldview can be defined as, “a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world” (Google Dictionary). Another idea is, how a Christian worldview is defined. A Christian Worldview...

The Correlation Between Christian Worldview And Criminal Justice System

Abstract This criminal justice research paper will discuss how people in law enforcement have demonstrated and or expressed their integration of Christen Worldviews into the field of criminal justice. It will show how their Christian beliefs are the driving force behind their ethical and moral...

The Age Of The Earth: Creation Vs. Evolution

There are four great questions of life that everyone asks. The questions are; Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? And where am I going when I die? These questions are answered completely different depending on if you are an...

The Impact Of Religion On Defining What Is Value Of Life

What might most people on this earth value? You guessed it right, it’s Life! Life brings a lot of meaning and purpose that is I feel is an ideal answer to the society and lets just face it, what could someone value other than life?...

• Meaning of Life

Exploration Of Buddhism And Hinduism: Similarities And Differences

Nearly, all people chose at least one religion which is suitable for their thoughts and believes. Due to that fact, people of the same religion come together usually. For instance, there are islamic countries in one community which is called Muslim countries or Ummah. Moreover,...

Buddhism And Hinduism: The Similarities And Differences Of Views

There are three ways to achieve moksha which is when a person’s atman (individual soul) is released from the eternal cycle of reincarnation. Reincarnation is a core idea of Hinduism as according to Upanishad (the third and final Vedic scripture) literature the atman would go...

The Similarities And Differences Between Worldviews Of Hinduism And Buddhism

I will start with the greeting of each religion since it gives a good first impression about you if you greet them in their own way. “Namaste” is the common greeting or salutation in Hinduism, it is usually said with body gestures where they bend...

A Biblical Worldview: The Values Of A Devoted Christian

There comes a point in everyone's life that they must start making decisions on their own, it is at this point they choose what lenses they will use to drive their decisions. For Christians that lense is the Bible and the Holy Spirit is the...

Christian Worldview: Faith And Forgiveness As A Basis

Throughout history, different point of views arose and changed the way people looked at the past of the world. One specific viewpoint is the Christian’s worldview. Christians sin just like everyone else and they recognize that, just like how they recognize the faith of God....

The Biblical Worldview On The Human Trafficking

Choices to commit a crime, fight against crime, or generate justice for criminal acts are all motivated by our worldview. Incorporating a Christian worldview into the Criminal Justice approach allows you to view behavior and response through the lens of God's expectations. This perspective creates...

• Human Trafficking

The Christian Worldview: Philosophy And Values

Today's culture has multiple worldviews. Many individuals prefer to select various religions views but mostly keep to one central worldview. A worldview is the gathering of values that form our everyday work and define our overall vision of existence. Looking seriously at my beliefs, my...

The Effect Of Prophet Muhammad On The Quick Spread Of Islam

This paper will deeply investigate the following interesting question on Islam and it’s spread. What effect did the spread of Islam by Prophet Muhammad in Mecca have on the already religious Saudi Arabian society? In order to compose this paper with reliable facts, mostly primary...

Understanding the Power of a Biblical Worldview in Psychology

A biblical worldview is a transformative lens through which we view the world, based on the teachings of the Bible. It impacts our perspectives on various situations, facts, and aspects of life. This worldview has profound implications for psychology, influencing even the smallest details, such...

Best topics on Religion

1. Why Is Freedom of Religion Important

2. Who is God in Your Life: Personal Beliefs and Spiritual Connections

3. Should Religion Be Taught in Schools

4. How Does Religion Affect Your Life

5. How Are Religion and Culture Connected in Various Ways

6. Buddhism and Hinduism: Exploring Similarities and Differences

7. Death is a Passage Beyond Life

8. Why Should We Respect Our Parents: Exploring Islamic Arguments

9. Respect Your Parents and Take Care of Your Children: Ephesians 6:1-9

10. The Importance of Respect and Obedience to Our Parents in Islam

11. Respect for Life: the Issue of Death Penalty in Catholic Teachings

12. What Does Respect Mean to You: Christian Explanation

13. Implementing the Four Noble Truths in Everyday Life

14. Euthanasia and the Catholic Church in Australia

15. Islamic Traditions and Practices: A Focus on Asian Muslims

• Seven Deadly Sins

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Home > Bible Facts > Writing a Perfect Religion Essay for College Students

Writing a Perfect Religion Essay for College Students

Modified: January 9, 2024

Written by: Daniel Gallik

Wonder how to write an amazing religion essay for collage? Here's a guideline that covers the basis of what to write and how to write.

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Are you a college student wondering how to write the perfect essay on religion? If yes, read on and find all that you need to know about writing a religion essay. This article will cover the basics and all you need to know about writing an excellent essay piece on religion.

What is a Religion Essay

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Well, religion essays are a kind of paper that relates to religion, belief, and faith. 

In college, many students will be required to write a few essays on religion. Students typically struggle with writing assignments of this nature since they haven’t learned how to write professionally. After all, religion is a highly personal subject, and objective discussions about religion can be particularly difficult and generally mind-boggling. 

As a result of this, many students prefer outsourcing their writing assignments on religion to a custom essay writing service like Edubirdie. On this “write an essay for me” platform, there are plenty of professional writers for you to choose from with guaranteed transparency on their profiles and reviews. After reviewing, you can simply choose a writer and you will have your essay delivered in no time. 

On the other hand, some students prefer completing such religious essays themselves to improve their writing. If you fall under this category we’ve put together some tips for you. for you to ace your religion essay.

Read more : Christian Blogs To Follow Before Writing a Religious Essay

Tip 1: Choosing a Topic for a Religion Essay

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Consider a topic that interests you, one that piques your curiosity . Though it’s said that curiosity kills the cat, it’s a much-needed drive in essays, especially ones that deal with theology and mind-boggling ideas. H aving an interest as your personal pedestal throughout is effective for your research and writing.

A contentious issue would make a fantastic topic for a religion essay because it means it’s a topic of interest to people and it gives room and framework to your arguments. An example can be whether hell is a truth or a myth . You can decide to look into where a particular religious idea came from and employ background information and opposing points of view to present your argument. Whatever the topic, always use the most reliable sources you can to back up your claims.

Next, contemplate what your stance is towards the issue and start to build your case around it. Are you for it or against it? Should this topic even be contentious in the first place? Are there other points that should be contended besides what has already been debated? Usually, a great religious essay identifies the issue and has tight arguments to support the thesis. But, an amazing essay is one that brings in a fresh perspective that’s been rarely discussed in class. So, work around that.

This step is usually the toughest, but once you’ve passed through it, the rest of the work is a breeze.

Tip 2: How to Write an Introduction for a Religion Essay

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Prepare your notes and an overview of your case before beginning to write the introduction. In contrast to creative writing , the reader expects your thesis statement and facts up front in an essay. Because of this, seasoned writers advise pupils to read more books and develop their own points of view. But occasionally it can be advantageous to grab an idea from someone who wrote it before you. It’s catchy and demonstrates your familiarity with the subject. The reader should have a clear understanding of what to anticipate from the article from the beginning.

How can you create a strong essay introduction? The components of a strong introduction are numerous such as some background information, a thesis statement, a purpose statement, and a summary of what’s to be covered. Essentially, your introduction is your first impression and a blueprint of what the entire essay will be. 

The topic and focus of the essay, as well as a few other important concepts, should be covered in the first paragraph. Along with the thesis, it should also give background details and the context of the argument. It should also describe the essay’s structure, which is outlined in the last paragraph. The importance of the introduction increases as the essay gets longer. Even though it may appear tedious, just like any first impression, the introduction is an important component of any paper. 

Tip 3: How to Write the Body of a Religion Essay

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Introduce the basic tenets and principles of the religion you’re addressing in the major body of your essay. Then, you should investigate the crucial components of the tradition. What are its core ideals and beliefs? What role does it play in society? How is it relevant in our current world? Textual support must be provided because this is an excellent approach to capturing your readers’ interest.

The promise you made in your introduction should be fulfilled in the body of your essay. Make sure to add new proof to the main argument of each paragraph in the body of your essay. Each paragraph should be concluded with a sentence that emphasizes the importance of the argument and connects it to the following one.

Tip 4: How to Write the Conclusion Section for a Religion Essay

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Your conclusion is a paragraph (or two) of concluding remarks that demonstrate the points you’ve made are still true and worth considering . Think of it as a final impression you make on the readers, you’d want to make yourself memorable Additionally, it should demonstrate that the arguments you made in the essay’s main body are supported by relevant evidence.

A great conclusion is also one that highlights the significance of your points and directs readers toward the best course of action for the future. This shows that you aren’t just someone who debates but someone who is also willing to try and better the situation.  Keep in mind that your final chance to convince or impress your audience is the conclusion.

Read more : Cultural Sensitivity in Student Essays about Religion

Tip 5: Find Proofreaders

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If I’d learned anything through my years of college essays, it’s to get people to proofread your essay. They are your safety nets. I’d usually find a coursemate or someone from my class to proofread. They are valuable second pairs of eyes to help you spot grammar mistakes but also in concepts that you may have applied. Next, find a friend that’s not from your course or class because they are an accurate assessment of how clear and cohesive your essay is. If they can understand what you’re writing, you can be sure that half the battle is already won.

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Essay on What is Religion for Students and Children

500+ words essay on what is religion.

Religion refers to a belief in a divine entity or deity. Moreover, religion is about the presence of God who is controlling the entire world. Different people have different beliefs. And due to this belief, many different cultures exist.

Further, there are a series of rituals performed by each religion. This is done to please Gods of their particular religion. Religion creates an emotional factor in our country. The Constitution of our country is secular . This means that we have the freedom of following any religion. As our country is the most diverse in religions, religion has two main sub broad categories:

Monotheistic Religion

Monotheistic religions believe in the existence of one God. Some of the monotheistic religions are:

Islam: The people who follow are Muslims . Moreover, Islam means to ‘ surrender’ and the people who follow this religion surrender themselves to ‘Allah’.

Furthermore, the holy book of Islam is ‘ QURAN’, Muslims believe that Allah revealed this book to Muhammad. Muhammad was the last prophet. Above all, Islam has the second most popular religion in the entire world. The most important festivals in this religion are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

Christianity: Christian also believes in the existence of only one God. Moreover, the Christians believe that God sent his only Jesus Christ for our Salvation. The Holy book of Christians is the Bible .

Furthermore, the bible is subdivided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. Most Importantly, Jesus Christ died on the cross to free us from our sins. The people celebrate Easter on the third day. Because Jesus Christ resurrected on the third day of his death.

However, the celebration of Christmas signifies the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Above all Christianity has the most following in the entire world.

Judaism: Judaism also believes in the existence of one God. Who revealed himself to Abraham, Moses and the Hebrew prophets. Furthermore, Abraham is the father of the Jewish Faith. Most Noteworthy the holy book of the Jewish people is Torah.

Above all, some of the festivals that Jewish celebrate are Passover, Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, Hanukkah, etc.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Polytheistic Religion

Polytheistic religions are those that believe in the worship of many gods. One of the most believed polytheistic religion is:

Hinduism: Hinduism has the most popularity in India and South-east Asian sub-continent. Moreover, Hindus believe that our rewards in the present life are the result of our deeds in previous lives. This signifies their belief in Karma. Above all the holy book of Hindus is ‘Geeta’. Also, Hindus celebrate many festivals. Some of the important ones are Holi-The festival of colors and Diwali- the festival of lights.

Last, there is one religion that is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic.

Buddhism: Buddhism religion followers do not believe in the existence of God. However, that does not mean that they are an atheist. Moreover, Buddhism believes that God is not at all the one who controls the masses. Also, Buddhism is much different from many other religions. Above all, Gautam Buddha founded Buddhism.

Some FAQs for You

Q1. How many types of religions are there in the entire world?

A1. There are two types of religion in the entire world. And they are Monotheistic religions and Polytheistic religions.

Q2. What is a Polytheistic religion? Give an example

A2. Polytheistic religion area those that follow and worship any Gods. Hinduism is one of the examples of polytheistic religion. Hindus believe in almost 330 million Gods. Furthermore, they have great faith in all and perform many rituals to please them.

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Home — Essay Samples — Religion — Religious Pluralism — Role of Religion in Society: Exploring its Significance and Implications

Role of Religion in Society: Exploring Its Significance and Implications

• Categories: Religious Beliefs Religious Pluralism

About this sample

Words: 1028 |

Published: Sep 5, 2023

Words: 1028 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the significance of religion in society, the implications of religion in society, the debate surrounding the role of religion in society, the historical context of religion in society, the impact of religion on culture and identity, the role of religion in promoting social cohesion, the impact of religion on politics and governance, the relationship between religion and morality, the role of religion in promoting social justice and equality, the debate between secularism and religious influence in society, the impact of cultural attitudes towards religion on the debate, the potential consequences of religion's role in society.

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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Understanding Islam, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

The TED Talks provide a unique opportunity for an educated layman to learn about the core beliefs and practices of Islam beyond the TV sound bites. These lectures are delivered in a straightforward, lucid and accessible manner, yet are profound and thought-provoking, arousing in the audience an interest to pursue further into a more engaged study of Islam and its varied civilizational expressions across the Muslim world. Mumtaz Ahmad, President, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan

For historic reasons, it's never been easy for non-Muslims to learn about Islam. Since the Crusaders' efforts to reinstate Roman control over Jerusalem, images of Islam as an ideology founded by a fanatic, posing as a prophet, and encouraging extremism have circulated widely. (Among other vestiges of this era is the saying, "If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad will go to the mountain." This was the punch line in a story about Muhammad's failed effort to prove he was a prophet by commanding a mountain to come to him.) In the modern era the British struggled to maintain their control over Arab and Indian lands, derisively referred to by Rudyard Kipling as the "white man's burden." The young Winston Churchill wrote of Sudanis resisting British conquest, "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedianism lays on its votaries!" He included among them "fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog." (Sir Winston Churchill; ( The River War , 1st ed., London 1899, II:248) The French felt compelled to undertake a "civilizing mission" among Africans, including the Muslim North Africans, casting those who preferred to rule themselves as insurgents and terrorists.

Without this background, it's difficult to comprehend the vehemence of contemporary Muslim struggles for good governance, much less reactions to insults to Islam, its scripture, and prophet. The TEDTalks presented here provide a framework for meeting that challenge. Presenting Islam as Muslims perceive it, beginning with the Qur'an (Islam's sacred scripture; "Koran" in archaic spelling), TED speakers allow us to appreciate that Islam shares its major prophets and core values with Judaism and Christianity. Tracing the historic origins of radicalism, they also reveal the key distinctions between mainstream Islamic values and those motivating headline-grabbing extremists. Finally, sampling some of the ways in which Muslims are working to provide positive role models for their children, and present mainstream views of Islam to non-Muslims using the tools of popular culture, TED speakers provide hope for a future in which non-Muslims and Muslims may work together to realize those shared values.

The Qur'an

Independent scholar and TED speaker Lesley Hazleton undertook a study of the Qur'an — the sacred scripture of Islam — in order to write a biography of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and discovered that it was a challenging task indeed. She quotes 19th-century historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle describing the Qur'an as "a wearisome jumble." For Carlyle it was "as toilsome reading as I ever undertook." That's because the Qur'an is not a book to be read like any other book. It's a book of scripture central to Islamic belief and practice, sacred to hundreds of millions of people all over the world. As such, in the words of contemporary Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan, the Qur'an is considered "more than a mere text[;] it is a traveling companion" through life. Ramadan writes, "For the woman or the man whose heart has made the message of Islam its own, the [Qur'an] speaks in a singular way. It is both the Voice and the Path. God speaks to one's innermost being, to his consciousness, to his heart, and guides him on the path that leads to knowledge of him, to meeting with him: 'This is the Book, about it there can be no doubt; it is a Path for those who are aware of God.'"

As Hazleton notes, the sound of the Qur'an recited is exquisitely, hauntingly beautiful. It reflects, in her view, "the rhythmic cadence" of the deserts and mountains of Arabia, where it was delivered over a period of 22-23 years in the 7th century. Scholar Michael Sells addresses the aesthetic qualities of the Qur'an in his unique introductory text Approaching the Qur'an (White Cloud 2007). Sells focuses on the shortest chapters (suras), which are generally believed to be the earliest ones. While later chapters often deal with practical issues of communal life and social justice, the early verses are deeply spiritual. They focus on the grand themes of creation and the purpose of human life. The powerful imagery, especially of these early chapters of the Qur'an, is conveyed most effectively by the human voice. The art of Qur'an recitation is among Islam's most cherished, and gifted Qur'an reciters can achieve fame worldwide. Sells has provided a CD with his book so that readers can experience the chanted Qur'an themselves — whether they understand Arabic or not.

Indeed, Arabic speakers comprise only perhaps one quarter of the world's Muslims. The majority of the world's Muslims are Indonesian, Indian, Bangladeshi, or Pakistani. Millions more are Malaysian, African, Central Asian, Chinese, European, Latin American, or North American. But the Qur'ân is considered to be authentic only in Arabic, so virtually all Muslims pray in Arabic. The text exists in translation in most languages, but once translated, it is no longer considered to be the Qur'an. As with all translations, it is an interpretation. The recited Qur'an, as Ramadan notes, speaks directly to the heart of Muslims.

For non-Muslims, on the other hand, the Qur'an must be approached with some preparation. To begin, the term qur'ân means "recitation" or "reading," reflecting the Muslim belief that it is the word of God, not of the prophet who delivered it. Muslims believe that the Qur'an is timeless, revealed word for word in the Arabic language through God's final messenger, Muhammad (d. 632).

In fact, the Qur'an states that its message has been delivered numerous times before. It refers frequently to the Torah and the Gospels, telling people that that they should remember those texts and following their teachings, clearly assuming people are familiar with them. As a result, the Qur'an does not recount their historic narratives. Instead, it uses characters and events familiar to Jews and Christians to make specific moral or theological points. References to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, and Jesus, for example, thus appear frequently but not in chronological order.

The Qur'ân also refers to prophets unknown to Jews and Christians, but all prophets are believed to have preached the same message of social justice as a reflection of true belief. The Qur'ân, in other words, considers its teaching to be part of the monotheistic tradition that began with the covenant between God and humanity forged at the time of Abraham. (See, e.g. verses 43:13, 2:136-7, 26:194-197; 6:92.) As TED speaker and scholar Karen Armstrong discovered when she began her study of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are indeed "sister religions." The Qur'an teaches that if people understood their diverse scriptures properly, there would be no religious disputes and, what's more, they would recognize that the Qur'ân truly confirms what had been revealed before. But the Qur'an recognizes that there are disputes among the communities that came to be distinguished as Jewish and Christian (27:76-77; 11:118), and that many people did in fact reject the message of Muhammad. (61:5-6) It offers explanations for these problems, identifying what it considers misinterpretations of the earlier messages. (E.g., 2:124; 3:45, 4:171; 2:87; 4:157.)

Yet the Qur'an teaches that these differences should not be a source of conflict. There must be no compulsion in matters of religion, the Qur'an insists. (2:256) Instead, people of all communities should work together for shared goals. Rather than disputing over doctrine, all who claim to believe should simply "compete with one another in good works." (5:48) Good works, in the Qur'an's perspective, include anything that promotes justice: charity, caring for parents and relatives and the poor, freeing slaves, keeping promises, being sincere and steadfast in one's commitments. And doing such works reflects genuine encounter with the divine. There is one God, who is the sole provider, protector, guide, and judge of all human beings. God created all human beings, and created them equal. Genuine awareness of God thus inspires people to serve God by safeguarding the dignity and equality in which all were created. (See, e.g., Ch. 107; 89:15-18.)

The Qur'an describes this responsibility as stewardship, khilafah . The related term khalifah is later used in the political sphere to mean "successor" of the Prophet (and anglicized as "caliph"), but in the Qur'an it has a much broader meaning. In a famous verse, the Qur'an says that God created humanity to be His khalifah (2:30). Human beings were put on earth to be responsible for all creation.

The majority of the Qur'an's later, more practically-oriented verses deal with specific aspects of that stewardship. Among the Qur'an's most detailed legislation is that designed to improve the status of women. As Hazleton notes, the Qur'an directly addresses both males and females. It is also the only major religious text to acknowledge misogyny and enjoin correctives. (See, e.g., 16:59-60; 43:17; 81:8-9; 4:24; 2:187; 30:21; 4:29; 4:35; 4:128; 2:24; 2:229; 9:71; 2:228) Protection of orphans is another major focus of the Qur'an's program for social justice. There are other aspects of stewardship, as well. Hazleton refers to the Qur'an's environmental concerns, for example (see e.g., 15:19). But altogether, as both Karen Armstrong and Faisal Abdul Rauf stress in their TEDTalks, the Qur'an's intense concern for the most vulnerable members of society, and commissioning of human beings to protect them, reflects Islam's overarching ethos of compassion. In one of its most paradigmatic verses, the Qur'an recalls that, as God (Allah, in Arabic) taught the people of Israel, killing one person is like killing all of humanity, and saving one person is like saving all mankind. (5:32)

Matters of Interpretation

TED speakers Mustafa Aykol, Maajid Nawaz, Maz Jobrani, and Naif al-Mutawa demonstrate that Muslims, at least as much as non-Muslims, wonder how a religion that insists on human dignity and compassion for all living beings could be associated with atrocities like female circumcision, honor killings, and terrorism. In the cases of circumcision and honor killings, it's simply a matter of pre-existing cultural practices being confused with religious teachings. But in the case of terrorism, as Aykol argues, the answer lies in perversion of religious teachings in response to specific political conflicts.

Aykol notes that Islam stresses specific individual liberties. Articulated in classical legal texts as the "goals" or "purposes" of Islamic law (Shari`ah), they include the right to life, religion, family, property, and reason or dignity. Despite economic and political decline in the later Middle Ages, Islamic traditions stressing human dignity remained vibrant. They became the core of reform movements that emerged under the impact of colonialism in the 19th century. By that time virtually all Muslim majority regions - North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia - were under European control. Reformers of this era ("modernists," in Aykol's terminology) exhibited considerable optimism that once free of foreign control, Muslim societies would recover their cultural dynamism and continue to contribute to global civilization.

But the outcome of World War I created a backlash against Europe and a strong sense of Islamic exceptionalism. Prior to World War I, Britain had convinced Arab leaders to assist them and their allies in defeating Germany by rebelling against Germany's ally, Ottoman Turkey. In return, Britain would recognize Arab independence. That promise, however, was violated. Britain and France in fact kept control of the territories they already dominated in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt), and took control of Syria (which at that time included Lebanon), Palestine (the territories later divided into Israel and the West Bank), Transjordan (roughly the portion of traditional Greater Syria that lies between Iraq and the Jordan River, eventually renamed Jordan), and Iraq — often ruling through local surrogates. In this context, a new generation of grassroots reformers stressed a sharp distinction between European and Islamic culture, the purity and superiority of Islamic values, and the sufficiency of Islam for all human needs — personal, social, and political. Leaders of this politicized Islam ("Islamism") organized community-based societies to provide social services generally unavailable to the poor through the European-controlled governments and, as a result, became very popular.

By the mid-20th century, Europe lost its dominance in the region, whether through revolution or due to economic and political exhaustion, leaving a legacy of economic and social underdevelopment and, in many cases, communities with no bureaucratic infrastructure except the military. As throughout the formerly colonized world, military-dominated, authoritarian governments thus became the norm. Islamist groups continued to fill the gaps in social services, and thus continued to grow in popularity. They also grew bolder in their political demands. As Aykol notes, increasing political pressure by Islamists resulted in increasing suppression of Islamist opposition by authoritarian post-colonial governments. Islamist organizations were frequently banned, their leaders arrested or assassinated, and many of their members imprisoned and tortured.

The systematic persecution of Islamists by authoritarian regimes resulted in the radicalization of some. The majority of Muslims and the majority of Islamists retained Islam's characteristic moderation. The atrocities committed by the radicals are thus condemned by the vast majority of Muslims as violations of core Islamic values. This became increasingly evident during the last quarter of the 20th century, when political setbacks unleashed a rash of extremist outbreaks in Egypt, Algeria, and Afghanistan.

Egypt was plagued by terrorist attacks and its President Sadat was assassinated (1981), Algeria descended into a shockingly brutal civil war following the military government's cancellation of elections (1992), and Afghanistan became a deadly war zone as warlords battled for dominance following Soviet withdrawal (1980), which ultimately led to the dominance of the repressive Taliban (1996). In all cases, the result was even further suffering in disadvantaged Muslim communities. By the 1990s even the Islamic government established with great optimism in Iran in 1979 had become extremely unpopular. Its people had suffered terribly in a brutal war with secular Iraq, and its increasingly youth-dominated population longed for freedom, development, and global cultural engagement.

By the 1990s, therefore, Islamism was undergoing a transformation. Early Islamist efforts had apparently failed, and new generations emerged whose experience of Islamism was scarcely more positive than had been their parents' experience of secular rule. Mainstream Islamists therefore intensified their demands for representative, participatory governance, and equality of all citizens before the law. Some earlier-generation Islamists had rejected use of the term "democracy" for the kind of government they advocated, given its association with the secular European governments who had caused such resentment in their colonial realms. Newer generations of reformers had no such qualms. They are the ones who rose to roles of leadership during the Arab Spring.

Not all Muslims are Islamists. Some indeed distrust the Islamists and advocate secularism, fearing that Islamism will result in the kind of oppressive societies developed in Iran and Afghanistan. And not all Islamists are pro-democracy. Pockets of militant, anti-West radicals remain and continue to plague both mainstream Muslim communities and the radicals' Western targets. But mainstream Muslims collectively struggle to counter the extremists' messages in diverse ways. TED speaker Maz Jobrani uses the performance art of comedy to challenge Hollywood-style stereotypes of Islam and the Middle East. Maajid Nawaz presents his personal experiences as a terrorist recruit, and describes his efforts to provide coherent media-based outreach programs to counter the outlaw-chic extremist allure for Muslim youth in Pakistan. Shereen El Feki describes how some Arab cultures are using music videos, comics, and even Barbie to promote positive perspectives of Islam; and Naif al-Mutawa introduces his immensely popular comic book series, The 99, offering superheroes embodying Quranic values such as justice, mercy, and wisdom as role models for Muslim children. The goal is for newer generations to emerge from the burdens of the past empowered by an appreciation of Islam's core values and confidence that the world will respect them.

Let's begin Understanding Islam with "On reading the Koran," the TEDTalk from journalist and scholar Lesley Hazleton. In her talk, the Jewish-born, Catholic-schooled Hazleton describes what she learned after spending three months in a close reading of the Koran, studying four well-known translations and the seventh-century Arabic text.

Lesley Hazleton

On reading the koran, relevant talks.

Karen Armstrong

My wish: the charter for compassion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Lose your ego, find your compassion.

Mustafa Akyol

Faith versus tradition in islam.

Maajid Nawaz

A global culture to fight extremism.

Maz Jobrani

Did you hear the one about the iranian-american.

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What Is a Religion Essay

Let’s begin with a proper definition of religion essay. Such texts talk about the basics of faith, churches, and believer communities’ traditions or inspect religions from historical, cultural, or philosophical perspectives. Depending on a general subject, you might talk about your belief or discuss other ones you are familiar with within your essay.

When describing such kind of topic (be it your own one or some others you wish to talk about), you should typically provide the following information:

• Its core beliefs (is it mono- or polytheistic and so on).
• Its main traditions.
• Problems it faces (or has faced in the past) and how they are solved, etc.

Religion Essay for School

In this article, we’ll provide some guidelines for writing about religion in schools essays. First of all, keep in mind that your paper must be informative and objective. Describing your own belief or discussing other ones, you need to avoid uninformed assumptions and prejudice. In order to engage in such discussions, one should learn about some basic principles at least:

• What is it in general?
• What are the main religions in the world or in your country?
• Main differences between religions or churches, etc.

More detailed tips for essay about religion in schools will be provided below. Besides, we’ve got many such examples posted here for free. Go ahead and check them. Maybe you’ll find some helpful ideas there to borrow for your own work. Start with civil disobedience essay or discrimination essay at StudyBounty .

Religion College Essays Example

Looking for a sample of college essays about religion? We’ve got one for you! Feel free to check out its structure and style and reuse it in your own essay.

College students are expected to address more complicated problems in their papers. But you need to stay respectful while writing about religion in college essays. This is quite an important and sensitive aspect of modern life so better make sure you’re not offending anyone. Be objective and use valid sources to back up your narrative. Avoid informal vocabulary and make sure all parts of your text are logically connected with each other.

Religious college essays aren’t very easy to compose. That’s why it would be useful to have some real completed works as your reference materials. Scroll down to access our college essay examples .

Religion Essay Examples That Will Help You in Writing

Searching for a good religion example to help you with your writer’s block? You’ve come to the right place. We have many different examples for various kinds of essays on this subject.

Is your task to write a college essay on religion? This level requires proper analysis and some time spent on research. You are likely to address complex or even controversial problems. So, make sure to use good argumentation and at the same time avoid radically judging other people’s views.

There are two main essay types for this topic:

• Argumentative
• Persuasive.

Each subtype has its own peculiarities and limitations. It is better to learn more about each one before choosing your topic. Let’s examine both these essay types in detail.

Religion Argumentative Essay

Writing an argumentative essay on religion requires presenting some claim and defending it before your audience. You should build a set of reasons showing that you’re right which requires conducting some preliminary research. 

So, these are necessary steps when working on an argumentative essay about religion:

• Formulate a strong claim in your thesis statement. Be cautious with that since you’re dealing with a sensitive subject.
• Brainstorm ideas and collect sources.
• Build your argumentation taking potential counterarguments into account.

Religion argumentative essay topics are controversial by definition which is why it might be complicated to deal with them. Feel free to check out argumentative essay examples or samples below – maybe you’ll find its argumentation structure useful for your own work.

Religion Persuasive Essay

Interested in persuasive essay topics on religion? We’ve got you covered! A real religion essay sample of this type is provided below. Feel free to use it as inspiration or reference material while writing your task.

Here are also some tips for persuading others to use in your writing:

• Choose a familiar topic. It would be hard to convince others when discussing questions you aren’t too well versed in.
• Use different types of reasoning. Appeal to your experience, emotions, rhetoric, etc.
• Maintain a respectful tone because you’re dealing with some quite sensitive questions. For example, if you’re presenting ‘My religion essay”, don’t offend any other religions or their representatives.

Do not forget to browse various persuasive essay examples by StudyBounty . It is crucial for your essay writing.

Religion Essay Outline

Let’s talk about an outline of essay on religion. This step is very serious because composing an excellent outline would help make huge progress with your essay. Presenting its logical structure in shortened but comprehensive format allows you to correct all grave mistakes before writing the full text.

Let's look at our sample. Suppose your general topic is ‘Cultural role of religion’.

Outline example for religion essay

Introduction: draft an introduction providing your thesis statement.

• Introduce your topic and write a thesis statement – a full sentence. E.g. debate that your belief is a key element of your national culture.
• Add a few words about this problem’s context, explaining the history of this question in your country.

Main body: the body should contain at least three paragraphs, sketched but concise. 

• Think your argumentation through and perform the necessary research.
• When defending the cultural role of your religion, place each of your major arguments in a new paragraph.
• Reserve the last paragraph to review possible counterarguments and refute them.

Conclusion: write a shortened conclusion.

• Summarize your arguments and refutations.
• Restate your claim and check whether it sounds convincing. Fill in any logical gaps if needed.

Bonus: Do not know how many pages your essay should be? Try our words per page tool and get an instant result!

Religion Essay Introduction

Making an introduction to religion essay informative enough requires some preparation and analysis. First, read how to write an informative essay . And here are the recommended steps:

• Provide your thesis statement making it clear, concise, and well formulated. We’ll discuss this part in another section below.
• Add enough context to make your audience familiar with the selected problem. It should explain why this problem is important and/or interesting for others. Otherwise, you would risk losing your audience’s attention.
• Make sure to keep it brief nevertheless. Don’t disclose any vital information that is to be provided in the main part later.

Our sample is available for you here. Feel free to choose and if necessary copy this structure and these techniques to use in your paper.

Introduction of religion essay example

During the ancient era, both power and religion had a connection to the aspect of kingship. Power was defined as the authority to influence other people's behavior. On the other hand, religion at times espoused the belief that the divinity in human beings was expressed in the center of leadership, in this case, the kingship. The fields of religious studies and anthropology, as well as a number of conferences, have considered kingship with respect to its relationship to religion. Going back to the early civilizations, the aspect of power and religion worked similarly as well as differently in both Aegean Crete and in Mesopotamia. This paper aims at discussing how the two aspects operated in the two regions.

Religion Essay Thesis Statement Examples

When brainstorming a thesis statement on religion, better focus on the aspects you are well familiar with. It would be difficult to prove the point if you don’t know enough about the problem.

Are you writing an argumentative or persuasive essay? In both cases, you should make some controversial claims so that you would have enough materials for discussion.

Here is a thesis statement about religion that you could use when discussing its cultural role:

Despite many controversies about the current role of our church, religion has shaped the unique culture of our society.

Here you quote an opposite opinion on your problem and refute it in the same sentence. Such construction makes your thesis sound more interesting.

Religion Essay Body Paragraph

The classic format of 5 paragraph essay about religion foresees using 3 out of 5 paragraphs for the main body part. The remaining 2 paragraphs are left for the introduction and the conclusion respectively.

Here is what your main part should include:

• All the information with necessary explanations and argumentation. Make sure to prepare valid data or evidence for your claims and assumptions.
• Each paragraph in your essay should contain a certain major argument. Leave the last one for reviewing the main counterarguments against your position and refuting them.
• Remember that all paragraphs should be logically connected with each other.

You can see how it is done in a sample available below.

Religion essay body paragraph example 

Ancient leaders, more particularly Kings, used architecture and art to show their true dominance vividly. In this context, various structures conferred different messages. It's evident that every structure portrayed a specific message as far as kingship was concerned. A much more critical component, in any case, is the central role performed by organized religion within Mesopotamian in regards to issues of state (Finegan 2015). More certainly during the Sumerian times, the city and its monetary association were the duty of the sanctuary, with its progressive brotherhood in which was vested a power practically equivalent to that of the ruler and his admonitory committee of elders. As needs were at the beginning of Sumeria and Babylonia, consideration was paid essentially to the design of religious structures, and all sculptures that had a religious significance filled. The elaboration and enhancement of castles were an advancement of the Assyrian times.

Religion Essay Conclusion

Finally, let’s talk about a conclusion on religion essay. Here are several tips on writing a good one:

• Summarize the important information you’ve provided in your essay, but don’t repeat it. Make sure you address the opposing point of view – this will make an essay more objective.
• Don't put any reference material in this section – place all of that in the previous part.
• Make it brief but comprehensive. Try adding some captivating comments about the subject. They could leave a lasting impression on readers.

A good sample is available below. It could be useful for you as extra reference material. Feel free to borrow some ideas from it!

Example of conclusion for religion essay

Evidently, as the paper highlights, in the ancient world, kingship was complemented both by power and by religion. The highest-ranking officials in government used architecture and artworks to show their dominance and authority. For instance, a stone relief and the Akkadian statue in Mesopotamia and the tallest buildings in Aegean Crete such as the Knossos Palace. These artworks showed that the kingship position was for universal well-being. The artwork was symbolic. It showed power vested upon the ruler and not the ruler themselves.

How to Write a Religion Essay

Are you stuck at the beginning? Here’s how to write an essay about religion – step by step:

• Choose your topic carefully. Brainstorm ideas and conduct some research. Make sure you know well what you are writing about.
• Present it to your audience properly. This includes preparing a strong thesis statement. But at the same time remain respectful to other people, including your opponents. Review your thesis carefully before proceeding.
• Write a short outline. At this stage, it will be much easier to evaluate how concise your work would be. Serious misjudgments, errors, or gaps can be quickly spotted and corrected. Just make sure to review your completed outline at least twice.
• Conduct serious research about your topic. Collect all necessary reference material. Use only valid sources and make sure all the citations aren’t offensive.
• Write the full essay. Format it carefully, use proper vocabulary, and don't forget about grammar.
• Review it at least once. Minor issues are left unnoticed quite often. Try asking someone else to check it out.

Still not sure how to write an essay on religion? You can contact us! We have experienced academic writers who are happy to help students.

List of Popular Religion Paper Topics

Need some good topics for religion papers ? Or not sure how to choose from various religion topics to write about? We’ve got your back! Here are the 12 best religion topics for essays of various levels and types:

• The historical role of religion in education. (Look at the education system essay from our library.)
• Comparison and contrast of Islam and Christianity.
•  Start with Importance of religious community in our society.
• How do churches in maintain international peace?
• Benefits of polygamy/monogamy from the religious aspect.
• Ideas of reincarnation and their basis.
• Dangers of religious radicalism.
• Are religious people more moral? Why or why not?
• What justifies changing your belief? 
• Why the church should/should not be separated from the state.
• Polytheism vs monotheism.
• Why religions will/will not disappear eventually.

FAQ About Essays on Religion

Sure, we’ve got totally free essays religion for you, at no charge at all. Feel free to browse through them, read or download them as pdf. As long as you avoid direct copying, you can reuse their style or structure in your own original work or borrow their sources if they match your own topic.

Always start your religious essays with strong thesis statements. It is recommended to address complex and even controversial problems. Such claims provide enough material for discussion and engage your reader. Don’t forget to give enough context about your thesis. Otherwise, people who read it might lose focus at the beginning.

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13.1 What Is Religion?

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Distinguish between religion, spirituality, and worldview.
• Describe the connections between witchcraft, sorcery, and magic.
• Identify differences between deities and spirits.
• Identify shamanism.
• Describe the institutionalization of religion in state societies.

Defining Religion, Spirituality, and Worldview

An anthropological inquiry into religion can easily become muddled and hazy because religion encompasses intangible things such as values, ideas, beliefs, and norms. It can be helpful to establish some shared signposts. Two researchers whose work has focused on religion offer definitions that point to diverse poles of thought about the subject. Frequently, anthropologists bookend their understanding of religion by citing these well-known definitions.

French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) utilized an anthropological approach to religion in his study of totemism among Indigenous Australian peoples in the early 20th century. In his work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915), he argues that social scientists should begin with what he calls “simple religions” in their attempts to understand the structure and function of belief systems in general. His definition of religion takes an empirical approach and identifies key elements of a religion: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them” (47). This definition breaks down religion into the components of beliefs, practices, and a social organization—what a shared group of people believe and do.

The other signpost used within anthropology to make sense of religion was crafted by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) in his work The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). Geertz’s definition takes a very different approach: “A religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (90). Geertz’s definition, which is complex and holistic and addresses intangibles such as emotions and feelings, presents religion as a different paradigm , or overall model, for how we see systems of belief. Geertz views religion as an impetus to view and act upon the world in a certain manner. While still acknowledging that religion is a shared endeavor, Geertz focuses on religion’s role as a potent cultural symbol. Elusive, ambiguous, and hard to define, religion in Geertz’s conception is primarily a feeling that motivates and unites groups of people with shared beliefs. In the next section, we will examine the meanings of symbols and how they function within cultures, which will deepen your understanding of Geertz’s definition. For Geertz, religion is intensely symbolic.

When anthropologists study religion, it can be helpful to consider both of these definitions because religion includes such varied human constructs and experiences as social structures, sets of beliefs, a feeling of awe, and an aura of mystery. While different religious groups and practices sometimes extend beyond what can be covered by a simple definition, we can broadly define religion as a shared system of beliefs and practices regarding the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena. And yet as soon as we ascribe a meaning to religion, we must distinguish some related concepts, such as spirituality and worldview.

Over the last few years, a growing number of Americans have been choosing to define themselves as spiritual rather than religious. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that 27 percent of Americans identify as “spiritual but not religious,” which is 8 percentage points higher than it was in 2012 (Lipka and Gecewicz 2017). There are different factors that can distinguish religion and spirituality, and individuals will define and use these terms in specific ways; however, in general, while religion usually refers to shared affiliation with a particular structure or organization, spirituality normally refers to loosely structured beliefs and feelings about relationships between the natural and supernatural worlds. Spirituality can be very adaptable to changing circumstances and is often built upon an individual’s perception of the surrounding environment.

Many Americans with religious affiliation also use the term spirituality and distinguish it from their religion. Pew found in 2017 that 48 percent of respondents said they were both religious and spiritual. Pew also found that 27 percent of people say religion is very important to them (Lipka and Gecewicz 2017).

Another trend pertaining to religion in the United States is the growth of those defining themselves as nones , or people with no religious affiliation. In a 2014 survey of 35,000 Americans from 50 states, Pew found that nearly a quarter of Americans assigned themselves to this category (Pew Research Center 2015). The percentage of adults assigning themselves to the “none” category had grown substantially, from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014; among millennials, the percentage of nones was even higher, at 35 percent (Lipka 2015). In a follow-up survey, participants were asked to identity their major reasons for choosing to be nonaffiliated; the most common responses pointed to the growing politicization of American churches and a more critical and questioning stance toward the institutional structure of all religions (Pew Research Center 2018). It is important, however, to point out that nones are not the same as agnostics or atheists. Nones may hold traditional and/or nontraditional religious beliefs outside of membership in a religious institution. Agnosticism is the belief that God or the divine is unknowable and therefore skepticism of belief is appropriate, and atheism is a stance that denies the existence of a god or collection of gods. Nones, agnostics, and atheists can hold spiritual beliefs, however. When anthropologists study religion, it is very important for them to define the terms they are using because these terms can have different meanings when used outside of academic studies. In addition, the meaning of terms may change. As the social and political landscape in a society changes, it affects all social institutions, including religion.

Even those who consider themselves neither spiritual nor religious hold secular, or nonreligious, beliefs that structure how they view themselves and the world they live in. The term worldview refers to a person’s outlook or orientation; it is a learned perspective, which has both individual and collective components, on the nature of life itself. Individuals frequently conflate and intermingle their religious and spiritual beliefs and their worldviews as they experience change within their lives. When studying religion, anthropologists need to remain aware of these various dimensions of belief. The word religion is not always adequate to identify an individual’s belief systems.

Like all social institutions, religion evolves within and across time and cultures—even across early human species! Adapting to changes in population size and the reality of people’s daily lives, religions and religious/spiritual practices reflect life on the ground . Interestingly, though, while some institutions (such as economics) tend to change radically from one era to another, often because of technological changes, religion tends to be more viscous , meaning it tends to change at a much slower pace and mix together various beliefs and practices. While religion can be a factor in promoting rapid social change, it more commonly changes slowly and retains older features while adding new ones. In effect, religion contains within it many of its earlier iterations and can thus be quite complex.

Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic

People in Western cultures too often think of religion as a belief system associated with a church, temple, or mosque, but religion is much more diverse. In the 1960s, anthropologists typically used an evolutionary model for religion that associated less structured religious systems with simple societies and more complex forms of religion with more complex political systems. Anthropologists noticed that as populations grew, all forms of organization—political, economic, social, and religious—became more complex as well. For example, with the emergence of tribal societies, religion expanded to become not only a system of healing and connection with both animate and inanimate things in the environment but also a mechanism for addressing desire and conflict. Witchcraft and sorcery, both forms of magic, are more visible in larger-scale, more complex societies.

The terms witchcraft and sorcery are variously defined across disciplines and from one researcher to another, yet there is some agreement about common elements associated with each. Witchcraft involves the use of intangible (not material) means to cause a change in circumstances to another person. It is normally associated with practices such as incantations, spells, blessings, and other types of formulaic language that, when pronounced, causes a transformation. Sorcery is similar to witchcraft but involves the use of material elements to cause a change in circumstances to another person. It is normally associated with such practices as magical bundles, love potions, and any specific action that uses another person’s personal leavings (such as their hair, nails, or even excreta). While some scholars argue that witchcraft and sorcery are “dark,” negative, antisocial actions that seek to punish others, ethnographic research is filled with examples of more ambiguous or even positive uses as well. Cultural anthropologist Alma Gottlieb , who did fieldwork among the Beng people of Côte d’Ivoire in Africa, describes how the king that the Beng choose as their leader must always be a witch himself, not because of his ability to harm others but because his mystical powers allow him to protect the Beng people that he rules (2008). His knowledge and abilities allow him to be a capable ruler.

Some scholars argue that witchcraft and sorcery may be later developments in religion and not part of the earliest rituals because they can be used to express social conflict. What is the relationship between conflict, religion, and political organization? Consider what you learned in Social Inequalities . As a society’s population rises, individuals within that society have less familiarity and personal experience with each other and must instead rely on family reputation or rank as the basis for establishing trust. Also, as social diversity increases, people find themselves interacting with those who have different behaviors and beliefs from their own. Frequently, we trust those who are most like ourselves, and diversity can create a sense of mistrust. This sense of not knowing or understanding the people one lives, works, and trades with creates social stress and forces people to put themselves into what can feel like risky situations when interacting with one another. In such a setting, witchcraft and sorcery provide a feeling of security and control over other people. Historically, as populations increased and sociocultural institutions became larger and more complex, religion evolved to provide mechanisms such as witchcraft and sorcery that helped individuals establish a sense of social control over their lives.

Magic is essential to both witchcraft and sorcery, and the principles of magic are part of every religion. The anthropological study of magic is considered to have begun in the late 19th century with the 1890 publication of The Golden Bough , by Scottish social anthropologist Sir James G. Frazer . This work, published in several volumes, details the rituals and beliefs of a diverse range of societies, all collected by Frazer from the accounts of missionaries and travelers. Frazer was an armchair anthropologist, meaning that he did not practice fieldwork. In his work, he provided one of the earliest definitions of magic, describing it as “a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct” (Frazer [1922] 1925, 11). A more precise and neutral definition depicts magic as a supposed system of natural law whose practice causes a transformation to occur. In the natural world—the world of our senses and the things we hear, see, smell, taste, and touch—we operate with evidence of observable cause and effect. Magic is a system in which the actions or causes are not always empirical. Speaking a spell or other magical formula does not provide observable (empirical) effects. For practitioners of magic, however, this abstract cause and effect is just as consequential and just as true.

Frazer refers to magic as “sympathetic magic” because it is based on the idea of sympathy, or common feeling, and he argued that there are two principles of sympathetic magic: the law of similarity and the law of contagion. The law of similarity is the belief that a magician can create a desired change by imitating that change. This is associated with actions or charms that mimic or look like the effects one desires, such as the use of an effigy that looks like another person or even the Venus figurine associated with the Upper Paleolithic period, whose voluptuous female body parts may have been used as part of a fertility ritual. By taking actions on the stand-in figure, the magician is able to cause an effect on the person believed to be represented by this figure. The law of contagion is the belief that things that have once been in contact with each other remain connected always, such as a piece of jewelry owned by someone you love, a locket of hair or baby tooth kept as a keepsake, or personal leavings to be used in acts of sorcery.

This classification of magic broadens our understanding of how magic can be used and how common it is across all religions. Prayers and special mortuary artifacts ( grave goods ) indicate that the concept of magic is an innately human practice and not associated solely with tribal societies. In most cultures and across religious traditions, people bury or cremate loved ones with meaningful clothing, jewelry, or even a photo. These practices and sentimental acts are magical bonds and connections among acts, artifacts, and people. Even prayers and shamanic journeying (a form of metaphysical travel) to spirits and deities, practiced in almost all religious traditions, are magical contracts within people’s belief systems that strengthen practitioners’ faith. Instead of seeing magic as something outside of religion that diminishes seriousness, anthropologists see magic as a profound human act of faith.

Supernatural Forces and Beings

As stated earlier, religion typically regards the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena. Put simply, a supernatural force is a figure or energy that does not follow natural law. In other words, it is nonempirical and cannot be measured or observed by normal means. Religious practices rely on contact and interaction with a wide range of supernatural forces of varying degrees of complexity and specificity.

In many religious traditions, there are both supernatural deities, or gods who are named and have the ability to change human fortunes, and spirits, who are less powerful and not always identified by name. Spirit or spirits can be diffuse and perceived as a field of energy or an unnamed force.

Practitioners of witchcraft and sorcery manipulate a supposed supernatural force that is often referred to by the term mana , first identified in Polynesia among the Maori of New Zealand ( mana is a Maori word). Anthropologists see a similar supposed sacred energy field in many different religious traditions and now use this word to refer to that energy force. Mana is an impersonal (unnamed and unidentified) force that can adhere for varying periods of time to people or animate and inanimate objects to make them sacred. One example is in the biblical story that appears in Mark 5:25–30, in which a woman suffering an illness simply touches Jesus’s cloak and is healed. Jesus asks, “Who touched my clothes?” because he recognizes that some of this force has passed from him to the woman who was ill in order to heal her. Many Christians see the person of Jesus as sacred and holy from the time of his baptism by the Holy Spirit. Christian baptism in many traditions is meant as a duplication or repetition of Christ’s baptism.

There are also named and known supernatural deities. A deity is a god or goddess. Most often conceived as humanlike, gods (male) and goddesses (female) are typically named beings with individual personalities and interests. Monotheistic religions focus on a single named god or goddess, and polytheistic religions are built around a pantheon, or group, of gods and/or goddesses, each usually specializing in a specific sort of behavior or action. And there are spirits , which tend to be associated with very specific (and narrower) activities, such as earth spirits or guardian spirits (or angels). Some spirits emanate from or are connected directly to humans, such as ghosts and ancestor spirits , which may be attached to specific individuals, families, or places. In some patrilineal societies, ancestor spirits require a great deal of sacrifice from the living. This veneration of the dead can consume large quantities of resources. In the Philippines, the practice of venerating the ancestor spirits involves elaborate house shrines, altars, and food offerings. In central Madagascar, the Merino people practice a regular “turning of the bones,” called famidihana . Every five to seven years, a family will disinter some of their deceased family members and replace their burial clothing with new, expensive silk garments as a form of remembrance and to honor all of their ancestors. In both of these cases, ancestor spirits are believed to continue to have an effect on their living relatives, and failure to carry out these rituals is believed to put the living at risk of harm from the dead.

Religious Specialists

Religious groups typically have some type of leadership, whether formal or informal. Some religious leaders occupy a specific role or status within a larger organization, representing the rules and regulations of the institution, including norms of behavior. In anthropology, these individuals are called priests , even though they may have other titles within their religious groups. Anthropology defines priests as full-time practitioners, meaning they occupy a religious rank at all times, whether or not they are officiating at rituals or ceremonies, and they have leadership over groups of people. They serve as mediators or guides between individuals or groups of people and the deity or deities. In religion-specific terms, anthropological priests may be called by various names, including titles such as priest, pastor, preacher, teacher, imam (Islam), and rabbi (Judaism).

Another category of specialists is prophets . These individuals are associated with religious change and transformation, calling for a renewal of beliefs or a restructuring of the status quo. Their leadership is usually temporary or indirect, and sometimes the prophet is on the margins of a larger religious organization. German sociologist Max Weber (1947) identified prophets as having charisma , a personality trait that conveys authority:

Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader. (358–359)

A third type of specialist is shamans . Shamans are part-time religious specialists who work with clients to address very specific and individual needs by making direct contact with deities or supernatural forces. While priests will officiate at recurring ritual events, a shaman, much like a medical psychologist, addresses each individual need. One exception to this is the shaman’s role in subsistence, usually hunting. In societies where the shaman is responsible for “calling up the animals” so that hunters will have success, the ritual may be calendrical , or occurring on a cyclical basis. While shamans are medical and religious specialists within shamanic societies, there are other religions that practice forms of shamanism as part of their own belief systems. Sometimes, these shamanic practitioners will be known by terms such as pastor or preacher , or even layperson . And some religious specialists serve as both part-time priests and part-time shamans, occupying more than one role as needed within a group of practitioners. You will read more about shamanism in the next section.

One early form of religion is shamanism , a practice of divination and healing that involves soul travel, also called shamanic journeying, to connect natural and supernatural realms in nonlinear time. Associated initially with small-scale societies, shamanic practices are now known to be embedded in many of the world’s religions. In some cultures, shamans are part-time specialists, usually drawn into the practice by a “calling” and trained in the necessary skills and rituals though an apprenticeship. In other cultures, all individuals are believed to be capable of shamanic journeying if properly trained. By journeying—an act frequently initiated by dance, trance, drumbeat, song, or hallucinogenic substances—the shaman is able to consult with a spiritual world populated by supernatural figures and deceased ancestors. The term itself, šamán , meaning “one who knows,” is an Evenki word, originating among the Evenk people of northern Siberia. Shamanism, found all over the world, was first studied by anthropologists in Siberia.

While shamanism is a healing practice, it conforms to the anthropological definition of religion as a shared set of beliefs and practices pertaining to the natural and supernatural. Cultures and societies that publicly affirm shamanism as a predominant and generally accepted practice often are referred to as shamanic cultures . Shamanism and shamanic activity, however, are found within most religions. The world’s two dominant mainstream religions both contain a type of shamanistic practice: the laying on of hands in Christianity, in which a mystical healing and blessing is passed from one person to another, and the mystical Islamic practice of Sufism, in which the practitioner, called a dervish, dances by whirling faster and faster in order to reach a trance state of communing with the divine. There are numerous other shared religious beliefs and practices among different religions besides shamanism. Given the physical and social evolution of our species, it is likely that we all share aspects of a fundamental religious orientation and that religious changes are added on to, rather than used to replace, earlier practices such as shamanism.

Indigenous shamanism continues to be a significant force for healing and prophecy today and is the predominant religious mode in small-scale, subsistence-based societies, such as bands of gatherers and hunters. Shamanism is valued by hunters as an intuitive way to locate wild animals, often depicted as “getting into the mind of the animal.” Shamanism is also valued as a means of healing, allowing individuals to discern and address sources of physical and social illness that may be affecting their health. One of the best-studied shamanic healing practices is that of the !Kung San in Central Africa. When individuals in that society suffer physical or socioemotional distress, they practice n/um tchai , a medicine dance, to draw up spiritual forces within themselves that can be used for shamanic self-healing (Marshall [1969] 2009).

Shamanistic practices remain an important part of the culture of modern Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic, particularly their practices pertaining to whale hunting. Although these traditional hunts were prohibited for a time, Inuit people were able to legally resume them in 1994. In a recent study of Inuit whaling communities in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, cultural anthropologists Frédéric Laugrand and Jarich Oosten (2013) found that although hunting technology has changed—whaling spears now include a grenade that, when aimed properly, allows for a quick and more humane death—many shamanistic beliefs and social practices pertaining to the hunt endure. The sharing of maktak or muktuk (whale skin and blubber) with elders is believed to lift their spirits and prolong their lives by connecting them to their ancestors and memories of their youth, the communal sharing of whale meat connects families to each other, and the relationship between hunter and hunted mystically sustains the populations of both. Inuit hunters believe that the whale “gives itself” to the hunter in order to establish this relationship, and when the hunter and community gratefully and humbly consume the catch, this ties the whales to the people and preserves them both. While Laugrand and Oosten found that most Inuit communities practice modern-day Christianity, the shamanistic values of their ancestors continue to play a major role in their understanding of both the whale hunt and what it means to be Inuit today. Their practice and understanding of religion incorporate both the church and their ancestral beliefs.

Above all, shamanism reflects the principles and practice of mutuality and balance, the belief that all living things are connected to each other and can have an effect on each other. This is a value that reverberates through almost all other religious systems as well. Concepts such as stewardship (caring for and nurturing resources), charity (providing for the needs of others), and justice (concern and respect for others and their rights) are all valued in shamanism.

The Institutionalization of Religion

Shamanism is classified as animism , a worldview in which spiritual agency is assigned to all things, including natural elements such as rocks and trees. Sometimes associated with the idea of dual souls—a day soul and a night soul, the latter of which can wander in dreams—and sometimes with unnamed and disembodied spirits believed to be associated with living and nonliving things, animism was at first understood by anthropologists as a primitive step toward more complex religions. In his work Primitive Culture (1871), British anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor , considered the first academic anthropologist, identified animism as a proto-religion, an evolutionary beginning point for all religions. As population densities increased and societies developed more complex forms of social organization, religion mirrored many of these changes.

With the advent of state societies, religion became institutionalized. As population densities increased and urban areas emerged, the structure and function of religion shifted into a bureaucracy, known as a state religion . State religions are formal institutions with full-time administrators (e.g., priests, pastors, rabbis, imams), a set doctrine of beliefs and regulations, and a policy of growth by seeking new practitioners through conversion. While state religions continued to exhibit characteristics of earlier forms, they were now structured as organizations with a hierarchy, including functionaries at different levels with different specializations. Religion was now administered as well as practiced. Similar to the use of mercenaries as paid soldiers in a state army, bureaucratic religions include paid positions that may not require subscribing to the belief system itself. Examples of early state religions include the pantheons of Egypt and Greece. Today, the most common state religions are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Rather than part-time shamans, tribal and state religions are often headed by full-time religious leaders who administer higher levels within the religious bureaucracy. With institutionalization, religion began to develop formalized doctrines , or sets of specific and usually rigid principles or teachings, that would be applied through the codification of a formal system of laws. And, unlike earlier religious forms, state religions are usually defined not by birthright but by conversion. Using proselytization , a recruitment practice in which members actively seek converts to the group, state religions are powerful institutions in society. They bring diverse groups of people together and establish common value systems.

There are two common arrangements between political states and state religions. In some instances, such as contemporary Iran, the religious institution and the state are one, and religious leaders head the political structure. In other societies, there is an explicit separation between religion and state. The separation has been handled differently across nation-states. In some states, the political government supports a state religion (or several) as the official religion(s). In some of these cases, the religious institution will play a role in political decision-making from local to national levels. In other state societies with a separation between religion and state, religious institutions will receive favors, such as subsidies, from state governments. This may include tax or military exemptions and privileged access to resources. It is this latter arrangement that we see in the United States, where institutions such as the Department of Defense and the IRS keep lists of officially recognized religions with political and tax-exempt status.

Among the approximately 200 sovereign nation-states worldwide, there are many variations in the relationship between state and religion, including societies that have political religions, where the state or state rulers are considered divine and holy. In North Korea today, people practice an official policy of juche , which means self-reliance and independence. A highly nationalist policy, it has religious overtones, including reverence and obeisance to the state leader (Kim Jong Un) and unquestioning allegiance to the North Korean state. An extreme form of nationalism, juche functions as a political religion with the government and leader seen as deity and divine. Unlike in a theocracy, where the religious structure has political power, in North Korea, the political structure is the practiced religion.

Historically, relationships between religious institution and state have been extremely complex, with power arrangements shifting and changing over time. Today, Christian fundamentalism is playing an increasingly political role in U.S. society. Since its bureaucratization, religion has had a political role in almost every nation-state. In many state societies, religious institutions serve as charity organizations to meet the basic needs of many citizens, as educational institutions offering both mainstream and alternative pedagogies, and as community organizations to help mobilize groups of people for specific actions. Although some states—such as Cuba, China, Cambodia, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union—have declared atheism as their official policy during certain historical periods, religion has never fully disappeared in any of them. Religious groups, however, may face varying levels of oppression within state societies. The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic group of some 10 million people in northwestern China. Since 2017, when Chinese president Xi Jinping issued an order that all religions in China should be Chinese in their orientation, the Uighurs have faced mounting levels of oppression, including discrimination in state services. There have been recent accusations of mass sterilizations and genocide by the Chinese government against this ethnic minority (see BBC News 2021). During periods of state oppression, religion tends to break up into smaller units practiced at a local or even household level.

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Free Religion Essay Examples

1600 samples of this type

Wondering how to write a paper on religion? Don’t know how to approach this controversial and debatable topic? We are here to help you! Here you’ll find religion essay topics, useful writing prompts, and a list of religion essay examples at the end of the article!

Religion Essay: What Is It about?

A religion essay is a paper that explores beliefs and traditions as well as their influence on cultures and nations. In a religion essay, you can also analyze the parallels and differences between various religious branches.

Religion studies are connected to philosophy and social science. That is why essays on the topic are often written in these disciplines.

Below are three primary approaches to compose the essay. You need to choose the one that stays in line with your assignment.

• Religion argumentative essay
• Religion persuasive essay
• Religion comparative essay

Make sure you state in your religion essay introduction that all religions are equal and have the right to exist. Now we may explore these types of papers in depth. Choose the one that applies to your task and write an excellent article with our tips!

Argumentative Essay on Religion

An argumentative essay on religion explores faith and its aspects. You prove right or claim wrong a specific concept you work on. You can discover the approaches of different schools of thought to some ideas. This is a reflection on questions that can be raised but cannot be answered.

These are the possible essays:

• Science and religion essay is on the relationship and contradictions between the two fields. Are they contested? Does creationism exclude evolution? At what point does religion become science and the other way round? Here you may explore the treatment of science among different religions. Compare traditions of the state where the research is approved and where it is not. There is a theory on atheism as a religion as well. Describe scientists’ views on this topic.
• Religion and morality essay is part of the debate on ethics and moral development. What is the difference between religion and morality? What is their connection to each other? What does a dignified life mean? You can argue on what is good and what is evil. Explain the roots of moral values. How have they developed out of religious traditions?
• Religion and politics essay puts questions on the role of religion in politics. Do these institutes have to be separated? How do religious states function? How has the bond of faith and state changed? Study the role religion played in various historical periods. You may try to defend the times when religion was the cause of wars. Or analyze the way religion has influenced the government’s programs.

Persuasive Essay on Religion

Religion persuasive essay sets a goal to reshape one’s mind on faith. There is no need to write about a wide-ranging concept or analyze a concrete notion. You aim to make others consider or even adopt the beliefs you promote. To achieve that, do not force your values, but use logic and strong arguments. Note pros and cons, so the reader knows your position from both sides.

The topics can be:

• Same-sex marriage persuasive essay on religion. It has to prove the need to legalize or prohibit this relationship. You are to give evidence about the benefits or drawbacks of such a law. Refer to the religious tradition of your culture and state. Explain the way morals change if you implement your beliefs.
• Persuasive essay: should religion be taught? In this paper, you need to define if there has to be a religious class or not. Do we have to explain to children world religions? American society is multicultural. So it is best to know more about the existing beliefs. Or are you sure that religion belongs to the past? Is there a place for it in the modern world?
• Freedom of religion essay is about one’s right to practice a religion or not. The first amendment to the US Constitution protects this right. Still, not everyone agrees with it. They believe religious unity is crucial to a society. You may try to adopt this point of view to prove these claims right or wrong.

Compare & Contrast Essay on Religion

Comparative essay on religion contrasts beliefs and traditions. What kind of relationships are among these faiths? What is their influence on each other? The goal is to define the similarities and contradictions. It is better to choose a concrete notion or practice. Then describe two or three religious scholars’ ideas on this topic. You may speculate on the future cooperation of this and that faith.

The titles are as follows:

• Compare and contrast: Buddhism and Christianity essay. Study the principle ideas and morals of these beliefs. Here you can describe the contacts of the Catholic Church with the Dalai Lama. Consider writing about Christ and Buddha’s teachings on the afterlife. What are their parallels? Do they have the same concept of the divine or not?
• Compare and contrast: Christianity and Islam essay. This paper can take as a topic the common roots of these faiths. How have they changed, and why are they so distinct? What are their principal similarities? Discuss the reasons for religious persecutions of the Middle Ages. You may explore Islam’s remains in the Iberian Peninsula.
• Compare and contrast: Hinduism and Buddhism essay. You may confuse these religions with one another, but they should not be mixed. They have many similar principles, but there are some distinctions as well. Compare Hinduism and Buddhism cosmology. How do these religions define karma and dharma? How do they represent gods and spirits?

How to Write an Essay about Religion?

These are some pieces of advice we recommend you to follow:

• Study your tutor’s instructions and ask him if something is unclear
• Think about an argumentative title
• Prepare a detailed outline
• Give a thesis in the introduction
• Make your arguments solid and valid
• Prove your evidence with reliable sources
• Do not make new points in the conclusion
• Place the best arguments at the beginning and at the end of a body part
• Reread the final essay and correct any incoherence
• Check the spelling and grammar mistakes

Hope our article is useful to you, and you will get an A+ essay. We also prepared some high-quality religion essay examples. Make sure to check them out!

The Impact of Religion in Society

Have you ever wondered how different religions influence society? In this impact of religion on society essay sample, you’ll find an answer to this and other questions about impact of religion on society. Keep reading to gain some inspiration for your paper! Impact of Religion on Society: Essay Introduction Let...

The Scribes and the Pharisees After Crucifixion of Christ

Jesus and the scribes and the Pharisees were always at crossroads and the latter believed that Jesus was neither the son of God nor did he have that he had the capabilities he talked about when addressing the multitudes. One of the things that Jesus said when he was alive...

Qur’an, Sunnah, and Hadith in Islam

Introduction Qur’an, Sunnah, and the Hadith are the three sacred texts that Muslims value and use for assessing the ethical behavior to be embraced in their societies. The Quran is the supreme of the three sacred texts. It is taken to be literal word of God and is believed to...

Saint Augustine vs Aquinas: Theological Approaches Comparison

If you need to give an example to differentiate Augustine’s views on the self from Aquinas’, this essay sample is for you. Here, you will find an explanation of the similarities and difference between Augustine and Aquinas regarding their philosophies and theological approaches. Augustine vs Aquinas: Introduction The views of...

Christianity, Islam and Judaism Similarities

Introduction Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all religions. Religion can be defined as a set of beliefs and a way of life. Though, there are different religions with different practices and beliefs in the world, there exists some clear similarities. Christianity is defined as the religion that is based on...

Similarities and Differences Between Islam and Hinduism

The two religions; Hinduism and Islam are considered poles apart from each other for many reasons, though one fails to consider their similarities as well. Being humans, no matter what religion or sect one belongs to, they think that their knowledge of the religion is best. For instance, all human...

Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Comparative Analysis

Introduction Global events and attitudes have to a large extent been shaped by religion. The history of humanity have been encompassed by a number of events such as wars, the building of new cities and the introduction of new laws with the central of aim of promulgating or protecting one...

The Relationship between Religion and Politics

Abstract Religion and politics are regarded as very unlikely bedfellows in the contemporary world. This is contrary to previous civilizations where religion took a center stage in the day-to-day running of politics. This paper will look at the various stages of the relationship between religion and politics through various ages...

Eastern vs. Western Religions: What’s the Difference?

The Eastern religions are typically described as those faiths which originated and were practiced in countries such as India, Japan, Southern Asia, and China. There are regular arguments and conflicts between the Eastern and Western religions, whereby the latter dwells on the idea that a distinct type of worshipping only...

Christianity Beliefs and Practices

Christian beliefs and practices are connected with the history and origin of Christianity. Beliefs and practices of worship are studied in this essay. Introduction Christianity is one of the most popular religions in the world. Beliefs and practices of Christianity are generally the same across the world. Christianity beliefs include...

• Christianity

An Introduction to Christian Values and Decision-Making in Health Care

Introduction In terms of spirituality, human nature is a vast, complex, largely unknown world. The inner world of a person is shaky, as it is vulnerable to the influence of other people and circumstances. At the same time, it can become a support in difficult times and lead a person...

Leadership Styles Used by the Church

Introduction Effective church leadership is important in the numerical growth of congregants. As such, the management strategy adopted by a church minister will have a bearing on the growth of membership. Poor administrative practices can lead to a drop in the followership of churches which even started with a large...

The Development of the New Testament Canon

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The Book of Ephesians: Literary Analysis of Passage

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Narrow Road to the Interior. Analysis

“Narrow Road to the Interior,” written by Matsuo Basho is a set of haiku and prose depicting Basho’s journeys across Japan. In this work, Basho describes how he traveled, describing the places and references to other poems. Additionally, the topic of spirituality, mainly on the basis of the religious tradition...

The Main Characteristics of Hinduism

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Major Themes of The 13 Letters of Paul

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Role of Religion in Functionalism and Conflict Perspectives

Introduction Religion is a basic social institution that affects an individual’s life from childhood to adulthood. Religion can be defined as a set of beliefs and practices which govern society, religion varies in different societies and also differs in the degree to which it is integrated into the society. It...

Similarities and Differences Between Jainism and Sikhism

Introduction Jainism came about as a result of efforts to transform Hindu religion 2000 years ago. This religion was established almost same time as Buddhism. It was founded by Vardhamana, a prominent person who live in East India. The founder became very famous in 420 BCE when he was around...

The Politicization of Muslim Identity

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• Jesus Christ

Importance of the New Testament for Christianity

Christianity is the world’s major religion with around 2 billion followers. Its central figure is Jesus Christ who through his birth, ministry life, trials, crucifixion, death, and, resurrection is believed to have offered the salvation and atonement needed by His followers from their sins. His nature and personality have been...

Christianity in Malaysia: The Spread and Development

The spread of Christianity began in the first century. It continued steadily as different missionaries traversed various continents globally. Activities such as crusades and campaigns significantly influenced the success of the spread of the religion which started in Northern Europe before proceeding to other continents. Among the earliest regions to...

The Christian Worldview: Gospel Essentials Essay

Introduction Gospel Essentials and the Christian Worldview Gospel essentials are the subject matter of the gospel books, whose theme is forgiveness of sin and redemption, qualified by Jesus’ atonement (1 Cor. 15: 1-4 New International Version). On the other hand, Valk describes the Christian worldview as the underlying philosophical structure...

The Ministry of the Prophet: Meanings and Goals

The Calling, The Prophetic Voice, Character, New Covenant Prophets The ministry of the prophet is referred to as any ministry that depends on the gift of prophecy and revelations from God to guide the church to maturity or a specific direction. The prophetic ministry is seen most often in the...

“Wonders of the Invisible World” by Cotton Mather

Wonders of the Invisible World is a book written by Cotton Mather, published in 1693, right after the Salem Witch trials. The objective of the book was to defend the role Cotton Mather played in the trials and is based on the man’s belief of witchcraft being real and perpetrated...

The Observance of Prayer in Christianity Compared to Islam

Introduction Religious organizations provide familiar institutions of social cohesion and control in an environment. In the city of Los Angeles, many religions are being practiced due to the freedom of worship. Talking about how Christianity and Islam are prevalent in the city of Los Angeles today, these two religions have...

Deontological Ethics of Christianity

Deontology is derived from two Greek words, “Deon,” which means duty, and “logos,” meaning science. It is an ethical term that applies the laid down rules to determine whether a thing is right or wrong. The theory argues that rules should be followed without establishing the consequences of the actions...

Safeguarding and the Bible Perspective

The term ‘safeguarding tendencies’ implies a range of structured actions of an individual determined to protect himself or herself from public criticism or other threats from other people, including both phycological and physical ones. These behavioral patterns are usually referred to as revealing a neurotic nature and lifestyle. There are...

The Old Testament’ Importance for the Modern Believer

Introduction Today, many Christians neglect the Old Testament, considering that it only contains bedtime stories and is not relevant for the modern believers. However, this approach is not correct. Studying the Old Testament gives a modern believer knowledge on the relationship between God and people, explains certain universal principles, helps...

The Importance of Studying and Understanding Different Religions

In my opinion, the study of different approaches to the study and comprehension of religions is indeed an exciting and important topic. The realities of the modern world significantly contribute to communication between representatives of different cultures. This can often lead to conflicts, including those that arise on religious grounds....

• Spirituality
• Old Testament
• Relationship

Judaism and Buddhism: Similarities and Differences

Abstract The term religion is used to refer to the approach that human beings give to their spirituality as provided by their beliefs, symbols, narratives, and practices on a supernatural figure. Human beings express religious inclination through several ways; some of which include prayers, rituals, and music. There are different...

Life and Ministry of John the Baptist

Introduction The life and ministry of John the Baptist started several years before his birth. His coming is prophesied in the Old Testament, even before his parents were in existence. His life is well mapped out and planned by God since He foretells his role in his plan for salvation....

The Healing Ministry of Jesus

Introduction This paper looks at the healing ministry of Jesus. This ministry is one of the most acknowledged yet controversial parts of His work on earth. However, He is the most recognized healer because of His expertise and compassion, as the paper will illustrate. This research is based on historical...

Ten Commandments in My Life and the World Today

The Ten Commandments hold a very special place in the hearts of all Christians, these commandments are believed to be written by God, and every person is expected to adhere to these Ten Commandments. It can be said that in order to have a good life one must follow all...

The Impact of Apostle Paul Leadership Style

Introduction Apostle Paul is considered the most important person after the death of Jesus due to his influence on Christian theology. He used a transformational leadership approach to inspire change in the followers. This is a leadership style where a leader collaborates with employees to identify the desired change, develops...

A Fresh Look at Christianity in the Therapy Room

Everyone who subscribes to Christianity is expected to be a missionary wherever they are. However, there is a challenge in applying related beliefs while counseling clients as a psychologist. Consequently, the paper thoroughly analyzes chapters four through six of the book Embodying integration: A fresh look at Christianity in the...

Concept of Human Being in Islam

Background Humans are considered the most important beings among all the animals created as they can distinguish between right and wrong. Muslims believe humans are born in a state of purity, and as they grow, they make decisions that are by and against Islam teachings. The creator sent his prophets...

How I Apply the Principles from Anderson’s Gracism

Humility is at the heart of Christianity, and every person who has faith must strive to adhere to this virtue. Being humble means valuing diversity in all of its manifestations, and to do it, one can rely on the principles outlined by David A. Anderson in his book Gracism. The...

Jesus Role in Fulfilling God’s Plan to Save the World

The bible as a religious book was written many years ago. It’s a religious book for Christians. Christians believe in God, the son and the Holy Spirit. Christianity acknowledges that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. The bible teaches about the history of the world in a religious perspective....

How Do Religions Both Unite and Divide Humanity?

Introduction Even in the age of secularity and diversity, religion permeates essential aspects of human society, such as law, morality, ethics, and economy. The power of faith can either unite or cause severe divisions. Examples of unifying potential can be found in universal values upheld by the followers of different...

• Interpretation

The Concept of Education and Religion

Introduction Education and religion are major social institution that impacts the lives of many people. They play an integral role in shaping values and beliefs as well as comparing various religious and educational practices across the globe. Education is a formal system of teaching knowledge, skills, and values (Henslin 495)....

The Positive and Negative Aspects of Judaism

Judaism is a Jewish religion where members believe in a single deity who is the creator and redeemer of human beings, all forms of life on earth, and everything in the Universe. It is one of the oldest monotheistic religions in history, said to have begun with Abraham in Canaan....

Critical Introduction to the Book of Matthew

Introduction The book of Matthew is the first in the New Testament and was written by Saint Matthew, the evangelist. The book primarily discusses the accounts of the life and death of Jesus Christ. The gospel was initially written in Greek sometimes after 69 CE and depended on the earlier...

Fruits of the Holy Spirit and Its Nine Attributes

Introduction Holy Spirit can be considered as one fruit with nine parts as developing all the nine attributes makes the soul holistic and establishes a connection with God. The fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Howard). Letting the listed attributes into life...

Comparison Between Buddhism and Christianity

Buddhism and Christianity are the religions that have many believers from different parts of the world. The two religions may be seen as distinct, but they still share some beliefs and teachings. Buddhism entails teachings about Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as Buddha, while Christianity is based on the belief in...

Religion Study: Analysis of Exodus 32:7-14

Introduction In the Book of Exodus, one of the most daring confrontations with God is the Golden Calf event. The story revolves around the people of Israel who doubted the divinity of the Lord and describes how God and Moses reacted to this treachery. The narrative reveals how arrogant and...

Exegesis of Jeremiah 1:4-10

Biblical Text The Call of Jeremiah The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew[a] you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not...

Islamic Culture, Politics and Religion

In the Arab world, the word ‘Islam’ means submission and peace. As a term, it refers to the messages revealed to Muhammad by Allah. Cultural practices and beliefs associated with the people who practice this religion give rise to Islamic culture. In the recent past, the religion has spread into...

The Second Coming of Christ

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ in Christian doctrine is reflected in the Nicene Creed. It is the return from Heaven to Earth of the Lord Jesus Christ in divine glory and power, which, according to the promise of God, will occur at the end of time. This is the...

“In His Steps” by Charles Sheldon

Since its publication in 1896, “In His Steps” by Charles Sheldon became widely popular in Christian circles. Part of the success of this religious fiction novel lies in its focus on timeless concepts of love and compassion and the responsibility we share to care for those in need. In his...

• Confucianism
• Western Civilization

Christianity in Rome During the 1st to 5th Centuries

Introduction One of the most astounding developments in world history was that within five centuries after its inception, Christianity had won adherents throughout the Roman Empire, including the backing of the Roman state. Christianity started as an apparently unknown sect of Judaism. It survived persecution to become an important part...

The Connection of Spirituality and Mental Health

Nowadays, spirituality plays a huge role for many people around the world, and the connection between the inner feelings of every person with the outside world is a crucial part. According to Brown, et al (2013), spirituality has a strong relation to mental health, and while working on the religion...

Religion as a Belief System: What Is It?

Introduction A belief system, as is generally understood, contains high values, moral ideas and thoughts which provide a moral lesson. An overview identifies different types of belief systems that have been prevailing in the modern world. One can regard “belief system is the actual set of precepts from which you...

Message of the Prophets: Background and Interpretation

Introduction The Bible described many situations when people got to know God’s words from other people among them. Being chosen individually, prophets were expected to pass God’s message to others. These messages were aimed to communicate God’s will, while the predictions in them happened to be inevitable. Background and Interpretation...

Why Is It Important to Study Bible?

Introduction The Bible as the repository of wisdom and God’s written word is often taken for granted. However, it needs to be examined as the source of essential insights into the nature of human relationships and the use of ethical and moral standards based on which one should build relationships...

China Buddhism vs. Japan Buddhism and Shintoism

Buddhism is a religion that uses Buddha’s perspective, such as the traditions and beliefs attributed to the religious faith. It is believed that Buddha lived and taught in some parts of India during the fourth century BCE (Miura, 2018). Buddhism has been getting popular in many countries, for example, Japan...

Effective Leadership: The Biblical Perspective

Effective leadership from a biblical perspective is a God manifested character to influence and serve others through Christ’s interests to accomplish God’s purposes. In a Christian community, leaders should be guided by the Holy Spirit to collaborate and adopt good attributes to execute their duties without fear. Jesus demonstrated effective...

The Difference between the Qur’an and Other Religious Texts

The Qur’an is a central divine book of Islam, written in the sacred language – Arabic. Many scholars believe that the message written within the passages of the Qur’an cannot be imitated since the Book is unique and contains universal knowledge. However, despite the initial beliefs, the Book can be...

Karma and Rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism Religions

Introduction In many cases people face difficulties trying to differentiate between Hinduism and Buddhism religions. The two share many similarities though they are not identical but only have Indian origin. Besides, each religion teaches its followers to separate doctrines and values. According to Romero (n.d.), Buddhism is one of the...

“The Making of a Leader” by Dr. J. Robert Clinton

Abstract The Making of a Leader by Dr. J. Robert Clinton explores the complicated nature of spiritual dynamics. The book provides readers with numerous accounts of leadership stories that are meant to serve as guidance for emerging leaders. In the first chapter of the book, Dr. Clinton describes five main...

African Christianity vs. Western Rationalism

Introduction Christianity has spread to all parts of the world since its early days, and the cultural differences of those who adopted this religion shaped their religious beliefs, practices, as well as spirituality. African Christianity is characterized by spiritual and holistic nature, which encompasses the acceptance of the empirical and...

Old Testament Lessons for National Security Council

Abstract The purpose of the paper is to offer a set of applicable recommendations regarding the National Security Council (NSC) membership and operations based on the examination of the Old Testament kings’ advisors. The Scripture offers a number of invaluable lessons related to political leadership and a ruler’s need for...

Neo-Orthodoxy Theology: Barth, Brunner et al.

Introduction Neo-orthodoxy is a concept used in advanced contemporary theology, also called liberal theology. The views of neo-theologians are different from those of the orthodoxy on the basis of their approaches to the word of God. Neo-theology is a deviant view of the doctrine of the word and is in...

The Book of Job From the Bible

Background The Book of Job in the Bible informs why God allows evil in people’s lives through Job’s experiences. Job was a man who feared the Lord and was prosperous in all ways; he lived a comfortable life, was wealthy, had a big family and possessions. After God boasted to...

The Biblical Creation Story

The Biblical account of the creation story portrays God as the creator of all matter who exists beyond time. The Christian understanding of the creation is that God as the master architect whose power is unfathomable. The Middle Eastern texts, however, propose the versions of the creation which appeal to...

Jesus Christ’s Ministries and Chaplain Behaviors

Introduction Parallels can be drawn between Jesus Christ and military chaplains, as both were sent to minister to secular and religiously diverse communities. As such, His example should serve as the inspiration for members of the profession, with His words and actions deserving emulation in the course of one’s work....

Symbols and Rituals in Religion

Introduction The word symbol is derived from a Greek word which is related to the word compare whereas rituals can be defined as actions which have a deeper implication than what we perceive at first instant. Rituals can be as simple as a blinking of an eye or as complex...

Joseph and Yusuf in the Qur’an and the Bible

Introduction Prophet Yusuf is a character in the Holy Book of the Koran, the Bible, and Jews. He lived, preached, and died in Egypt in the sixteenth century BC, living for nearly one hundred and ten years. His name is mentioned twenty-six times in the Qur’an, and there is also...

Leadership Development Plan Based on the Bible Principles

Introduction Leadership advancement is the practice of cultivating governance abilities and proficiencies through various undertakings. During the process, individuals are taught vital management competencies that enable them to lead, encourage and direct their teams to success properly. Training is essential to cultivate a culture of headship throughout an establishment appropriately....

The Concept of God in Christian, Islamic and Hindu Religions

Muslim concept of God Muslims are monotheistic, they believe in one God whom they refer to as Allah. Allah is an Arabic name for God; he is One and unique in everything he had created. Allah has no gender. He is self-sufficient as His existence is not determined by anything....

• Discrimination

Impact of Religion on Individuals, Society, and the World

Religion plays an essential role in the growth of an individual, society, and the whole world. Religion acts as a guidebook on how people should live, driven by their faith and principles of life (Primal Religions, n.d.). Moreover, religious leaders are expected to teach people the virtue of love and...

Servant Leadership in the Church and Its Purpose

Introduction Leadership is a quality that people can be endowed with if they can manage other groups for development. In addition, leadership qualities are formed over a long period, thus becoming the result of a person’s experience. Among leadership types, there is Servant Leadership, the essence of which is the...

Ministry of the Prophets, Bible Prophets and Their Prophecies

Prophetic ministry at its core is the act of leading and guiding the church based on revelations from God and gift of the prophesy. The Scriptures present multiple examples of prophetic ministry. The Old Testament has a significant number of prophets. There are the central ones who directly communicated with...

Steward Versus Servant Leadership in Christianity

Introduction Leadership style is the method or approach employed by a person while managing or heading a team. The leadership style is determined by factors such as an individual’s personal characteristics or traits, behaviors, and goals. Christian leadership styles have been in existence for a long time, and different people...

Afterlife in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Introduction A basic belief that varies from faith to faith is that there is life after death. According to several religions, including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, where followers of a common religion have diverse afterlife concepts, life takes multiple forms when a person dies (Kippenberg 110). Afterlife, immortality as a...

Jesus’s Teaching Methods and Messages

Introduction Jesus Christ is the most prominent figure in Christianity. The New Testament fully portrays his life, actions, teachings, and the legacy that remained. The teachings, specifically, have become a pillar of religious studies and illustrate the moral and ethical values Christians have nowadays in regard to having a righteous...

Decline of Christianity in Europe

Christianity is the largest religion in the world, with more than two billion adherents. Christian faith includes numerous branches, the most popular of which are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Protestantism. Even though all the branches are diverse in terms of canons and rituals, all of them...

Analysis of Exegesis of Numbers 21: 4-9

“If it does not kill you, it will make you well” (Barlett and Brown Thaylor, 2008, 101). This well-known statement that is used now as a saying is given in the presentation of the exegetical perspective of the analyzed pericope. It has its roots in the Scripture, mainly in the...

Jesus and Confucius Comparison

Christianity and Confucianism are well-known systems of belief, based on the number of adherents and their significance. There are three more than 2 billion Christians today, whereas there are approximately 7 million Confucianists only. While Christianity is expected to remain the world’s largest religion in the nearest 50 years, competing...

Psychology and Theology: Worldview Issues, and Models of Integration

Psychology and theology are often viewed as two opposing forces with no common ground and the proponents of which deny the merits of each other’s disciplines. Nevertheless, the two fields of studies have a long-standing history, although the relationship between the two can be described as problematic. Many people who...

• Ancient Civilizations
• Ancient History
• Civilization

The Reflection of Shinto in Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki

The animated film Spirited away, produced by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, contains many sacred Shinto motives and folklore reflections. The film’s plot follows the story of a 10-year-old girl named Chihiro Ogino, who finds herself in a world inhabited by ghosts and spirits. Although Hayao Miyazaki, being a big admirer...

“The New Christian Counselor: A Fresh Biblical and Transformational Approach”

Introduction In their book The New Christian Counselor: A Fresh Biblical and Transformational Approach, Hawkins and Clinton seek to explain counseling from a Christian perspective. They consider what it means to be a new Christian counselor. Additionally, the book makes a distinction between old Christian counselors and new ones. In...

A Belief in Helping Strangers

The collision of the two vehicles startled me. I swerved to the side of the road to ensure that I did not become a victim. My husband jumped out of the car before it had even stopped and rushed towards one of the cars that had been involved in the...

The Watch and the Watchmaker Summary & William Paley Watchmaker

Curious to find the answer to the question, “Who is a watchmaker according to William Palley?” You’re in the right place! This essay contains The Watch and the Watchmaker summary of the theory and analysis of William Palley watchmaker argument in support of the existence of God. Sounds interesting? Keep...

The Kingdom of God in Christianity

The Kingdom of God portrays the rightful society ruled by God, where each member dedicates to their moral and spiritual development, and the principle of righteousness and virtue is dominant. According to Christian beliefs, people fell from God’s grace thousands of years ago, being seduced to disobey His orders, after...

The Image of Christ in Mark’s Gospel

The Gospel The Gospel is an irrefutable witness to the divine humanity of Christ. As a God-inspired book, however, it was written by living people, each describing events as he saw and perceived them or as he heard about them from eyewitnesses. The inspiration of the sacred books refers to...

“Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling” Book by McMinn

Summary Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling by Mark McMinn is a book that reflects the professional experience and the wisdom of the author as both a teacher and practitioner. Combining the Scripture with the context within which counseling takes place in a rather complicated assignment that requires a...

The Problem of Evil and Suffering

The nature of evil No matter what an optimist a person may be, the surrounding reality is not always the merriest place for living. No matter what religious beliefs an individual has, everyone during his life bears the burden of suffering and faces evil. It is useless to deny the...

Is Jesus God? Critical Evaluation, Arguments for and Against

Introduction Diverse religious opinions arise whenever individuals hold different views about a certain spiritual issue. Most people respect the opinion of others about a certain topic. People appreciate that rational individuals can in differ in opinion. However, these sensible and tolerant attitudes lead to the formulation of two distinct lines...

Critical Evaluation of Talal Asad’s Critique of Geertz’s Model

Introduction Religion is an integral part of the life of society, performing a number of important functions, one of which is cultural. Despite the fact that this area is ancient, there are still disputes among researchers about the significance of this institution for the individual and the state. Clifford Geertz...

• Social Work
• Women's Rights

Reflection on the Book of Psalms

Introduction The Bible does not provide all the religious answers that believers may have; only the passages and translations open to interpretation. God’s figure is mysterious, fearsome, and impossible to fully understand; thus, some readers can feel confused or intimidated. However, the Bible touches on the Lord’s nature and provides...

Comparison of the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John

The Bible is the book of eternal wisdom and experience; it is the source that can provide answers to all questions if one is faithful enough and if he/she takes a deep look at the endless wisdom embodied in words. It is impossible for one person to convey this eternal...

The Significance of the Ethical Pillars of Jainism

The non-Vedic native Jainism religion has an origination in India and Mahavira is the most prominent tutor of the doctrine of this religion. The main belief of the religion is that Universe is forever it is not affected by time, there is no commencement or an end and it is...

Is Jesus Both Human and Divine?

Introduction The personality of Jesus Christ is one of the most interesting and a mystical one in Christian thought. The Old and New Testaments contain the evidence about divine nature of Jesus and his life as a human. The biblical facts suggest that Jesus was a man. He was a...

Religion in Candide: Theme Analysis

Introduction Candide is a satirical novella where the author employs satire as a weapon to unearth the corruption, hypocrisy, prejudices, and immorality that was prevalent in the organized Catholic Church. The strong criticism that Voltaire showers on the organized religion all throughout the entire story are to be understood in...

“On the Soul and the Resurrection: St. Gregory of Nyssa” by Roth

Doctrine of Resurrection The text that is summarized is part of the book On the Soul and the Resurrection: St. Gregory of Nyssa by Roth (1993). The story is about the doctrine of St. Gregory of Nyssa, who considers human resurrection as one of the main divine gifts that allow...

The Meaning of Human Existence

Meaning of Spirituality Spirituality refers to the sense of connection to a higher being or purpose that goes beyond normal human understanding. In that regard, it is the connection that humans have to the divine. Spirituality can also be defined as the connection humans have to concepts that are hard...

Abortion in Hanafi and Maliki Schools of Islamic Thought

Introduction It is a well-known fact that the Quran outlines the ethical and practical principles that were designed to be followed in 7th-century Arabia. At the same time, Islam as a global religion aims to translate a universally applicable worldview that, at least theoretically, should work in every situation and...

Comparing of Judaism and Taoism

The purpose of this essay is to compare the two religions, their main characteristics, beliefs, and conceptual and ethical attitudes. Judaism and Taoism are chosen as examples for comparison. Judaism is one of the oldest Western monotheistic religions, distinguished by belief in the one true God. Judaism is based on...

Global Challenges of The Muslims in the Modern Society

The presented research outlined and examined some of the issues facing Muslims in modern society, taking into account knowledge acquisition and global Muslim representation as the core aims in the study. One of the significant problems identified in the research faced by Muslims was the mass media misrepresentation and Western...

• Colonialism
• Architecture
• Native American
• Nationalism
• Communication

Gregory the Great Life and Teachings

Introduction Pope Gregory the Great became a pope when the Italian province was in crisis, and the state appeared lawless, crumbling, and semi-abandoned by visitors to Rome. A statement by the future pope had indicated that barbarians had full control of the religion. The city’s state had made the Romans...

Analysis of “Surah al-Ikhlas” in Qur’an

This paper targets to analyze Surah 112 of the Qur’an, which consists of 4 verses. It is relatively short, yet considered to be one of the most significant. It goes under the name “Surah al-Ikhlas,” which in translation from Arabic means “The Purification” or “The Unity”. It contains many fundamental...

Exegesis of Job 23: 1-17, The Book of Job

Introduction The Book of Job can be considered as one of the most philosophical works of the Old Testament. The uniqueness of the Book of Job is in its “depth and thoroughness in dealing with the relationship of human suffering to divine justice” (Gaebelein, 1979-1992, 843). The commonly accepted notion...

Cross-Cultural Evangelism Strategies

Cross-cultural evangelism is the sharing of the gospel with people from other cultures. It involves getting to know people from other cultures, learning about their customs and beliefs, and then sharing the gospel with them in a culturally relevant way. An example of cross-cultural evangelism would be a missionary who...

Scriptural Authority and Theological Interpretation

Scriptural authority and theological interpretation are two distinct and different topics. According to Entwistle (2021), scripture is incredibly authoritative, and those who do this place their views on the same level of authority as scripture itself. Theological interpretation takes precedence over psychological interpretation, which a person may have, and a...

“Viderunt Omnes” by Leonin

Viderunt Omnes is an old Georgian chant based on a biblical Psalm XCVII. It is sung as a gradual, which is a liturgical celebration of the Eucharist, mostly in the Catholic religion. The hymn is usually performed at the masses on such catholic and Christian holidays as Christmas and, historically,...

Hinduism and Buddhism: Similarities and Differences

Many religions take similar paths and steps to help their followers or believers reach enlightenment. Other religions require their followers or believers to accept one idea or creed. Some believe in God and others do not. Whether they believe in gods or not, each religion has its followers who believe...

Christianity as a Contemporary World Religion

Introduction Christianity remains one of the contemporary religions in the world today. Religion emerged during the first few decades of the Roman Empire. This was after several religious leaders began to get rid of various rituals and practices that characterized the Jewish way of worship. This means that the religion...

Christianity: History, Traditions, and Cultural Practices

Introduction Cultural diversity in society is an unavoidable and unique phenomenon that is central to human development. Unfortunately, several multicultural issues arise when individuals from different backgrounds interact because many people strongly hold onto their beliefs. Thus, it is critical to understand the backgrounds, history, and practices of different cultures...

Comparison of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam

Introduction Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the main monotheistic religions of the world with millions of followers. Although tolerance has become more widespread in society, conflicts and disputes still erupt between representatives of these religions, since they consider their faith to be more right. However, one may note that Christianity,...

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Salvation Concept in Religion

What do (or should) Christians mean by the word “Salvation”? The Christian definition for salvation is deliverance from wrath of God brought about by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Salvation is a process which Witherington describes as: “one believe in ones heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, He...

The First Three Kings of Israel in the Bible

Introduction The history of the establishment of monarchy and the reign of the first Israeli kings is described in the books of Samuel and the books of Kings. The first king, Saul, was appointed due to the fact that people turned away from God’s will; even though his successor, David,...

Mecca and Meccan Society Before Islam

Introduction Mecca has been a significant social, economic, and political hub in the Middle East since the ancient period. Before the rise of Islam, Mecca mainly served as a commercial and religious center in the Middle East. Mecca was strategically located along major trade routes that linked the Middles East,...

Difference Between 3 Abrahamic Religion

Introduction The term “Abrahamic Religions” refers to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, which derive their spiritual source from common ancestry. According to Lovat and Crotty (2015), the cultural, geographical, ethnic, and historical backgrounds of these belief systems emanates from the Near East. The three are monotheistic and rely on some discrete...

Classical Sufism and Al-Gahazali’s Sufism: Different Perceptions, but Goal Is One

Sufism generally means reaching the greatest level of believing in truth. A Sufi or a person dedicated in seeking the truth is in the process of moving towards God, which is called the tariqat. Sufism teaches Islam to exercise divine ethics and doing the will of God. Members are expected...

St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians

Historical Background of the text of 1 Corinthians The First Epistle to the Corinthians, or 1 Corinthians was written in Greek by St. Paul of Tarsus to the fledgling Christian Community of Corinth. In the Bible, It is the seventh book of the New Testament and the second of the...

Theology: Virgin Mary as a Goddess

Goddesses have always been part of various pantheons during the various stages of human history. Their role is inseparable from the role of women in ancient, medieval, and modern societies, as religion was used as a blueprint for morality, proper behavior, and the establishment of societal and gender roles. Ancient...

Developing a Personal Philosophy of Ministry

What I Believe About God What people believe about God can both be universal and personal since at the end of the day it is upon a particular believer to make his or her personal choice whether to believe in God or not to believe in Him. As to the...

Origin of the Universe and Life on the Earth

Introduction There exist diverse theories of the origin of the universe and life. This has been argued through scientific theory, creation theory, and myths theory. With these theories, people have different ideologies and views in accordance with what one believes in. This paper summarizes beliefs about the origin of the...

Charles Manson and the Family as a Destructive Cult

Introduction There is freedom of worship in the US and one can join any religion she/he feels like. Everyone has control of his/her life and is responsible for the actions he takes. One can do everything that pleases him as long as his actions do not hurt another person. However,...

• Human Nature
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The Tale of Kieu: The Value of Confucianism

Introduction The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du is one of the most prominent Vietnamese poems, depicting the life of a woman who had to save her family by sacrificing her own life. This poem presents the social and political challenges of the 18th century, when two dynasties, Nguyen and...

Religious Denominations Analysis: Christianity, Catholicism, and Lutheranism

Introduction: A brief historical background of Christian Denominations Considering the first stages of Christianity development, humanity knew no ‘denominations’ within the church; in 1504 there was first Christendom division between the Eastern and Western Churches with ‘Great Schism’. It is necessary to underline the fact that this stage appeared to...

Womanist and Feminist on Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit refers to God’s activity within followers. That is, if the Incarnation of God the Son in Jesus Christ can be spoken of as objective, then our appropriation of it is subjective. While God on the one hand does something for us, on the other hand, He does...

Cherubim Angels: Attributes and Meaning

Introduction It is common knowledge that angelic beings play a significant role in mythology and religion across the world. They are particularly renowned in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) as the creatures who serve God and execute His will. However, researchers note that there is a tradition of...

Christianity and Rastafarianism Comparison

Introduction Many religions are observed to manifest and follow eight unique elements. These elements include community, worldview, myths or general stories, ethics, rituals, emotional experiences, sacredness, and material expression (Guyette, 2014). These elements play a critical role towards bringing followers of the religion together. This discussion describes how Rastafarianism and...

Poverty from Christian Perspective

Introduction The gospel claims “The poor you will always have with you” in Mark 14:7. Christian circles have varying responses to poverty based on one’s decision to focus on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and economic aspects connected to being poor. Christianity emphasizes being rich in spirit. I believe one’s perception...

The Biography of Maramoas, Priest of Zeus

Maramoas was the priest of Zeus in Lystra, a city in the Roman Empire, which was situated on the territory of modern Turkey. He was mentioned in the New Testament in verses describing the idolatry in Lystra: “Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of their city,...

The Story About Joseph: God Always Has a Plan

Joseph was one of Jacob’s twelve sons and the most loved ones, so his father gave him a beautiful colorful coat. Joseph’s brothers became jealous of him and decided to sell him as a slave. He was taken to Egypt and started to serve the Potiphar, who was a Pharaoh’s...

Stewardship and the Kingdom of God

Stewardship is a critical spiritual principle that has always been a part of faith in God. It is a complex principle, that many in the modern world do not wish to fulfill or interpret. As noted in the reading by Walborn and Chan (2015), stewardship as a concept has been...

The Role of Ruth’s Character in the Scripture

Introduction God’s use of ordinary people to achieve His goals may be found in the Holy Scripture more than once. As an example, the story of Ruth can be cited, a humble girl who symbolizes the events of Israel’s redemption. The chapters in the Bible about this character introduce the...

• Women’s Role
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The Gospels of Mark and Luke

The Gospels of Mark and Luke contain many of the same stories, often in similar sequences and comparable wording when describing the events. However, distinct similarities in the way the events are expressed can be seen when comparing Mark 14:3-9 with Luke 7:36-50 and Mark 3:31-35 with Luke 8:19-21. This...

“A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini

Introduction During the course of the recent decade, it used to be particularly fashionable among political scientists to discuss the present confrontation between the supposedly Christian West and Muslim Middle East/South in terms of ‘clash of civilizations’. Nevertheless, as time goes by, more and more people in Western countries come...

Religion and Community: The Impact of Religion on Social Life

Introduction According to Kurtz (6), globalization of social life refers to the innumerable ways through which our global society has been integrated into one small village in the sense that anything that happens in one part of the world could potentially have a large effect or influence on other parts...

Apologetics as a Theological Discipline

Introduction Apologetics is a discipline of theology that involves the defense of ones’ religious position by systematically reasoning out disputed issues. This has been there since the time of early Christian writers such as Paul, the apostle. Apologists try to explain that their preferred religion is rational, and it promotes...

The Epistle of Paul to Philemon: Interpretation

Introduction The Epistle of Paul to Philemon (otherwise known as Philemon) is a book included in the Christian New Testament. The most common interpretation of the book was that Paul wrote a letter to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus, who was a runaway slave that had wronged his owner. Throughout...

Phenomenological and Experiential Approaches to Religious Education

Introduction Religion is an integral part of most societies. In the history of humanity, religions have influenced major parts of the way of life of most societies. In many societies, passing religious beliefs to the other members of the society is taken as major duty for existence. In accordance with...

The Foundation of Christianity: Greek, Jews, Roman, and Heathen Traits

Christianity has always been a cross-cultural and diverse religion with no single dominant expression. Historically, Christians lived in diverse cultural contexts enabling Christianity to gain a multicultural and polytonal context globally. The Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Heathen ancient cultural traits influenced the development and spread of Christianity. Christianity started with...

The Book of Exodus: Brief Analysis

Introduction The Book of Exodus is one of the defining narratives of Western culture. It recounts the story of ancient Israelites being chosen by Yahweh to escape slavery at the hands of Egyptians and attain the Promised Land. It features many of the most famous characters and episodes from biblical...

Phenomenology Approach in Studying Religion

Introduction Many disciplines have attempted to define the field of religion to give it a substantive and universal grounding. However, some of these definitions have been found to be compartmentalized and narrow. The different methods used to define religion include phenomenology, comparative religion, historical approach, sociology of religion, and philosophy...

Obedience in Faith in the Story of Abraham

Among the examples of steadiness and firmness in faith, few parts of the Holy Scripture are as impactful in this respect as the story of Abraham. The hardship he endured and the challenges he faced were colossal by any standard, yet his stalwart faith in God never wavered even in...

• Social Justice
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The Crucifixion of Jesus in Old and New Testament

The Old Testament includes a range of themes and concepts later referenced and reinterpreted in the New Testament. For example, Luke’s descriptions of Jesus’ death are thoroughly connected to Zechariah’s prophecy presented in the Old Testament. Chapter 23 of the Gospel of Luke highlights the fulfillment of predictions about the...

Comparison of Utilitarianism and Christian Ethics

Introduction Human beings encounter diverse challenges and obstacles that could affect their goals and force them to change their philosophies of life. Metaethics has emerged as a powerful field that presents evidence-based concepts for examining moral issues and addressing them from an informed perspective. Depending on the existing situation and...

The Role of Religion in One Amazing Thing

One Amazing Thing was written by an Indian-American poet and novelist Chitra Divakaruni, who used the ancient storytelling form of Panchatantra to write her own sapiential story in the post-9/11 United States setting. The novel emphasizes the notion of multiculturalism and tells the story of nine protagonists who are captured...

The Concept of Blasphemy

Introduction Blasphemy refers to an act of striping a consecrated character out of something. In religion, blasphemy refers to a show of irreverence towards holy individuals or things. Blasphemy in Judaism is considered an act of cursing and showing contempt for God. Blasphemy may take different forms depending on the...

Importance of Speaking in Tongues in Christianity

Introduction Speaking in tongues is a term that is common especially when referring to the Pentecostal churches. It is a supernatural language that is believed to be imparted to Christian believers when they have been baptized in the Holy Spirit. The issue of speaking in tongues has raised a lot...

The Role of Women in Judaism

Judaism is thought to be founded almost 3,000 years ago. This religious idea is based on the Jewish ways of life. A lot of reverence is annotated from the account of Abraham and Moses in the Biblical writings. That is the covenant affiliation between the patriarchs and matriarchs and God...

Atheism and Its Religious Analysis

Introduction Atheism entails the belief that there are no deities or supreme beings. It is the opposite of theism which is the belief in the existence of at least one Supreme Being or deity. In simple terms, it can be said to be the belief that there is no God...

Modernism and Postmodernism: Which World View Is More Conducive to Christian Beliefs

Introduction Modernism and postmodernism belong to the same movement. Both are based on changes in cultural, economic, and social movements. However, the two movements differ when it comes to the way of thinking. This essay will explore which world view, the modernity or the postmodernity, is more conducive to Christian...

Buddhism and the Life Teaching of Siddhartha

Buddhism Essay Introduction Buddhism is believed to have been in existence, way before Siddhartha existed (United Press International, 2007, p. 1). Most scholars observe that the roots of Buddhism are very deep, and though Siddhartha contributed a lot to the development of the religion, many Buddhists believe that he was...

How Religion Affects Our Lives

Religion can significantly impact an individual’s daily life by influencing their values, beliefs, and practices. Many people find that their religious faith provides them with a sense of purpose, direction, and meaning in life. However, the impact of religion on daily life can vary widely depending on an individual’s religion,...

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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

World Religions Overview Essay

The Movement of Religion and Ecology: Emerging Field and Dynamic Force

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Yale University

Originally published in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology

As many United Nations reports attest, we humans are destroying the life-support systems of the Earth at an alarming rate. Ecosystems are being degraded by rapid industrialization and relentless development. The data keeps pouring in that we are altering the climate and toxifying the air, water, and soil of the planet so that the health of humans and other species is at risk. Indeed, the Swedish scientist, Johan Rockstrom, and his colleagues, are examining which planetary boundaries are being exceeded. (Rockstrom and Klum, 2015)

The explosion of population from 3 billion in 1960 to more then 7 billion currently and the subsequent demands on the natural world seem to be on an unsustainable course. The demands include meeting basic human needs of a majority of the world’s people, but also feeding the insatiable desire for goods and comfort spread by the allure of materialism. The first is often called sustainable development; the second is unsustainable consumption. The challenge of rapid economic growth and consumption has brought on destabilizing climate change. This is coming into full focus in alarming ways including increased floods and hurricanes, droughts and famine, rising seas and warming oceans.

Can we turn our course to avert disaster? There are several indications that this may still be possible. On September 25, 2015 after the Pope addressed the UN General Assembly, 195 member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On December 12, 2015 these same members states endorsed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Both of these are important indications of potential reversal. The Climate Agreement emerged from the dedicated work of governments and civil society along with business partners. The leadership of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, and many others was indispensable.

One of the inspirations for the Climate Agreement and for the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals was the release of the Papal Encyclical, Laudato Si’ in June 2015. The encyclical encouraged the moral forces of concern for both the environment and people to be joined in “integral ecology”.  “The cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” are now linked as was not fully visible before. (Boff, 1997 and in the encyclical) Many religious and environmental communities are embracing this integrated perspective and will, no doubt, foster it going forward. The question is how can the world religions contribute more effectively to this renewed ethical momentum for change. For example, what will be their long-term response to population growth? As this is addressed in the article by Robert Wyman and Guigui Yao, we will not take it up here. Instead, we will consider some of the challenges and possibilities amid the dream of progress and the lure of consumption.

Challenges: The Dream of Progress and the Religion of Consumption

Consumption appears to have become an ideology or quasi-religion, not only in the West but also around the world. Faith in economic growth drives both producers and consumers. The dream of progress is becoming a distorted one. This convergence of our unlimited demands with an unquestioned faith in economic progress raises questions about the roles of religions in encouraging, discouraging, or ignoring our dominant drive toward appropriately satisfying material needs or inappropriately indulging material desires. Integral ecology supports the former and critiques the latter.

Moreover, a consumerist ideology depends upon and simultaneously contributes to a worldview based on the instrumental rationality of the human. That is, the assumption for decision-making is that all choices are equally clear and measurable. Market based metrics such as price, utility, or efficiency are dominant. This can result in utilitarian views of a forest as so much board feet or simply as a mechanistic complex of ecosystems that provide services to the human.

One long-term effect of this is that the individual human decision-maker is further distanced from nature because nature is reduced to measurable entities for profit or use. From this perspective we humans may be isolated in our perceived uniqueness as something apart from the biological web of life. In this context, humans do not seek identity and meaning in the numinous beauty of the world, nor do they experience themselves as dependent on a complex of life-supporting interactions of air, water, and soil. Rather, this logic sees humans as independent, rational decision-makers who find their meaning and identity in systems of management that now attempt to co-opt the language of conservation and environmental concern. Happiness is derived from simply creating and having more material goods. This perspective reflects a reading of our current geological period as human induced by our growth as a species that is now controlling the planet. This current era is being called the “Anthropocene” because of our effect on the planet in contrast to the prior 12,000 year epoch known as the Holocene.

This human capacity to imagine and implement a utilitarian-based worldview regarding nature has undermined many of the ancient insights of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions. For example, some religions, attracted by the individualistic orientations of market rationalism and short-term benefits of social improvement, seized upon material accumulation as containing divine sanction. Thus, Max Weber identified the rise of Protestantism with an ethos of inspirited work and accumulated capital.

Weber also identified the growing disenchantment from the world of nature with the rise of global capitalism. Karl Marx recognized the “metabolic rift” in which human labor and nature become alienated from cycles of renewal. The earlier mystique of creation was lost. Wonder, beauty, and imagination as ways of knowing were gradually superseded by the analytical reductionism of modernity such that technological and economic entrancement have become key inspirations of progress.

Challenges: Religions Fostering Anthropocentrism

This modern, instrumental view of matter as primarily for human use arises in part from a dualistic Western philosophical view of mind and matter. Adapted into Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious perspectives, this dualism associates mind with the soul as a transcendent spiritual entity given sovereignty and dominion over matter. Mind is often valued primarily for its rationality in contrast to a lifeless world. At the same time we ensure our radical discontinuity from it.

Interestingly, views of the uniqueness of the human bring many traditional religious perspectives into sync with modern instrumental rationalism. In Western religious traditions, for example, the human is seen as an exclusively gifted creature with a transcendent soul that manifests the divine image and likeness. Consequently, this soul should be liberated from the material world. In many contemporary reductionist perspectives (philosophical and scientific) the human with rational mind and technical prowess stands as the pinnacle of evolution. Ironically, religions emphasizing the uniqueness of the human as the image of God meet market-driven applied science and technology precisely at this point of the special nature of the human to justify exploitation of the natural world. Anthropocentrism in various forms, religious, philosophical, scientific, and economic, has led, perhaps inadvertently, to the dominance of humans in this modern period, now called the Anthropocene. (It can be said that certain strands of the South Asian religions have emphasized the importance of humans escaping from nature into transcendent liberation. However, such forms of radical dualism are not central to the East Asian traditions or indigenous traditions.)

From the standpoint of rational analysis, many values embedded in religions, such as a sense of the sacred, the intrinsic value of place, the spiritual dimension of the human, moral concern for nature, and care for future generations, are incommensurate with an objectified monetized worldview as they not quantifiable. Thus, they are often ignored as externalities, or overridden by more pragmatic profit-driven considerations. Contemporary nation-states in league with transnational corporations have seized upon this individualistic, property-based, use-analysis to promote national sovereignty, security, and development exclusively for humans.

Possibilities: Systems Science

Yet, even within the realm of so-called scientific, rational thought, there is not a uniform approach. Resistance to the easy marriage of reductionist science and instrumental rationality comes from what is called systems science and new ecoogy. By this we refer to a movement within empirical, experimental science of exploring the interaction of nature and society as complex dynamic systems. This approach stresses both analysis and synthesis – the empirical act of observation, as well as placement of the focus of study within the context of a larger whole. Systems science resists the temptation to take the micro, empirical, reductive act as the complete description of a thing, but opens analysis to the large interactive web of life to which we belong, from ecosystems to the biosphere. There are numerous examples of this holistic perspective in various branches of ecology. And this includes overcoming the nature-human divide. (Schmitz 2016) Aldo Leopold understood this holistic interconnection well when he wrote: “We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” (Leopold, 1966)

Collaboration of Science and Religion

Within this inclusive framework, scientists have been moving for some time beyond simply distanced observations to engaged concern. The Pope’s encyclical, Laudato Si , has elevated the level of visibility and efficacy of this conversation between science and religion as perhaps never before on a global level. Similarly, many other statements from the world religions are linking the wellbeing of people and the planet for a flourishing future. For example, the World Council of Churches has been working for four decades to join humans and nature in their program on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation.

Many scientists such as Thomas Lovejoy, E.O. Wilson, Jane Lubchenco, Peter Raven, and Ursula Goodenough recognize the importance of religious and cultural values when discussing solutions to environmental challenges. Other scientists such as Paul Ehrlich and Donald Kennedy have called for major studies of human behavior and values in relation to environmental issues. ( Science , July 2005) This has morphed into the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere. (mahb.standford.edu). Since 2009 the Ecological Society of America has established an Earth Stewardship Initiative with yearly panels and publications.  Many environmental studies programs are now seeking to incorporate these broader ethical and behavioral approaches into the curriculum.

Possibilities: Extinction and Religious Response

The stakes are high, however, and the path toward limiting ourselves within planetary boundaries is not smooth. Scientists are now reporting that because of the population explosion, our consuming habits, and our market drive for resources, we are living in the midst of a mass extinction period. This period represents the largest loss of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when the Cenozoic period began. In other words, we are shutting down life systems on the planet and causing the end of this large-scale geological era with little awareness of what we are doing or its consequences.

As the cultural historian Thomas Berry observed some years ago, we are making macrophase changes on the planet with microphase wisdom. Indeed, some people worry that these rapid changes have outstripped the capacity of our religions, ethics, and spiritualities to meet the complex challenges we are facing.

The question arises whether the wisdom traditions of the human community, embedded in institutional religions and beyond, can embrace integral ecology at the level needed? Can the religions provide leadership into a synergistic era of human-Earth relations characterized by empathy, regeneration, and resilience? Or are religions themselves the wellspring of those exclusivist perspectives in which human societies disconnect themselves from other groups and from the natural world? Are religions caught in their own meditative promises of transcendent peace and redemptive bliss in paradisal abandon? Or does their drive for exclusive salvation or truth claims cause them to try to overcome or convert the Other?

Authors in this volume are exploring these issues within religious and spiritual communities regarding the appropriate responses of the human to our multiple environmental and social challenges. What forms of symbolic visioning and ethical imagining can call forth a transformation of consciousness and conscience for our Earth community? Can religions and spiritualites provide vision and inspiration for grounding and guiding mutually enhancing human-Earth relations? Have we arrived at a point where we realize that more scientific statistics on environmental problems, more legislation, policy or regulation, and more economic analysis, while necessary, are no longer sufficient for the large-scale social transformations needed? This is where the world religions, despite their limitations, surely have something to contribute.

Such a perspective includes ethics, practices, and spiritualities from the world’s cultures that may or may not be connected with institutional forms of religion. Thus spiritual ecology and nature religions are an important part of the discussions and are represented in this volume. Our own efforts have focused on the world religions and indigenous traditions. Our decade long training in graduate school and our years of living and traveling throughout Asia and the West gave us an early appreciation for religions as dynamic, diverse, living traditions. We are keenly aware of the multiple forms of syncretism and hybridization in the world religions and spiritualties. We have witnessed how they are far from monolithic or impervious to change in our travels to more than 60 countries.

Problems and Promise of Religions

Several qualifications regarding the various roles of religion should thus be noted. First, we do not wish to suggest here that any one religious tradition has a privileged ecological perspective. Rather, multiple interreligious perspectives may be the most helpful in identifying the contributions of the world religions to the flourishing of life.

We also acknowledge that there is frequently a disjunction between principles and practices: ecologically sensitive ideas in religions are not always evident in environmental practices in particular civilizations. Many civilizations have overused their environments, with or without religious sanction.

Finally, we are keenly aware that religions have all too frequently contributed to tensions and conflict among various groups, both historically and at present. Dogmatic rigidity, inflexible claims of truth, and misuse of institutional and communal power by religions have led to tragic consequences in many parts of the globe.

Nonetheless, while religions have often preserved traditional ways, they have also provoked social change. They can be limiting but also liberating in their outlooks. In the twentieth century, for example, religious leaders and theologians helped to give birth to progressive movements such as civil rights for minorities, social justice for the poor, and liberation for women.  Although the world religions have been slow to respond to our current environmental crises, their moral authority and their institutional power may help effect a change in attitudes, practices, and public policies. Now the challenge is a broadening of their ethical perspectives.

Traditionally the religions developed ethics for homicide, suicide, and genocide. Currently they need to respond to biocide, ecocide, and geocide. (Berry, 2009)

Retrieval, Reevaluation, Reconstruction

There is an inevitable disjunction between the examination of historical religious traditions in all of their diversity and complexity and the application of teachings, ethics, or practices to contemporary situations. While religions have always been involved in meeting contemporary challenges over the centuries, it is clear that the global environmental crisis is larger and more complex than anything in recorded human history. Thus, a simple application of traditional ideas to contemporary problems is unlikely to be either possible or adequate. In order to address ecological problems properly, religious and spiritual leaders, laypersons and academics have to be in dialogue with scientists, environmentalists, economists, businesspeople, politicians, and educators. Hence the articles in this volume are from various key sectors.

With these qualifications in mind we can then identify three methodological approaches that appear in the still emerging study of religion and ecology. These are retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction. Retrieval involves the scholarly investigation of scriptural and commentarial sources in order to clarify religious perspectives regarding human-Earth relations. This requires that historical and textual studies uncover resources latent within the tradition. In addition, retrieval can identify ethical codes and ritual customs of the tradition in order to discover how these teachings were put into practice. Traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) is an important part of this for all the world religions, especially indigenous traditions.

With reevaluation, traditional teachings are evaluated with regard to their relevance to contemporary circumstances. Are the ideas, teachings, or ethics present in these traditions appropriate for shaping more ecologically sensitive attitudes and sustainable practices? Reevaluation also questions ideas that may lead to inappropriate environmental practices. For example, are certain religious tendencies reflective of otherworldly or world-denying orientations that are not helpful in relation to pressing ecological issues? It asks as well whether the material world of nature has been devalued by a particular religion and whether a model of ethics focusing solely on human interactions is adequate to address environmental problems.

Finally, reconstruction suggests ways that religious traditions might adapt their teachings to current circumstances in new and creative ways. These may result in new syntheses or in creative modifications of traditional ideas and practices to suit modern modes of expression. This is the most challenging aspect of the emerging field of religion and ecology and requires sensitivity to who is speaking about a tradition in the process of reevaluation and reconstruction. Postcolonial critics have appropriately highlighted the complex issues surrounding the problem of who is representing or interpreting a religious tradition or even what constitutes that tradition. Nonetheless, practitioners and leaders of particular religions are finding grounds for creative dialogue with scholars of religions in these various phases of interpretation.

Religious Ecologies and Religious Cosmologies

As part of the retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction of religions we would identify “religious ecologies” and “religious cosmologies” as ways that religions have functioned in the past and can still function at present. Religious ecologies are ways of orienting and grounding whereby humans undertake specific practices of nurturing and transforming self and community in a particular cosmological context that regards nature as inherently valuable. Through cosmological stories humans narrate and experience the larger matrix of mystery in which life arises, unfolds, and flourishes. These are what we call religious cosmologies. These two, namely religious ecologies and religious cosmologies, can be distinguished but not separated. Together they provide a context for navigating life’s challenges and affirming the rich spiritual value of human-Earth relations.

Human communities until the modern period sensed themselves as grounded in and dependent on the natural world. Thus, even when the forces of nature were overwhelming, the regenerative capacity of the natural world opened a way forward. Humans experienced the processes of the natural world as interrelated, both practically and symbolically. These understandings were expressed in traditional environmental knowledge, namely, in hunting and agricultural practices such as the appropriate use of plants, animals, and land. Such knowledge was integrated in symbolic language and practical norms, such as prohibitions, taboos, and limitations on ecosystems’ usage. All this was based in an understanding of nature as the source of nurturance and kinship. The Lakota people still speak of “all my relations” as an expression of this kinship. Such perspectives will need to be incorporated into strategies to solve environmental problems. Humans are part of nature and their cultural and religious values are critical dimensions of the discussion.

Multidisciplinary approaches: Environmental Humanities

We are recognizing, then, that the environmental crisis is multifaceted and requires multidisciplinary approaches. As this book indicates, the insights of scientific modes of analytical and synthetic knowing are indispensable for understanding and responding to our contemporary environmental crisis. So also, we need new technologies such as industrial ecology, green chemistry, and renewable energy. Clearly ecological economics is critical along with green governance and legal policies as articles in this volume illustrate.

In this context it is important to recognize different ways of knowing that are manifest in the humanities, such as artistic expressions, historical perspectives, philosophical inquiry, and religious understandings. These honor emotional intelligence, affective insight, ethical valuing, and spiritual awakening.

Environmental humanities is a growing and diverse area of study within humanistic disciplines. In the last several decades, new academic courses and programs, research journals and monographs, have blossomed. This broad-based inquiry has sparked creative investigation into multiple ways, historically and at present, of understanding and interacting with nature, constructing cultures, developing communities, raising food, and exchanging goods. 

It is helpful to see the field of religion and ecology as part of this larger emergence of environmental humanities. While it can be said that environmental history, literature, and philosophy are some four decades old, the field of religions and ecology began some two decades ago. It was preceded, however, by work among various scholars, particularly Christian theologians. Some eco-feminists theologians, such as Rosemary Ruether and Sallie McFague, Mary Daly, and Ivone Gebara led the way.

The Emerging Field of Religion and Ecology

An effort to identify and to map religiously diverse attitudes and practices toward nature was the focus of a three-year international conference series on world religions and ecology. Organized by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, ten conferences were held at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996-1998 that resulted in a ten volume book series (1997-2004). Over 800 scholars of religion and environmentalists participated. The director of the Center, Larry Sullivan, gave space and staff for the conferences. He chose to limit their scope to the world religions and indigenous religions rather than “nature religions”, such as wicca or paganism, which the organizers had hoped to include.

Culminating conferences were held in fall 1998 at Harvard and in New York at the United Nations and the American Museum of Natural History where 1000 people attended and Bill Moyers presided. At the UN conference Tucker and Grim founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology, which is now located at Yale. They organized a dozen more conferences and created an electronic newsletter that is now sent to over 12,000 people around the world. In addition, they developed a major website for research, education, and outreach in this area (fore.yale.edu). The conferences, books, website, and newsletter have assisted in the emergence of a new field of study in religion and ecology. Many people have helped in this process including Whitney Bauman and Sam Mickey who are now moving the field toward discussing the need for planetary ethics. A Canadian Forum on Religion and Ecology was established in 2002, a European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment was formed in 2005, and a Forum on Religion and Ecology @ Monash in Australia in 2011.

Courses on this topic are now offered in numerous colleges and universities across North America and in other parts of the world. A Green Seminary Initiative has arisen to help educate seminarians. Within the American Academy of Religion there is a vibrant group focused on scholarship and teaching in this area. A peer-reviewed journal, Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology , is celebrating its 25 th year of publication. Another journal has been publishing since 2007, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture . A two volume Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature edited by Bron Taylor has helped shape the discussions, as has the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture he founded. Clearly this broad field of study will continue to expand as the environmental crisis grows in complexity and requires increasingly creative interdisciplinary responses.

The work in religion and ecology rests in an intersection between the academic field within education and the dynamic force within society. This is why we see our work not so much as activist, but rather as “engaged scholarship” for the flourishing of our shared planetary life. This is part of a broader integration taking place to link concerns for both people and the planet. This has been fostered in part by the twenty-volume Ecology and Justice Series from Orbis Books and with the work of John Cobb, Larry Rasmussen, Dieter Hessel, Heather Eaton, Cynthia Moe-Loebeda, and others. The Papal Encyclical is now highlighting this linkage of eco-justice as indispensable for an integral ecology.

The Dynamic Force of Religious Environmentalism

All of these religious traditions, then, are groping to find the languages, symbols, rituals, and ethics for sustaining both ecosystems and humans. Clearly there are obstacles to religions moving into their ecological, eco-justice, and planetary phases. The religions are themselves challenged by their own bilingual languages, namely, their languages of transcendence, enlightenment, and salvation; and their languages of immanence, sacredness of Earth, and respect for nature. Yet, as the field of religion and ecology has developed within academia, so has the force of religious environmentalism emerged around the planet. Roger Gottlieb documents this in his book A Greener Faith . (Gottlieb 2006) The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew held international symposia on “Religion, Science and the Environment” focused on water issues (1995-2009) that we attended. He has made influential statements on this issue for 20 years. The Parliament of World Religions has included panels on this topic since 1998 and most expansively in 2015. Since 1995 the UK based Alliance of Religion and Conservation (ARC), led by Martin Palmer, has been doing significant work with religious communities around under the patronage of Prince Philip.

These efforts are recovering a sense of place, which is especially clear in the environmental resilience and regeneration practices of indigenous peoples. It is also evident in valuing the sacred pilgrimage places in the Abrahamic traditions (Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca) both historically and now ecologically. So also East Asia and South Asia attention to sacred mountains, caves, and other pilgrimage sites stands in marked contrast to massive pollution.

In many settings around the world religious practitioners are drawing together religious ways of respecting place, land, and life with understanding of environmental science and the needs of local communities. There have been official letters by Catholic Bishops in the Philippines and in Alberta, Canada alarmed by the oppressive social conditions and ecological disasters caused by extractive industries. Catholic nuns and laity in North America, Australia, England, and Ireland sponsor educational programs and conservation plans drawing on the eco-spiritual vision of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. Also inspired by Berry and Swimme, Paul Winter’s Solstice celebrations and Earth Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York Winter have been taking place for three decades.

Even in the industrial growth that grips China, there are calls from many in politics, academia, and NGOs to draw on Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist perspectives for environmental change. In 2008 we met with Pan Yue, the Deputy Minister of the Environment, who has studied these traditions and sees them as critical to Chinese environmental ethics. In India, Hinduism is faced with the challenge of clean up of sacred rivers, such as the Ganges and the Yamuna. To this end in 2010 with Hindu scholars, David Haberman and Christopher Chapple, we organized a conference of scientists and religious leaders in Delhi and Vrindavan to address the pollution of the Yamuna.

Many religious groups are focused on climate change and energy issues. For example, InterFaith Power and Light and GreenFaith are encouraging religious communities to reduce their carbon footprint. Earth Ministry in Seattle is leading protests against oil pipelines and terminals. The Evangelical Environmental Network and other denominations are emphasizing climate change as a moral issue that is disproportionately affecting the poor. In Canada and the US the Indigenous Environmental Network is speaking out regarding damage caused by resource extraction, pipelines, and dumping on First Peoples’ Reserves and beyond. All of the religions now have statements on climate change as a moral issue and they were strongly represented in the People’s Climate March in September 2015. Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published the first collection of articles on religion and climate change from two conferences we organized there. (Tucker & Grim, 2001)

Striking examples of religion and ecology have occurred in the Islamic world. In June 2001 and May 2005 the Islamic Republic of Iran led by President Khatami and the United Nations Environment Programme sponsored conferences in Tehran that we attended. They were focused on Islamic principles and practices for environmental protection. The Iranian Constitution identifies Islamic values for ecology and threatens legal sanctions. One of the earliest spokespersons for religion and ecology is the Iranian scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Fazlun Khalid in the UK founded the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science. In Indonesia in 2014 a fatwa was issued declaring that killing an endangered species is prohibited.

These examples illustrate ways in which an emerging alliance of religion and ecology is occurring around the planet. These traditional values within the religions now cause them to awaken to environmental crises in ways that are strikingly different from science or policy. But they may find interdisciplinary ground for dialogue in concerns for eco-justice, sustainability, and cultural motivations for transformation. The difficulty, of course, is that the religions are often preoccupied with narrow sectarian interests. However, many people, including the Pope, are calling on the religions to go beyond these interests and become a moral leaven for change.

Renewal Through Laudato Si’

Pope Francis is highlighting an integral ecology that brings together concern for humans and the Earth. He makes it clear that the environment can no longer be seen as only an issue for scientific experts, or environmental groups, or government agencies alone. Rather, he invites all people, programs and institutions to realize these are complicated environmental and social problems that require integrated solutions beyond a “technocratic paradigm” that values an easy fix. Within this integrated framework, he urges bold new solutions.

In this context Francis suggests that ecology, economics, and equity are intertwined. Healthy ecosystems depend on a just economy that results in equity. Endangering ecosystems with an exploitative economic system is causing immense human suffering and inequity. In particular, the poor and most vulnerable are threatened by climate change, although they are not the major cause of the climate problem. He acknowledges the need for believers and non-believers alike to help renew the vitality of Earth’s ecosystems and expand systemic efforts for equity.

In short, he is calling for “ecological conversion” from within all the world religions. He is making visible an emerging worldwide phenomenon of the force of religious environmentalism on the ground, as well as the field of religion and ecology in academia developing new ecotheologies and ecojustice ethics. This diverse movement is evoking a change of mind and heart, consciousness and conscience. Its expression will be seen more fully in the years to come.

The challenge of the contemporary call for ecological renewal cannot be ignored by the religions. Nor can it be answered simply from out of doctrine, dogma, scripture, devotion, ritual, belief, or prayer. It cannot be addressed by any of these well-trod paths of religious expression alone. Yet, like so much of our human cultures and institutions the religions are necessary for our way forward yet not sufficient in themselves for the transformation needed.  The roles of the religions cannot be exported from outside their horizons.  Thus, the individual religions must explain and transform themselves if they are willing to enter into this period of environmental engagement that is upon us. If the religions can participate in this creativity they may again empower humans to embrace values that sustain life and contribute to a vibrant Earth community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berry, Thomas. 2009. The Sacred Universe: Earth Spirituality and Religion in the 21st Century (New York: Columbia University Press).

Boff, Leonardo. 1997. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).

Gottlieb, Roger. 2006. A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planetary Future . (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Grim, John and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds. 2014. Ecology and Religion. (Washington, DC: Island Press).

Leopold, Aldo. 1966. A Sand County Almanac . (Oxford University Press).

Rockstrom, Johan and Mattias Klum. 2015. Big World, Small Planet: Abundance Within Planetary Boundaries . (New Haven: Yale University Press)

Schmitz, Oswald. 2016. The New Ecology: Science for a Sustainable World. (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Taylor, Bron, ed. 2008. Encyclopedia of Religion, Nature, and Culture. (London: Bloomsbury).

Tucker, Mary Evelyn. 2004. Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter their Ecological Phase . (Chicago: Open Court).

Tucker, Mary Evelyn and John Grim, eds. 2001 Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change? Daedalus Vol. 130, No.4.

Header photo: ARC procession to UN Faith in Future Meeting, Bristol, UK