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While each new religious movement expresses
in deed and word a unique symbolic world, all such movements exhibit
a range of common features that constitute religion as an empirical
construct.
This empirical construct of religion is
not the same as the conventional American understanding of religion
as personal salvation, moral values, or belief in deities. The empirical
construct of religion from the study of new religious movements informs
us that religion is not necessarily good or ethical, that it is social
and communal, not personal; that the community shares symbolic expressions
that may mean little or nothing to outsiders; that the community values
their definition of collective salvation above all else including even
maternal ties and material survival; and that achieving the ultimate
concern determines how the community interacts with outsiders, including
whether or not it is a threat to itself or perceived enemies.
I would define religion not necessarily
as God-centered, but as concerned primarily with constructing a pure
social world defined by social, sexual, and geo-political boundaries
that are in accordance with a heavenly template conveyed to the community
by an absolute authority. What is paradigmatically religious is not
the mystical experience, personal salvation, spirituality, or belief.
Religion is what binds a people together: a self-identified mythologized
history, a space guarded by a perimeter that outsiders cross at their
own peril, social roles that conform to a received tradition, a calendar
of times set apart for communal celebration of important past events
in the history of the community, a common language, and a shared identity.
A religious community seeks to define itself
as distinct from other nationalities by asserting a claim to truth
that sets it apart from and above all other peoples. Thus, religion
is integral to nationhood, homeland, identity, meaning, and law. It
establishes an ordered world that sets the standard against which all
other communities are judged. Given these paradigmatic features, one
deduces that religion and politics cannot easily be separated and do
not always belong to distinct analytic categories.
Copyright: 2001, Jean E. Rosenfeld
Epilog:
Religion & Politics
While each new religious movement expresses
in deed and word a unique symbolic world, all such movements exhibit
a range of common features that constitute religion as an empirical
construct.
This empirical construct of religion is
not the same as the conventional American understanding of religion
as personal salvation, moral values, or belief in deities. The empirical
construct of religion from the study of new religious movements informs
us that religion is not necessarily good or ethical, that it is social
and communal, not personal; that the community shares symbolic expressions
that may mean little or nothing to outsiders; that the community values
their definition of collective salvation above all else including even
maternal ties and material survival; and that achieving the ultimate
concern determines how the community interacts with outsiders, including
whether or not it is a threat to itself or perceived enemies.
I would define religion not necessarily
as God-centered, but as concerned primarily with constructing a pure
social world defined by social, sexual, and geo-political boundaries
that are in accordance with a heavenly template conveyed to the community
by an absolute authority. What is paradigmatically religious is not
the mystical experience, personal salvation, spirituality, or belief.
Religion is what binds a people together: a self-identified mythologized
history, a space guarded by a perimeter that outsiders cross at their
own peril, social roles that conform to a received tradition, a calendar
of times set apart for communal celebration of important past events
in the history of the community, a common language, and a shared identity.
A religious community seeks to define itself
as distinct from other nationalities by asserting a claim to truth
that sets it apart from and above all other peoples. Thus, religion
is integral to nationhood, homeland, identity, meaning, and law. It
establishes an ordered world that sets the standard against which all
other communities are judged. Given these paradigmatic features, one
deduces that religion and politics cannot easily be separated and do
not always belong to distinct analytic categories.
Copyright: 2001, Jean E. Rosenfeld
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