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Thomas A Tweed Biography

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“Some adherents think of a religion as having a core that does not really change, as if it were a mango with a leathery outer skin and inner pit covering a single seed. That misses something crucial about religious traditions: they are constantly changing and being changed.”

Religion Change

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Source: Religion: A Very Short Introduction

“Sometimes religion fails to serve its meaning-making function at moments of catastrophic disruption or cultural change. For example, many elite and middle class Christian adherents were shaken by a Victorian spiritual crisis as intellectual challenges converged. Between 1840 and 1900 some lost faith in the face of Darwinian biology and the new geology, which challenged biblical claims about the origin and age of the universe; the new historical and literary study of the Bible, called Higher Criticism, which challenged the claim that scripture was divinely inspired; and the new comparative study of religions, which challenged the uniqueness and superiority of Christianity. Those doubters now looked out on a different ocean, as does the narrator in Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach," who once found comfort as waves in "the sea of faith" drew near, but who now hears only "its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.”

Religion Change Meaning

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Source: Religion: A Very Short Introduction

“If a religious community lacks cohesion, it will lose members. But other problems—from isolation to aggression—arise when a religious community is too cohesive, when it is so tightly bound there is no space for adhesive forces to form ties with the wider culture and members of other communities. When inward-looking groups face outward with fear or fury, they can become, to coin a term, dehisive, a bond-breaking social force. The history of religion provides myriad examples of volatile religious movements that overemphasized in-group solidarity and escalated tensions with outsiders.”

Cohesion Religious Community

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Source: Religion: A Very Short Introduction

“In Japanese Buddhist temples the presiding monk watched the stick of incense burn to tell when it was time to stop meditating and begin the next communal activity.”

Meditation Incense Japanese Buddhism

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Source: Religion: A Very Short Introduction

“Bodies constrain but do not determine religious experience. It matters that humans have two eyes facing forward and a cerebral cortex with billions of neurons for higher-order thinking.”

Bodies Religious Experience

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Source: Religion: A Very Short Introduction

“Religion maps social space and distinguishes us and them. It says the folks over the mountain have less powerful gods and less efficacious rituals. But even in one place, a religious worldview suggests, not everyone has the same status.”

Religion Us And Them

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Source: Religion: A Very Short Introduction

“Because the past shapes the present, responsible citizenship also requires some sense of history, an idea that applies particularly to the matter of religion. Too often public discussions of the religious dimensions of policy issues either overlook the past or concentrate on very recent years. But that shortened perspective makes it difficult to see what is new and what is not and which problems, such as climate change, economic disparity, and interreligious violence, are entangled in a longer past. We need a history that traces religion's role in the broad changes in ways of life, from foraging to farming to factories.”

Citizenship History Of Religion

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Source: Religion: A Very Short Introduction