DEFINE RELIGION DISCUSS THE POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF RELIGION

Define religion Discuss the Political, Social, and Economic Impacts of Religion

Define religion Discuss the political, social, and economic impacts of religion

Definition of Religion

Religion is the impression in and worship of a god or gods, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe. It is routinely considered as consisting of a person's relation to God, gods, or spirits. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories related with their deity or deities that are intended to give meaning to life. They incline to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature. (Harvey, Graham, 2000)

The word religion is sometimes used interchangeable with faith or belief system, but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have formed behaviors, including congregations for prayer, priestly hierarchies, holy places, and/or scriptures.

Academics studying the subject have defined religion into three broad categories: world religions, a term which refers to trans-cultural, international faiths, indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific religious groups, and new religious movements, which denote to recently develop religious belief. (Nicholas, 1996)

The growth of religion has taken different forms in different cultures. Some religions place greater stress on belief, while others emphasize practice. Some religions aim on the personal know-how of the religious individual, while other ones address the undertakings of the community to be most important. Some religions claim to be universal, believing their laws and cosmology to be attaching for everyone, while others are intended to be practiced only by one, localized group. Religion often makes use of meditation, melodies and art. In many places it has been associated with public institutions such as education, the class, government, and political power.

One of the more influential theories of religion today is social constructionism, which says that religion is a modern concept suggesting all spiritual exercise and worship follows a model similar to Christianity; social constructionism suggests that religion, as a concept, has therefore been applied inappropriately to non-Western cultures.

Political Impact of Religion

The idea of political belief concerns governmental ideologies whose cultural and political backing is so powerful that they are said to attain power matching to those of a state religion, to which they often display substantial likenesses in both theory and practice. Such political religions generally vie with being transcendent ...