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Tag: doctrine

  • Religious freedom is a kind of heaven on earth

    Religious freedom is a mirage or a kind of heaven on earth. Man has always tried to create a relationship with the absolute, giving different explanations to existential questions. However, these roads collide with each other. Why can’t we live together? Is the problem religious or social?

    The theme of religious freedom, although it starts from the spiritual sphere, is absolutely not resolved in it. Clashes based (or justified) by religious incompatibility are the order of the day. Some of us were born with these clashes going on and who knows if the end will be seen. The problem is far more serious than one might imagine.

    According to some experts, there are 56 countries with a level of at least medium risk for the violation of religious freedom. The improvements that are occasionally glimpsed are mostly the result of local initiatives which, however, fail to expand their range of action at least at the national level.

    To understand what stands in the way of total religious freedom, we can deepen some mechanisms of group psychology. If applied in an absolutist way, they close any opening.

    Religious involvement

    If we leave out all the earthly reasons that lead to a clash between groups, the greatest obstacle to religious freedom is certainly the attitude of believers. What is religious orthodoxy based on? Gerard Lenski identified a fundamental difference between devotionalism and devotional orthodoxy.

    Being devout is based on the feeling of an important private and emotional connection with God, while orthodoxy emphasizes intellectual consent to the theological doctrines of a given religion.

    Starting from this distinction it is possible to reconstruct two ways of participating in the religious group.

    • Associative involvement based on participation in the ritual and institutional activities of a community.
    • The emotional involvement that sees religion more linked to the intimate and personal sphere.

    These two orientations are totally independent and cause opposite behaviors. Those who feel attached to the doctrine will hardly jeopardize it with a different version.

    Affiliation and membership

    Regardless of what the individual seeks in religion and religious groups, there are different methods by which the group seeks the affiliation of believers and grounds their membership in the group. Let’s see 4 perspectives.

    • Charismatic groups, all those who take on religious principles in a total way in daily life and without any adaptation, often make use of extreme persuasive processes. The goal is to bring the whole life of the individual back to participation in the group through control and isolation.
    • The perspective that bases affiliation on granting rewarding answers to the person’s problems.
    • The affiliation that is also formed on the possibility of transforming one’s life. In a particular moment of one’s existence characterized by a need for growth or change, religion becomes an engine of growth. It will be the personal history of the individual that will dictate the direction of this change.
    • The fourth perspective emphasizes the religious practices that a group offers. The simple fact of finding more suitable for our personality pushes us towards one choice rather than another.
  • Syncretism spread thanks to the New Age

    Syncretism spread thanks to the New Age

    For syncretism, it is not important to which creed one belongs, but the actual commitment to inner research. Syncretism is a religious form that mixes doctrines, liturgies, and spiritual practices of different origins.

    By syncretism, we mean the integration or fusion of doctrines of different origins into a new doctrine, both in the sphere of religious beliefs and in that of philosophical conceptions.

    More particularly, in the history of religions, syncretism means the fusion of two or more religions or even the partial contamination of one religion with elements of others.

    However, the term syncretism has spread in modern times thanks above all to the New Age movement, which attributes a particular meaning to syncretism.

    New Age and syncretism

    In fact, the New Age doctrine represents a form of religious syncretism because it mixes elements of various origins. It takes up elements of Eastern wisdom – Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoga -, of the esotericisms of the Western tradition – theosophy, anthroposophy, occultism – of Christianity and of the religions of the primitives – shamanism, animism, magic.

    In this vision, God is real, exists, and is part of nature and man. God is seen as an energy that permeates all things – the sum of the consciousness existing in the universe. Man’s transformation lies in learning to recognize divine energy in oneself and in nature.

    For the New Age, the best part of any religion is its esoteric, secret, and mysterious side. At the same time, the more modern meaning of syncretism simply indicates that the substratum of all religions is unique.

    For the effects of syncretism it is therefore not important to which creed one belongs, but the actual commitment to the inner search within the religion or doctrine in which one is established, by choice or culture.

    Religious s yncretism affirms the substantial unity of all faiths and schools of thought, beyond dogmas and formal and external differences.

    According to the syncretistic view, the founding concepts and principles of every creed – such as the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men, the value and importance of prayer, universal love, etc. – are the only and the same.