What Is Religion?

1. What are some of the questions religion seeks to answer?

Speculations on the Sources of Religion

1. List some of the human needs served by religion.
2. Discuss a theory on origins of religion by one of the thinkers in the reading (Tylor, Frazer, Freud, James, Otto, or Jung) that makes most sense to you at the present time.
3. Why are scholars today hesitant to speak of an evolution of religion from one form to another?

Key Characteristics of Religion

1. What is the problem with the traditional dictionary definition of religion?
2. List the eight elements manifested in varying degrees in religions.

The Sacred

1. Define what is meant by the sacred in religion.
2. Offer some examples of how the sacred is variously understood.
3. How can atheism or agnosticism be considered a religion?

Religious Symbolism

1. Offer some examples of religious symbols and discuss their meaning.
2. How are symbols important in dreams?

Patterns among Religions
Discuss the goal of studying religions in the comparative and historical sense.

First Pattern: Focus of Beliefs and Practices

1. Describe features of the sacramental orientation in conceiving and locating the sacred.
2. Describe the features of the prophetic orientation.
3. Describe the features of the mystical orientation.
4. Discuss ways that the three orientations might be found in the same religious tradition.

Second Pattern: Views of the World and Life

1. What are the eight great questions religions must answer?
2. Review ways that the nature of sacred reality may be conceived.
3. Describe different conceptions of the nature of the universe.
4. Describe the spectrum of attitudes toward nature found in religions.
5. Define linear and cyclical time and the concerns that accompany each.
6. Offer views of human purpose seen in different religions.
7. What place do words and scriptures occupy in religion?
8. How are concepts of inclusiveness and exclusiveness expressed in religion?

Third Pattern: Religious Views of Male and Female

1. What role did female deity play in many cultures and religions?
2. Give some examples of places where Goddess worship is alive today.
3. Offer examples of patriarchal religion overcoming matriarchal elements.
4. What factors point to a change in the status of women in religion?

Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Religion
Discuss the approaches of at least three disciplines to religion (psychology, mythology, philosophy, theology, the arts, anthropology, archeology, linguistics and literary theory).

Key Critical Issues

1. Describe the shifting approaches and concerns in the evolution of religious studies scholarship.
2. What moral questions have emerged in the study of religions?
3. What challenges or opportunities for exploration does the great diversity within major world religions present?

Why Study the Major Religions of the World?
The author offers ten examples of the pleasures and rewards of the study of religions. Which ones appeal to you now and why?

The Pilgrimage
What might be some of the consequences of undertaking an intellectual pilgrimage to many of the world's important living religions?

Religion beyond the Classroom

1. What are some of the benefits in going beyond just studying books to learn about religion?
2. Which of the options presented by the author appeal to you?