Abstract:Peter L. Berger (Berger, 1974a) has proposed definitions and descriptions of religion. The purpose of his efforts is to place some boundaries around area of scientific study of religion. Berger is muc...Peter L. Berger (Berger, 1974a) has proposed definitions and descriptions of religion. The purpose of his efforts is to place some boundaries around area of scientific study of religion. Berger is much concerned with such dichotomies as secular (the mundane, the ordinary safe of everyday life, and the ordinary, everyday 'life-world' ), and religious (ecstacies, the 'otherness' of religious experience, transcendental). He is worried that scientific study of religion must exhibit methodological atheism and would lead to secularization, which to him is a progressive loss of plausability to religious views of reality (p. 132), and to flattening out of' religious phenomenon and greyness of view of reality. Berger is wary of defining: many definitions of religion are really reductionist; others are really post hoc rationalizations; some are used ideologically. He stresses transcendence and transcendental in connection with religion, almost to point of making them sine qua non of religion. Elsewhere he (Berger, 1974b) states that religions are many sided and gigantic effort to come to terms with experience of transcendence, and that transcendence is human life experience of world of uncanny, of totally other, in which assumptions of life no longer hold. Berger's dichotomy of transcendence-religion and daily living is not universally shared. For example, in normative Judaism every act from moment of awakening in morning to that of going to sleep at night is an act of worship. And this holds true for some aspects of Islam and Hinduism. Jensen (Jensen 1951: 203) parallels this in his quotation from Kant that all duties are divine commands and awe is not special act of religion but rather religious temper in all our actions done in conformity with duty. However, it should be noted that Berger (Berger, 1974a: 132) feels uneasy about this dichotomy: at one point he says that ecstacies are domesticated by channelling them into socially acceptable and useful activity such as moral conduct. Berger, however, mentions mundane act of study as a preliminary to religious mysticism. Judaism, however, considers study as higher than prayers, etc., and, therefore, to devout Jew study is not trigger to religious experience; it is religious experience. Religion is better defined as system of practices and ideas, or perhaps betterRead More
Publication Year: 1975
Publication Date: 1975-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 4
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