Free Essay - Religion and the Sacred

Almost everyone understands that we exist in a secular and desacralized society. The sacred part encompasses both religious and secular guises. Sacred is focused on shaping social life, embracing the modern world as it is, having polarized group identities, and allowing the rise of powerful emotions. The concept of morality and moral society also factors in. Gordon Lynch drew the whole aspect of sacredness, and he advanced the initial work of Durkheim (ELIADE 1957). He focuses on the goodness that could come out if moral reflexivity was exercised. On the other hand, Eric Taylor sees the application of the concept to be unconvincing.

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Eric would instead associate sacred with the negative part of it. He is also an author who tries to associate sacredness with the role played by the church. He defines and assimilates sacred with colonialism and suffering due to holding to a belief emphasized by a group of people (TURKLE 2011). He brings this out by describing the life of tortured children who had been subjected to various psychological, sexual, and other physical abuse (LYNCH 2014). The church abducted them, and they would term it saving the children, yet they ended up imparting civilization and Christianity to them. To the church, they define the role as sacred. The paper focuses on the concept of sacredness and how it is applied on both religious and nonreligious basis.

Sacred can be associated with profane in the exact way that Lynch adopted Durkheim. Sacred is used to refer to the universal representation made and made part of a society to be achieved collectively (Durkheim 2001). It also draws the aspect of how a group of people has an impact on dictating what sacred should be or described to be. Durkheim adopts the concept of profane and explains it to be all the mundane things that society engages in. They involve our jobs, even our bills that need to be settled. Durkheim focuses on the concept of profane and relates it to the theory of religion (ELIADE 1957). Profane are the activities, ideas, and persons that are involved in everyday commonness.

Based on the ideology, profane is linked to sacred. They both have a positive and negative influence on how they are exercised or how they are failed to be applied. For both of them to be applicable, a person or a group of people is supposed to uphold to them. Something is sacred if it is viewed as holy or if it is supposed to be shown the utmost respect. It can be a place like Jerusalem; it is sacred ground for several religions (LYNCH 2014). Sacred can also be defined as something set aside for a particular role. In faith, it could be used as an idol or anything worthy to be worshipped like the shrines.

Lynch develops the concept after analyzing the sacred in the world. He adopted the definition of the sacred as the norms that are taken for granted and have a critical effect on the social lives of people. He also associated the sacred to be the moral dimension of social life. Sacred can have both side effects. Goodness or evil can be the result of the sacred; Lynch focuses on the better side of the sacred (DURKHEIM 2001). The application of sacred is diverse, and its examples range from how an individual is affected by how an entire society or country is changed. An example of a sacred form has the belief to uphold the value of human rights.

Sacred can also be defined according to two interpretations; ontological and cultural. While describing the former, lynch reviews the work made by other authors such as Rudolph Otto, Bernhard Giesen, and Mircea Eliade. The challenge made on sacred while using the ontological interpretation is that its definition is oriented to the objective universal phenomenon (LYNCH 2014). The ontological argument lacks a sense of how and why sacred forms arise in different social contexts.

Based on cultural interpretation, Lynch develops the definitions of authors such as Edward Shils, Jeffrey Alexander, and Robert Bellah. The description is much more reliable because it associates sacred to being culturally developed in historical contexts (DURKHEIM 2001). Through this, it helps reduce the problem of how to respond to questions about being sacred. It helps uncover and answer how various sacred forms arose and how the different ways affect the social lives of different people.

What Makes Something Sacred

To consider something to be sacred has been one of the greatest mysteries across different religions. However, from the definition, being holy means being dedicated to being a worship or service part of a given religion. In most cases, considering something to be sacred comes along with spiritual devotion and respect. Another aspect such as an exhilarating feeling and reverence across the deity is common. The word holy has full application to things considered unique by as given belief or religion (Brunn 2015). Other common uses include when referring to objects, places, or even particular property usually found to be blessed and venerated. Most sociologists refer to sacred and profane aspects as the main religious characteristics.

Religion is based on beliefs of specific artifacts and certain practices reflecting sacred things. Sacred things are usually forbidden and set aside for religious purposes (Norris and Inglehart 2011). Therefore it can be argued that sacred is a representation of given group interests such as unity which is inscribed within given group totems and symbols representing holy things. Mundane individual concern towards a given belief can be considered to be an aspect contributing to their firm belief towards a given situation. Considering personal faith as a driving force, sacred can, therefore, be argued to be something that has been set aside for a whole-like purpose for a given religion. Sacred relates to wholeness hence considered to be monadic a unique characteristic of being a wholeness associative aspect.

For instance, most people are likely to have diverse beliefs on sacred life either by arguing that, something is considered to be sacred to only those following such denomination. In the case of a Bible, only individuals supporting Bible teaching and holding such beliefs are likely to treat it as being sacred. To understand how things become holy, therefore, needs a prior understanding of how different people come to believe in them.

Most people are likely to believe and treat certain things and places with more respect because they were taught earlier about them. Others continuously argue that a supernatural power behind such things makes them be treated as sacred. In the same case, other religions are built under such beliefs based on the body and script of the scriptures (Valis, N.M., 2010). Therefore, people believe something is sacred with an underlying reason or belief. Considering "a Christian religion" instead of "the Christian religion", it implies that, a given religion creator, was succeeded by many followers or a group of people who earlier developed the religion had many successors. The mystery behind such religious beliefs is considered to be sacred.

What Are The Examples Of Sacred?

As discussed earlier, for something to be considered sacred, it depends on the belief of an individual. Different people hold different views about things or places. For example of Holy books such as the Bible or Quaran, it depends on those following a deity to such religions to consider them as being sacred. Other people have different beliefs about why a particular phenomenon happens or why certain places should be treated with dignity.

For example, specific accident causes have been related to extra-ordinary forces with people relating them to the wrath of the gods (Eliade 2019). While most people do not necessarily believe, the situation remains sacred to those holding such views. In other cases, individuals are likely to worship different things, some God, other gods, or even individual animals (Brueggemann 2016). Carrying out rituals towards marriage and burial or special occasions can be considered to be sacred.

The people involved in such cases hold diverse beliefs which had been earlier taught or are being associated with specific forces. The presence of different religions indicates that people have different opinions, also within the religions, there are different denominations that hold sub-beliefs differing from others despite having a supra belief (Ricoeur 2015).

In the Christian life, there is a different denomination that practices different belief and faith towards a Christian life. Despite having a bible as a universal sacred thing, there are different beliefs that do not necessarily share a common aspect, especially baptism. It does not necessarily matter whether other individuals are ready to adopt others' conviction for something to be sacred; any opinion towards treating anything to be unique is what defines sacredness.

References

Brueggemann, W., 2016. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination: By Paul Ricoeur Minneapolis, Fortress, 1995. 340 pp. $24.00. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/004057369605300116

Brunn, S.D. ed., 2015. The changing world religion map: Sacred places, identities, practices, and politics. Springer. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CGh-BgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=Religion+and+sacred&ots=csUWmL9qd-&sig=9Up-ROoKPWOtOGxxyPYaplc3Yjc

DURKHEIM. E. 2001. The Elementary forms of religious life. London: Oxford University Press

Eliade, M., 2019. The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zBzzv977CLgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA68&dq=Religion+and+sacred&ots=znN8oqD9sC&sig=Vkrui-Z8R-fffHqAw73MwZvm7Rc

ELIADE. M. 1957. The sacred and the profane. The nature of religion. New York: AHarvest Book Harcourt Inc.

LYNCH. G. 2014. The sacred in the modern world. London: Oxford University Press

Norris, P. and Inglehart, R., 2011. Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge University Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ObwtZ36m1hwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Religion+and+sacred&ots=AwecXZ6RiD&sig=OpM0p1Xc1n89DHfoMNGb-itpB40

Ricoeur, P., 2015. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, narrative, and imagination. Fortress Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1PRI3ZRWr7gC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Religion+and+sacred&ots=22yTnvqYol&sig=X7VAh1CGfam7R6qya30EMoXZHlg

TURKLE. S. 2011. Evocative Objects. Things we think with. Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press

Valis, N.M., 2010. Sacred realism: religion and the imagination in modern Spanish narrative. Yale University Press.