Religion and culture contemporary practices and perspectives book summary essay

The essays in the book by Richard D. Hecht and Vincent F. Biondo explain the key facets of the important interactions between the culture and religion. The focus of the authors is essentially from the post modern world although the relationships in the text are continually in flux history. Every chapter of this text moves so that the authors cover all the angles of a topic from various religious perspectives. Each part of the text shows the interweaving of culture and religion. It is worth mentioning that every chapter of the book helps the reader to comprehend why it is impossible to compartmentalize or separate religion so that it functions only in the religious institutions walls or in the religious events as well as dates, in the calendar. For this reason, this essay summarizes and offers the opinion of chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 of this book.
According to Chapter 8, “ Nature,” by Evan Berry, the term nature carries a broad meaning, and thus it is not possible to discuss either daily life or religion from this term. The chapter argues that, in many contemporary cultures, people are broadly alienated from the nature. The chapter explores environmental contexts for the religious customs across an assortment of the many cultures of the world. The chapter focuses on the social practices, which respond to the natural happening such as the influence of the climate on the human climates and landscape and bodily need of food. In every case where natural world and religious life come to bear on one another, the chapter has analyzed constructivist and deterministic modes of description in a careful manner. The result has been a broad array of examples of the way various cultures negotiate their natural environments through everyday life practice. According to the chapter, ritual and religious responses to the nature are just natural for various small scale societies and historical cultures.
In the chapter, the authors argue that the rising worries regarding industrial civilization impacts on ecosystem health in the past half-century prompted religious environmental activism, which is a new ritual engagement with natural world. The chapter increases our understanding about the relationship between nature and religion by giving a description of religious traditions greening. After reading the chapter, I think that the authors are trying to bring out the idea that the current threat to the human kind survival that is, nature can only be removed only by a revolutionary change of the heart in human beings. This means that the change of heart should be stimulated by the religion so as to create the will power required for putting strenuous fresh ideals into practice. The chapter reveals that various environmental problems have resulted from the human activities, and thus religion should hold a number of solutions to mitigate the destructive patterns of nature.
Chapter 9, “ Tourism” by Alex Norman in the book, the authors describe the ranges of spiritual tourist experience. According to the chapter, spiritual tourism is a tourism, which is typified by a self- conscious project of the spiritual betterment. Thus, the spiritual tourists in the contemporary world are essentially engaged in numerous behaviors or practices, which are self- consciously viewed as contributory to the identity and meaning as well as beneficial for a person’s wellbeing and health. On average, these practices or behaviors are coupled with the practices of religious institutions and movements. In this chapter, spiritual tourism has been identified through the meaning making and identity projects of people. The chapter reveals the idea that spiritual tourism can occur within the pilgrimage traditions, and bear a resemblance to religious tourism.
The chapter offers explanations of spiritual tourism as healing. This category refers to the tourist experiences, which are oriented to the practices that seek out amelioration or correction elements of daily life identified as problematic. In this category, the chapter describes that tourists inspect the value and status of the relationships. Therefore, such tourists use their time away from their dwelling, normally engaged with the religious practices so as to analyze the self in an approach suggestive of counseling. Spiritual tourism as experiment entails the tourists trying out the alternatives when the ordinary lifeways appear problematic. The chapter describes spiritual tourism as quest as a category of tourism, which views the experience visualized as a pursuit for the personal knowledge or discovery.
In addition, the chapter describes spiritual tourism as retreat as a category of spiritual tourism, which we find the experience typified as one of the escapes from daily ritual renewal. Moreover, the chapter argues that we must be careful with spiritual tourism as collective not to divorce the idea of image, specifically in tracing motivation threads, which lead a tourist to the experience. By investigating the spiritual tourists, this chapter helps the readers gain a unique perspective of the religion in the society. The chapter gives additional insights to the perceptions of religions in the society as well as how individuals are trying to re-sacralise their lives.
Chapter 10, “ Education” by Colleen Windham-Hughes in the book describes a local project that deals with the religious diversity in the Coastal California. The chapter brings out the idea that when the world religions education is essentially done badly it serves the wealthy through reinforcing the stereotypes so as to protect the institutional inequality. Nonetheless, we understand that all cultures and religions are not similar, as there are complex differences and similarities within and between groups. According to this chapter, world religions curricula and textbooks normally distill the global religions phenomena through using a reductive model, which obscures diversity whilst aiming at simplicity. After reading the chapter, we understand that religions are essentially internally varied in dramatic ways.
The chapter brings out the notion that the traditional school curricula and textbooks have a tendency of reinforcing stereotypes, which prevent the students from comprehending the true complication of the world. In particular, Colleen describes these innovations as difficulties of relational as well as relational literacy according to the ways teachers conceive the concept of religion in relative to the other religions and basic literacy that is involved with the definitions of stereotypical dictionary of most popular practices and beliefs. What’s more, the chapter describes that the students in their questions, self-reflections, and questions are the focus of kaleidoscope studies’ methodology to teaching about religion, but not whichever necessary content regarding religions traditions.
In this chapter, we understand that neither students nor teachers are asked to turn out to be experts in any religious traditions facts. Instead, they are requested to reflect on their individual life experiences of navigating, belonging to, and shaping the world. We further understand that students are persuaded to utilize their personal life experiences, as well as orientations in the humanity as the beginning points for discussions. In my opinion, this chapter implies that by studying religion as well as practicing character in the community, cooperation, and self- reflection the school gives dimensions to what it essentially means to train their students to be the global citizens. Similarly, it is assisting those students that name their place in their community’s world.
Sarah W. Whedon, in Chapter 11, “ Children” of this text argues that the millennialism has essentially been a part of the Christian expectation and American religion of an upcoming peace period, which will transform the world. After reading the chapter, we understand that the cosmology elements are articulated around Indigo children, which reveal a deep ambivalence regarding the relative truth and value of religion. According to this chapter, a positive but false identification of Indigo children would possibly be of no disadvantage to these children if they are cared for according to the virtue’s guiding principles. The chapter brings out the idea that this broad applicability would be real if the methods were used without expectation of the ability of children to change the world as well as bringing spirituality and wisdom to their parents.
The chapter argues that the alleged crises of the American childhood, which are re-inscribed with the positive meaning in Indigo Children world, are twofold. Initially, there is a rise in ADD and ADHD diagnoses in the American children. The second is that of fairly less significant in the children discourse. From this chapter, we understand that the social construction of the Indigo children is essentially a response to the obvious crisis of the American childhood in the form of augmented youth violence as well as the diagnoses of the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and attention deficit disorder.
Chapter 12, “ Death and Dying” in the text entails death, which is a great mystery and among the innermost issues with winch the science, philosophy, and religion has wrestled from the start of human history. The chapter implies that although dying is a natural part of the occurrence, the American culture is exceptional in the degree to which people view death as a taboo topic. Thus, this means that instead of having open discussions, people have a tendency of viewing death as an enemy that is feared and which we must defeat through the contemporary machines and medicines. After reading the chapter, we understand the meeting points between death and religion.
The chapter reveals that the interpretations of death and dying among the cultures are important because they are inherently connected with the common conditions of the body, the self, the individual, and with life definitions, and good life visions that are send out through literature and rituals. In fact, death and rituals are the innermost concerns of various religious and cultural systems. This topic argues that the relationship between culture and religion, the multifaceted relationships are in the practices that are essentially central to the domestic life whereas the others are deeply public. The chapter thus increases our understanding of the concepts of death and dying in various cultures