1. Ritual Dimension
This refers to what the adherents of a religion does as a part of that religion.
a) Prayer: Is a private and solitary moment of a quiet reflection on God; noisy, group singing and chanting; fully prostrate.
While prayer is conducted by a priest, kneeling down, reciting memorised prayers, bowing down repeatedly in the direction of Mecca, chanding from the Holy Quran (for the Islamic religion).
b) Asceticism: Severe self discipline, renouncing pleasures; desert father and martyrdom, Yoga, and World-renunciation (thorns); self mortification, flagellation, snake handling and drinking poison in the Appalachians.
c) Possession: Hook hanging, fire walking, possession by demons, gods, speaking in tongues, pentecostal, divine language.
d) Modes of dress: Muslim women and the Purdah, Muslim man who dies with his beards red after pilgrimage to Mecca.
e) Pilgrimage: To Mecca to circle around the Ka’abah, Kiss the stone, Holy temples in Himalayas.
f) Ritual: i.e
i) Sacrifice – ritual death in which a sacrificial victim is offered to God as part of a reciprical relationship between God and Human beings. Aboriginal: Life force of victim released. Aztac: Human sacrifice. Hindu: Buffalo sacrifice. Hebrew: Bible. Christian: Death of Christ.
ii) Innitiation – Into religious community – Sacred thread; presented to guru received instruction (Hindus). Circumsision; In aboriginal tribes. Ritual killing, ressurection of the victim into new existence.
iii) Transition and Transformation: i.e
a) Rites of passage – Mark/ bring about change of social position and status, change in physical or spiritual being of initiate. Chage of life phase (Birth? puberty? Marriage ? Death ?)
b) Seasonal, calendrical rites – harvest, rains, births and deaths
2. Mythological Dimensions
What we learn from stories is different from what we learn from systematic thought and concepts. They convey their own types of meaning and information, cannot reduce the essence of a story to a group of statement.
Mythologies are an important part of all religions of the world. Mythologies are retained, shared and changed in different ways, i.e oral or written.
Kinds of Mythologies include:
a) Historical Mythology – e.g. Moses, Budha, Jesus,Mohammad.
Histories of : a people, saints, prophets, nations, lands, wars, etc.
b) Creation Mythology – before history, before time
i.e – How the universe began
- How creation is organised – Cosmology
c) Destruction mythology – escatological ( Death and final destiny)
i.e – Natareja - Lord of dance, circle of fire
- Revelations – Describes the signs and events of the final days when Christ comes to reclaim the faithful.
- Creation and destruction mythologies tell us about a tradition’s notion of time , i.e cyclical, linear.
d) Divine mythologies- Stories about gods.
3. Doctrinal Dimensions
The intellectual components of religion however simple or complex. Especially developed in literate, scholarly tradition.
The role and influence of scripture upon the spread and continuity of ideas. Example of doctrine is Theology, systematic speculation about God and God’s relationship with human beings.
4. Ethical dimensions
Ehtics concerns what is good and bad , how one should live. Example:
- The ethic of love in christianity
- Sharia (law); pray five times daily, give alms, marrying up to four wives.
5. Social Dimensions
How people’s interactions are organised as part of their religion; i.e church, monastic, orders, Umma. All of society itself ; temism and synagogues..
Individual and institutional influence in religion.
6. Experiencial dimensions
Subjective, emotional side of religion. What goes on inside the person.
Basis of religious vitality and human significance, central to on-going individual religiosity, to the funding of a tradition itself.
a) Muhammad, conversion of Paul, Budha’s enlightenment; devotional movement, mystical tradition (direct experience of the divine intiment)
b) The very core of religion is experience and emotional, all else revolve around experience
c) William James (Varieties of Religius experience). James’ definition of religion ”...(based in) the feelings, acts, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitudes so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”
ELVIS123 answered the question on December 2, 2017 at 08:50