What is a religion? What is a religion? What is a religion? What is a religion?What is a religion?
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Religions are combinations of the grassroots practices and cultural norms of the lay believers, with the high-brow theologizing and intellectualization of the religious professionals. The two forms of a religion often struggle against each other. Folk practices are resilient to top-down declarations of what is or isn't supposed to be part of a religion, and often reforming popular beliefs results only in name-changes and other surface changes, leaving underlying practices more or less as they were. When academics codify the religion they often fail to account for - or completely ignore - the practices of the laypeople. When documenting a religion we cannot rely only on the testimonies of the masses, who might en masse be taken in by fads, nor rely only on the definitions of the professionals, academics and clerics, who only represent a small portion of believers. Therefore the only pragmatic route is to consider religions to be pluralities and umbrella terms.
The grassroots of a religion is nearly always a combination of beliefs and practices from multiple historical sources. Magical thinking, ritualistic habits and popular beliefs all tend to survive within a culture even though its official religion may change. On the other hand, the formal and scholarly religion of clerics and religious professionals is complex, more complete and resilient to change. Theology is demanding to study and is frequently very convoluted because the religion's scholars debate the weakspots and difficult spots of the tenets and work out complex philosophies to circumvent them. The more difficult the area of study of a religion, the more maze-making its scholars will do in attempts to explain irrationality. But the more complex and difficult the intellectual aspect of a religion, the more the lowly masses will fail to comprehend or implement it, and the bigger the divide will be between the cultural and scholarly versions of the religion. A religion is always a contradictory mix of both what the leaders say the religion is, plus what the mass of the actual followers do and believe
As a Christian, I was first introduced to my Catholic Religion (taught the beliefs, practices and customs of my Catholic Religion). I learned all about the Blessed Mother of Jesus, and certain traditional rituals.
As a Christian, around 16 yrs old I became aware off spiritualness and wanted to find a religion that would allow me to grow into my spiritual self without.. all of the stigmas and regulations regarding church attire, or the gossip about who the minister is running with, which member is pregnant from this deacon!
Then I followed my mother's religion, missionary baptist... awesome choir, older minister whom could preach... and I learned more about the Bible Lessons or stories.
With that...
Religion is simply that; man made, man managed, and man owned.