While religion is largely about belief systems, it is also about active traditions that allow individuals to manifest their belief in action. This is true across multiple religions, including Western religions like Christianity and religions from the East like Buddhism and Hinduism. Religious traditions can be very different depending upon the specific religion, but they all have meaning. This is what keeps them relevant to the religious individuals that practice them. Religious traditions can have many components. They can say or dictate certain things, and a religious tradition can also require an activity. Likewise, religious traditions are organized in various ways depending upon the nature of the religion and the socio-cultural elements that underpin the societies where each religion is practiced.
Religious traditions are largely about teachings, which can include a wide range of different things. Typically, religious traditions cover a wide range of different topics. Because religion concerns itself with the entirety of creation, most religious traditions will include some story of how the world came to be. For Native American religious traditions, these stories can be quite vague. Christianity, on the other hand, has a distinct story of how God came to create the earth and all of the things on it. Likewise, religious traditions say much about how a person should live his or her life. In Eastern traditions, religious doctrines say that people should focus on their internal well-being in order to reach a state of awareness or “nirvana.” In religions like Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, the doctrines are much more specific. They can concern themselves with the particular habits of individuals, including how people eat, what they wear, and how they marry.
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Religious traditions also “do” various things beyond simple belief. In Islam, individuals are required to complete five pillars, which are concerned with things like daily prayer, a pilgrimage to the holy city, and a dedication to charitable giving (Tritton, 1980). Likewise, religious traditions outline what people should do in order to worship or adhere to the religion. Christianity asks its adherents to pray in private, while Islam asks its adherents to pray in public. While worship can come in many different forms – from dances and sacrificial rituals in Native American religions to concern-like spectacles in Western religion – it is an important element of the religious tradition. In some cases, these practices are needed in order for a person to reach paradise or “Heaven.” In other cases, they are simply things that a person is asked to do in order to show his or her dedication to the cause.
Religious traditions can either be highly organized or loosely organized depending upon the religion. Hinduism, for instance, has a loose organizational structure (Hopkins, 1971). While there are people at the top who are recognized as the leaders of religious practice, there is far less structure going down the chain. In certain denominations of Christianity – including Roman Catholicism – there are many different roles that leaders play, including bishops, priests, and the like. Members, if they are not a part of the religion’s leadership, are seen as being equals. In some cases, though, the religion can elevate certain individuals to the position of “elder” or “deacon,” giving them a heightened amount of authority even though they are just typical individuals.
In religion, there are different things that various traditions believe, and these things make up the important parts of the study of religion. For instance, there are different beliefs about what happens to a person when that person dies. In addition, there are different beliefs on what a person needs to do to satisfy God. In some cases, a person is required to follow a set of rules, while in other cases, “salvation” is granted based on relief. These are largely the issues that divide religions into various categories, as each religion gets to determine its own interpretation of what it means to satisfy its own particular version of God.
- Hopkins, T. J. (1971). The Hindu Religious Tradition (The Religious Tradition of Man) by. Encino, Calif.: Dickenson Publishing Company.
- Tritton, A. S. (1980). Islam: belief and practices. Books for Libraries.
