History

Travel programs for young and old abound. Many colleges offer study-abroad programs, including summer courses that incorporate travel, as well as semester-and year-long study programs. Scholarships and other financial aid may be available for these programs. Large travel companies also offer summer tours for students, particularly to Europe and Asia; these companies are able to […]

Rituals and Celebrations: Travel and Pilgrimage One of the most universal religious practices is pilgrimage—travel undertaken by believers to important religious sites. But you do not have to belong to a specific religion to benefit from this ancient practice. Travel to religious sites is a wonderful way to experience the varieties of human belief firsthand,

Intellectual questioning Religions make claims about truth, yet some of their views are not easy to reconcile. For example, doesn’t the theory of reincarnation of the soul, as found in Hinduism, conflict with the teaching of several other religions that a soul has only one lifetime on earth? And how can the notion of an

Key Critical Issues The research-based approach to the study of religions, though valuable, brings problems and questions. Are we genuinely listening to the voices of the practitioners, or are we only paying attention to the experiences of the observer? Can an outsider be truly objective, or is the outsider merely imposing the theories of other

Linguistics and literary theory The study of linguistics has sometimes involved a search for patterns that may underlie all languages. But linguistics has occasionally also suggested general patterns and structures that may underlie something broader than language alone: human consciousness. This interest in underlying patterns has brought new attention to the possible structures behind religious

Although the mystical orientation is more common in religions that stress the immanence of the sacred or that are nontheistic, it is an important but less prominent tendency in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well. Any one of these three orientations may be dominant in a religion, yet the other two orientations might also be

  Mystical orientation The mystical orientation seeks union with a reality greater than oneself, such as with God, the process of nature, the universe, or reality as a whole. There are often techniques (such as seated meditation) for lessening the sense of one’s individual identity to help the individual experience a greater unity. The mystical

First Pattern: Views of the World and Life Religions must provide answers to the great questions that people ask. How did the universe come into existence, does it have a purpose, and will it end? What is time, and how should we make use of it? What should be our relationship to the world of