Religion Course Study Guide: Weeks 1-7

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, theoretical frameworks, and concepts across Weeks 1 through 7 of the Religion Course Study Guide.

Religious literacy

The ability to understand and analyze the beliefs, practices, and texts of religions and how religion shapes history, politics, and culture, without needing to be a believer.

First Amendment

Part of the U.S. Bill of Rights protecting religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition, containing two religion clauses: the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses.

Establishment clause

A constitutional provision stating that government may not establish an official religion or favor one religion over others, or religion over non-religion.

Free exercise clause

A constitutional provision stating that government may not prohibit people from practicing their religion, though practice can be limited when it conflicts with compelling public interests.

Religion (etymology)

Derived from the Latin religio; ancient writers linked it either to relegere ('to re-read/gather carefully', per Cicero) or religare ('to bind', per Lactantius).

Content approach

An approach that defines religion by what it contains or what people believe, such as belief in gods, spirits, or the supernatural (associated with Tylor).

Function approach

An approach that defines religion by what it does, such as creating social cohesion, providing meaning, easing anxiety, or reinforcing morality (associated with Durkheim and Malinowski).

Dimension approach

An approach associated with Ninian Smart that treats religion as having multiple variable aspects, including ritual, narrative/myth, doctrine, ethics, community, experience, and material objects.

Anthropomorphism

Attributing human form, emotions, or behavior to gods, animals, or nature; used both as a critique of religion by Xenophanes and as a lens Europeans applied to others' gods.

Apotheosis

The elevation of a human being to divine status, as seen with Roman emperors or Heracles.

Euhemerism

The theory of Euhemerus (c. 300 BCE) proposing that gods originated as great historical kings, heroes, or benefactors who were deified after death.

Religio vs. superstitio

In ancient Rome, religio signified proper, state-approved worship, whereas superstitio signified excessive, foreign, or improper practice; early Christians later inverted and reused the terms.

Dharma

A Sanskrit term in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions signifying duty, law, order, righteousness, or teaching, which has no direct equivalent to the Western category of 'religion'.

Sacredness

The quality of being set apart, powerful, and deserving special treatment or reverence, famously contrasted with the profane by Émile Durkheim.

Fetishism / fetisso

Derived from the Portuguese feitiço ('charm'); originally applied by Portuguese traders to West African objects thought to be worshiped, and later labeled by Charles de Brosses as the earliest form of religion.

T-O Map

A medieval European world map consisting of a circle (O) divided by a T into Asia, Europe, and Africa, with Jerusalem situated at the center.

Three origins of 'religion' as a category

The conceptual framework showing that religion emerges from comparison (encounters between peoples), contestation (disputes over true religion vs. superstition), and consequences (legal status, colonization, rights).

Cannibal (etymology/misunderstanding)

A label that arose when Columbus linked the Taíno name Carib/Caniba to the Great Khan; Spain later legalized the enslavement of 'cannibals', using the term to depict Native Americans as savages without true religion.

Sacrifice (etymology)

A ritual offering, often involving the killing or destruction of something valuable, derived from the Latin sacra + facere ('to make sacred').

Sacrifice as economy

The framework understanding sacrificial ritual as an exchange or repayment of cosmic debt (do ut des: 'I give so that you will give') that mirrored tribute systems and political power.

Codex Mendoza

A pictorial manuscript (c. 1541) produced for Spanish viceroy Mendoza to send to Charles V, recording Aztec rulers, conquests, daily life, and tribute collections.

Savagery, Barbarism, Civilization

A 19th-century evolutionary scheme formulated by Lewis Henry Morgan that ranked human societies into hierarchical stages and was used to justify colonization.

Triple Alliance

A military and political pact formed c. 1428 among Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan that established the Aztec empire and extracted tribute from conquered territories.

Huitzilopochtli

The patron deity of the Mexica, associated with the sun and warfare, who required offerings of human hearts to overcome darkness daily.

Quetzalcoatl

The Aztec feathered serpent deity associated with wind, learning, priesthood, and creation.

Tlaloc

The Aztec god of rain, water, and fertility, associated with child sacrifice where tears were viewed as an omen of favorable rainfall.

Xipe Totec

'Our Lord the Flayed One', the Aztec deity of agricultural renewal and spring whose priests wore flayed human skins symbolizing new vegetation.

Tenochtitlan

The Mexica island capital in Lake Texcoco founded c. 1325 with the Templo Mayor at its center; conquered by Cortés in 1521 and rebuilt as Mexico City.

Marina / Malinche

A Nahua woman who served as interpreter, advisor, and mediator for Hernán Cortés; remembered variously as a traitor ('malinchista'), victim, or founding mother of mestizo Mexico.

La Noche Triste

'The Sad Night' (June 30, 1520), marking a major defeat in which Spanish forces suffered heavy losses and fled Tenochtitlan following the death of Moctezuma.

Flower Wars

Ritualized military engagements fought between the Triple Alliance and neighboring regions like Tlaxcala to train soldiers and capture victims for sacrifice.

Symbolism of gold (Aztec vs. Spanish)

Spaniards viewed gold as currency and material wealth, whereas the Aztecs viewed it as sacred material linked to the sun and gods ('excrement of the gods' in Nahuatl).

Sympathetic magic

A ritual principle identified by James George Frazer holding that 'like produces like' through imitation (homeopathic magic).

Contact (contagious) magic

A ritual principle identified by James George Frazer holding that objects or persons once in physical contact continue to exert an influence on each other over distance.

Syncretism

The blending of beliefs and practices from different religious traditions, such as the devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe at Tepeyac combining Catholic and Nahua traditions.

Seven reasons for sacrifice

(1) To sustain the gods; (2) expiation of guilt / scapegoat; (3) communion or communication with God; (4) repetition of origins; (5) offering, gift, homage, or tribute as spectacle; (6) political intimidation; (7) barter (do ut des).

Ritual

A formal, repeated, symbolic action set apart from ordinary life that expresses and creates meaning, relationships, or social and cosmic order.

Rite of passage

A structured ceremonial process marking a transition between social statuses or life stages, divided by Arnold van Gennep into separation, liminality, and reincorporation.

Liminality

The middle phase of a rite of passage characterized by being 'betwixt and between', where normal status is stripped away and the initiate is open to transformation.

Communitas

Victor Turner's term for the intense feeling of social equality, fellowship, and togetherness experienced by participants sharing a liminal state outside ordinary hierarchy.

Polyvalence

The quality of a religious symbol, site, or ritual possessing multiple layers of meaning simultaneously for different participants or observers.

Hajj

The annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca occurring in the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, involving the wearing of ihram, circumambulation of the Kaaba (tawaf), and standing at Arafat.

Lakota Sun Dance

An annual Plains ceremonial gathering of prayer, fasting, dance, and bodily offering centered around a sacred cottonwood tree, aimed at renewing the people and the cosmos.

Wakan / Wakan Tanka

Lakota terms for the divine; wakan denotes that which is holy, powerful, or mysterious, while Wakan Tanka represents the 'Great Mystery' or supreme sacred whole.

White Buffalo Calf Woman

A sacred female figure in Lakota origin accounts who gifted the sacred pipe and fundamental religious rites to the Lakota people.

Waga chun

The Lakota term for the sacred cottonwood ('rustling tree') erected at the focal center of the Sun Dance lodge, functioning as an axis mundi.

Cosmogenic repetition

The ceremonial re-enactment of the original creation of the world, renewing the cosmos through ritual action (associated with Mircea Eliade).

Invented rituals

Newly constructed rituals, such as Kwanzaa (created in 1966), that utilize traditional aesthetics, structures, and authority to foster collective identity or social transformation.

Technological rituals

Rituals intended to manage or control natural processes for practical human ends, including rites for rain, planting, and hunting.

Therapeutic rituals

Rituals designed to cure or prevent affliction, sickness, or misfortune and restore equilibrium to individuals or communities (e.g., healing ceremonies, exorcisms).

Ideological rituals

Rituals performed to articulate, inculcate, and reinforce cultural values, civic duty, and the prevailing social order (e.g., rites of passage, national ceremonies).

World religions

A 19th-century comparative taxonomy categorizing widespread, text-based faiths (e.g., Christianity, Islam, Buddhism) that transcend local geography and actively or potentially welcome converts.

World's Parliament of Religions

An 1893 interfaith assembly held at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago that popularized the comparative 'world religions' model within a Western Christian-centered frame.

Indigenous religions

Place-bound, community-oriented traditions rooted in ancestral lineages, specific landscapes, and oral transmission that generally do not proselytize.

Diaspora / diasporic religions

Religious practices maintained by communities displaced from their ancestral geographic homelands (e.g., Judaism, Vodun, Orisha traditions) that preserve ties to a distant place.

World making

The capacity of religious traditions to construct a structured, meaningful world (cosmos) out of chaotic reality through mythic narrative, spatial design, and ritual performance.

Ascetic / asceticism

Rigorous, disciplined self-denial (including fasting, poverty, celibacy, or solitude) undertaken to attain heightened spiritual insight or transformation.

Axis mundi

The perceived 'axis of the world' or symbolic cosmic center (such as a sacred tree, mountain, temple, or city) connecting the celestial realm, the earth, and the underworld.

Canon

An authoritative, closed collection of sacred scriptures or doctrines that sets orthodoxy, establishes religious boundaries, and facilitates mobility across locations.

Five Pillars of Islam

The fundamental obligatory practices of Islam: Creed (shahada), Prayer (salat), Fasting (sawm), Alms-giving (zakat / sadaqa), and Pilgrimage (hajj).

Theodicy

The theological inquiry, named by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, that attempts to reconcile the existence of suffering and evil with an omnipotent, benevolent deity.

Dualism

A worldview dividing reality into two co-equal or opposing forces, such as good versus evil, light versus darkness, spirit versus matter, or sacred versus profane.

Spiritualism

A movement originating in the mid-19th century through the Fox sisters maintaining that living individuals can interact with spirits of the deceased through mediums.

Agent ambiguity

The uncertainty surrounding whether an individual in a state of possession or trance is acting on their own volition, under divine or demonic control, or as a fraud.

Ecstasy vs. enstasy

Ecstasy ('standing outside oneself') describes a shaman's controlled soul-travel to the spirit world; enstasy ('standing within') describes spirit possession where an external entity mounts or displaces the host's consciousness.

Technologies of epiphany

Systematic physical and contemplative practices—including fasting, rhythmic drumming, chanting, dance, psychoactive plants, and sensory deprivation—employed to induce sacred experiences.

Qualities of mystical experience

The four markers formulated by William James: Ineffability (defies verbal expression), Noetic quality (imparts profound knowledge), Transience (short duration), and Passivity (feeling grasped by a higher agency).

Diabolical mysticism

The institutional categorization of ecstatic states or possession phenomena as demonic deception or the work of the devil to suppress uncontrolled charisma.

Ashe (ase)

A foundational Yoruba spiritual concept signifying life force, divine energy, and the potent authority to bring events and reality into manifestation.

Juca Rosa

A prominent 19th-century Afro-Brazilian religious leader in Rio de Janeiro whose spirit-possession practices attracted both elite and lower-class followers before he was prosecuted for sorcery and fraud.

Leibniz's three values of free will

The philosophical prerequisites of moral agency according to Leibniz: intelligence (awareness of action), spontaneity (source of action originating within the self), and contingency (action not logically necessitated).

Disenchantment

Max Weber's concept describing how modern rationalization, scientific materialism, and bureaucracy strip the natural world of autonomous spirits, magic, and inherent meaning.

Animism

The understanding that non-human entities—including plants, animals, landforms, and inanimate objects—possess spiritual agency, personhood, or consciousness.

Anthropocentrism

The perspective centering human beings as the apex or sole possessors of intrinsic moral value in nature, critiqued by scholars like Lynn White Jr. for enabling environmental exploitation.

Ho'ailona

Hawaiian natural signs or omens manifesting through atmospheric phenomena, animal behaviors, or weather patterns by which ancestral spirits and gods communicate.

Wao Akua

The high, wild, and sacred 'realm of the gods' in traditional Hawaiian topography, encompassing elevated mountaintops like Mauna Kea.

Kino lau

The Hawaiian concept of 'many bodies', referring to the myriad physical forms (such as particular flora, fauna, rain, clouds, or lava) assumed by deities and ancestors in nature.

Wakea and Papahanaumoku

The Sky Father (Wakea) and Earth Mother (Papahanaumoku) whose union genealogically birthed the Hawaiian islands and the Hawaiian people, establishing an ethic of familial kinship with the land.