ANTH 1000 Lecture 22: Religion
7 Nov 2018
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11/7/18
The Anthropology of Religion
What is Religion?
● Is every religion ‘theistic’?
○ Theism: belief in a god or gods (deities)
○Atheist: without god; a non believer in deities
○ Agnostic: ‘I don’t know’
● Ecstatic: a kind of experience in which someone is transported out of normal rational
consciousness and into what appears to be a higher, more different experience
○ A ‘trance’ state
● Most religions involve people reaching out to some sort of higher power or spirit
● Cultural anthropologists look at all sorts of diverse cultures and belief systems when
doing research
○ They try to see where there are similar structures
○ They see the differences in ritual systems cross-culturally
Key Concepts
● Ritual & Belief: in a belief system, you cannot hold two contradictory beliefs at the same
time. A ritual is a set of procedures that are performed over and over again every time.
You follow the same sequence, use the same materials and do the same thing each time
● Symbol: something that stands for something else
● Witchcraft/Sorcery/Magic: an explanation of why things happen
● Shamanism: a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of
consciousness in order to perceive and interact with what they believe to be a spirit
world and channel these transcendental energies into this world
● Rites of Passage: (initiation rites) rituals that marking an important stage in a child’s life
○ Birth
○ Puberty
○ Marriage
○ Death
● Altered States of Consciousness
Document Summary
Ecstatic: a kind of experience in which someone is transported out of normal rational consciousness and into what appears to be a higher, more different experience. Most religions involve people reaching out to some sort of higher power or spirit. Cultural anthropologists look at all sorts of diverse cultures and belief systems when doing research. They try to see where there are similar structures. They see the differences in ritual systems cross-culturally. In a belief system, you cannot hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. A ritual is a set of procedures that are performed over and over again every time. You follow the same sequence, use the same materials and do the same thing each time. A practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with what they believe to be a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world.
