Tuesday March 25, 2013
REL/133 – World Religious Traditions I
Dr. Stephen Weisz
Elements of Religious Traditions Paper
Traditional saying of religion by a Webster Dictionary meaning will be a system of belief that involves worship of God or gods, prayer, ritual, and a moral code. Coming together to or to reunite with one another, which is like forming a culture group in the form of religion. The ritual beliefs are enacted and made through ceremonies, and a moral code is a way of teaching the "goodness" or "rightness."
Tradition, on the other hand, is an inherited religious practice or a social custom, which was, in the near or far past, introduced first by certain circumstances and then perpetuated by following generations. An urgent need to meet an exceptional event may linger long, a human experience over a length of time may turn into a custom, a social behavior in face of a particular event may continue, and a practice, born of a belief in an abnormal occurrence or an extraordinary experience, may turn into a tradition with the passage of time. Alien invasion, conquest, occupation, captivity, slavery, forced labor, forced marriage, and socialization as well inter religious rivalry also help to introduce, innovate, change, transform, hinder, stop, erase, or kill a tradition. It has many a cause to fall into a firm form. Created, adopted, borrowed, or imposed, once it becomes a tradition, people practicing it develop a kind of attachment to it. That makes them bound to it so much so that sometimes it becomes hard to introduce a change in it, leave aside abandoning it. In the ancient past, this attachment generally gave the tradition a religious hue, a hue that made it a part and parcel of religion (www.zoroastrian.org).

Sacredness, a distinction, is made between the sacred and the ordinary; ceremonies often emphasize this distinction through