Mircea Eliade And Religion Essay

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), influenced by Durkheim and Otto, further contributed to the discussion by examining the sacred. Religion, to him, is an aspect of a pre-modern society, and a “religious man” develops a sacred lifestyle. While his definition of sacred is simple (as the opposite of profanity) (see. Eliade 1957), he studied different aspects of sacredness extensively. The concept of hierophany gave structure and orientation to the world, in which established a sacred order. Having established a sacred order, ‘religious man’ would attempt to center his life to sacredness, participating sociation in a sacred place which stands as a threshold between the sacred on the inside and profane on the outside. ‘Religious man’ experience sacred

James understood religion in terms of experiences, and religious experiences as regular experiences we can have on a daily basis. In this statement alone, we can conclude that him and his followers would see SBNR as a religious community because they dismissed the need for institutions and regard more on personal experiences because they see it to be more fundamental to the study of the sociology of religion. As seemingly mundane as regular experiences, ideas and insights that were stem from the religious experience were further solidified and proved to be valued heavily for the individual’s life. Religious experience is often depicted as a way to proves the follower’s perception of truth, and one can experience religious experience by maintaining happiness (what he called “Healthy mindedness”). Religious experience is not sacredly special, institutional, and universal, it is the individuals who gave the aspect of religiousness into regular experiences. He stated that organized religion must recognize the importance of personal religious experiences, as well as tolerating religious diversity. In this sense, the spiritual but not religious community can be categorized under the umbrella term of religion, its individualistic characters encourage individuals to have personal experiences regarding the deity, thus being