SACE Stage 2 Spiritualities, Religion and Meaning cheat sheet

Spirituality denotes an individual's search for connection to what is held sacred or ultimate; it need not involve a deity, a text, or an institution.

Lived religion (practice-as-experienced) differs from official religion (doctrine and institutional norms); the two often diverge within the same tradition.

Indigenous spiritualities typically tie the sacred to Country, kinship, and ancestral law; knowledge may be restricted by gender, initiation, or seniority.

Mysticism describes direct, experiential union with the divine; it appears in Christian, Islamic (Sufi), Jewish (Kabbalah), and Hindu (bhakti) contexts.

Ritual has three common components: a prescribed sequence, a symbolic frame separating it from ordinary time, and a participant community.

Pilgrimage is a liminal journey: participants leave ordinary status, cross a threshold, and return with changed standing or obligation.

New Religious Movements are typically recent, centred on a founder or revelation, and often in tension with surrounding society; 'cult' is a polemical label, not a neutral category.

Spirituality without formal religion (e.g., nature-based, meditative, secular-sacred) is a documented and growing pattern in Australian census data.

The five largest global traditions are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism; internal diversity within each usually exceeds differences between them.

Abrahamic traditions share monotheism and lineal narrative; they differ on revelation, scripture status, and the role of law.

Hinduism is internally plural: Vedanta, bhakti, and yoga are distinct paths, and 'Hinduism' as a unified label is partly colonial-era consolidation.

Buddhism centres on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path; Theravada and Mahayana differ on the path's accessibility and on the status of the Buddha.

The sociological typology of religious organisation runs church, denomination, sect, and cult/NRM, classified by tension with society and by membership basis.

Durkheim's sacred/profane distinction and Weber's Protestant ethic thesis are foundational, and both are contested by later scholarship.

Religion functions socially through legitimation, social cohesion, and meaning-making; conflict theory reads the same functions as maintaining inequality.

Insider and outsider accounts (emic/etic) can both be valid; phenomenological method brackets the researcher's own beliefs when describing a tradition.

A worldview comprises answers to ontology, epistemology, ethics, and teleology; comparing traditions requires matching which question is being answered.

Frankl's logotherapy holds that meaning is found through creative work, experiential encounter, and the attitude taken toward unavoidable suffering.

Intrinsic religiosity (faith as an end) correlates differently with prejudice than extrinsic religiosity (faith as a means); Allport's distinction is the standard reference.

Ethical frameworks include deontology (duty), consequentialism (outcomes), and virtue ethics (character); religious ethics usually blends at least two.

The Euthyphro dilemma asks whether acts are good because God commands them or commanded because they are good; divine command theory answers the first horn.

Secularisation theory predicts declining public religion with modernity; desecularisation and post-secular accounts note religion's persistence in public life.

Existential questions (death, freedom, isolation, meaninglessness) are identified in existential psychology as sources of both anxiety and meaning-making.

Interfaith and ecumenical dialogue distinguish exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism as positions on the truth of other traditions.