SACE Stage 2 Spiritualities, Religion and Meaning flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Lived religion

The everyday, practised form of a tradition as actually experienced by adherents, which may diverge from official doctrine or institutional rules.

Liminality

The transitional middle phase of a rite of passage or pilgrimage in which ordinary status and social structure are suspended, allowing transformation.

Mysticism

A form of spirituality emphasising direct personal experience of union with the divine, often beyond language and doctrine.

New Religious Movement

A recently formed religious group, usually centred on a founder or new revelation, often in tension with mainstream society.

Phenomenology of religion

A method that describes religious experience as it presents itself to the believer, bracketing the researcher's own beliefs about its truth.

Sacred and profane

Durkheim's distinction between things set apart as forbidden or holy and the ordinary everyday realm of practical life.

Indigenous spirituality

Spiritual systems grounded in Country, ancestral law, and kinship, where knowledge access may be governed by age, gender, or initiation.

Ritual

A prescribed, symbolically framed sequence of actions performed by a community, marking or effecting a change in status or time.

Monotheism

Belief in a single deity, characteristic of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, each with distinct claims about revelation and divine nature.

Four Noble Truths

The Buddhist core teaching that suffering exists, has a cause in craving, can cease, and that the Eightfold Path leads to that cessation.

Sect

A religious group formed in protest against a parent tradition, typically demanding high commitment and existing in tension with wider society.

Denomination

A religious body accepted as broadly legitimate within a society, coexisting with others and holding moderate tension with surrounding culture.

Weber's Protestant ethic

The thesis that Calvinist ascetic values, especially disciplined work and deferred reward, supported the emergence of modern capitalism.

Revelation

The claimed self-disclosure of the divine to humanity, transmitted in traditions through scripture, prophecy, or authoritative teaching.

Emic and etic

Paired perspectives: the insider's account using the tradition's own categories, and the outsider's analytical account using external scholarly categories.

Ecumenism

The movement seeking unity and cooperation among different branches of a single religious tradition, such as across Christian denominations.

Bhakti

A Hindu devotional path centring loving surrender to a personal deity, expressed through song, ritual, and communal worship.

Theravada and Mahayana

The two major Buddhist branches; Theravada emphasises the arhat's path, while Mahayana emphasises universal liberation and the bodhisattva ideal.

Logotherapy

Frankl's approach holding that the primary human drive is the search for meaning, realised through work, encounter, and attitude toward suffering.

Intrinsic religiosity

Allport's term for faith held as an end in itself, internalised and lived, generally associated with lower prejudice in research.

Extrinsic religiosity

Allport's term for faith used instrumentally for social belonging, status, or comfort, generally associated with higher prejudice in research.

Euthyphro dilemma

The question whether actions are good because God commands them or God commands them because they are already good.

Divine command theory

The metaethical position that moral rightness is grounded in God's commands, answering the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma.

Virtue ethics

An ethical framework focused on the character traits and dispositions of the agent rather than on rules or outcomes alone.

Secularisation thesis

The prediction that modernisation, pluralism, and rationalisation cause religion's decline in public life and personal belief.

Desecularisation

The observation that religion has re-entered public and political life, challenging predictions of inevitable secular decline.

Exclusivism

The position that one tradition alone holds saving truth, with other traditions regarded as incomplete or mistaken.

Inclusivism

The position that one tradition holds the fullest truth while other traditions may still mediate genuine, if partial, salvation.

Pluralism

The position that multiple religious traditions can independently offer valid paths to ultimate reality or salvation.

Worldview

A framework of assumptions answering questions about reality, knowledge, ethics, and purpose, shaping how adherents interpret experience.

Existential questions

Core concerns such as death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness that drive both anxiety and the construction of personal meaning.

Rite of passage

A ritual sequence of separation, liminality, and incorporation that marks and effects a change in a person's social status.