Test Questions & Answers Ch.13 Religion Ritual And Belief

Chapter 13: Religion: Ritual and Belief

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 01

1) A symbolic system socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life is

Feedback: Religion is a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life that relate to ultimate issues of humankind’s existence.
Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. mana.

b. religion.

c. worldview.

d. totemism.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 02

2) The earliest anthropologist to compare religious and spiritual beliefs around the world was E. B. Tylor. For him the heart of religious beliefs was the belief in

Feedback: The British anthropologist EB Tylor suggested that religion had to do with belief in spiritual beings. For him, primitive religions were based on a fundamental error in thinking. He reasoned that people in all societies had dreams, but the so-called primitive peoples had misinterpreted their dreams as reality, transforming the characters in their dreams into souls or spirits. Tylor called such beliefs in spirits animism, which refers to the belief that inanimate objects such as trees, rocks, cliffs, hills, and rivers are animated by spiritual forces or beings. For him, the ideas that trees and rocks might have souls and that carved images might contain spirits were just other examples of this same “primitive” misunderstanding. Tylor also reasoned that as societies evolved and became more complex, the supernatural beings they believed in gave way to demigods and mythical heroes, gods and goddesses, eventually to a single, all-powerful God, and finally to science.
Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. spirits.

b. magic.

c. the sacred.

d. totems.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 03

3) Stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities are called

Feedback: Rituals are stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities.
Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. rituals.

b. magic.

c. ceremonies.

d. witchcraft.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 04

4) The conceptualization of the world offering a set of unquestioned assumptions about it and how it works is called

Feedback: Worldview is a general approach to or set of shared, unquestioned assumptions about the world and how it works

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. religion.

b. perspective.

c. worldview.

d. fundamentalism.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 05

5) The core of Anthony F. C. Wallace's understanding of religion was belief in

Feedback: At the core of Wallace’s definition of religion was belief in the supernatural. But in surveying societies around the world, he recognized that some peoples believed in gods or spirits, while others, like the ancient Hawaiians, were concerned with much more amorphous powers and forces that anthropologists had come to call mana, which can be understood as raw supernatural power. Just touching things—such as a possession of the chief or even a chief’s person—permeated with mana could cause sickness or death for any commoner. High-ranking chiefs, whose bodies were believed to possess mana, could unintentionally cause harm to any commoner who touched the royal body or who sat at a level higher than that of the chief.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. supernatural things.

b. the afterlife.

c. Jesus.

d. God.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 06

6) Geertz's approach to religion is a style of analysis that looks at the underlying symbolic and cultural interconnections within a society; this is often referred to as

Feedback: Unsatisfied with Wallace’s notion of religion as simply belief in the supernatural, American cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1966) proposed another kind of definition that could help explain why beliefs are deeply held and motivational, even to the point of risking harm to oneself. Geertz argued that religion was a cultural system, or as he put it a “system of symbols,” consisting of five elements: Religion is (1) a system of symbols which act to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Page reference: How should we understand religion and religious beliefs?

a. structural-functionalism.

b. neo-evolutionism.

c. symbolic anthropology.

d. the interpretive approach.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 07

7) The interpretivist approach to religion

Feedback: Interpretive approach is a kind of analysis that interprets the underlying symbolic and cultural interconnections within a society.
Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. is one of understanding religion as belief in supernatural things.

b. is one of stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities.

c. argues there was nothing simpleminded about the myths, legends, and religious practices of tribal leaders.

d. looks at the underlying symbolic and cultural interconnections within a society.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 08

8) A key feature of religious beliefs and behavior is that they are rooted in:

Feedback: A key feature of religious beliefs and behavior is that they are rooted in social behavior and social action. Beliefs get most of their power from being socially enacted repeatedly through rituals and other religious behaviors. By acting together, the community of believers begins to accept the group’s symbolic interpretations of the world as if they were tangible, authentic, and real rather than merely interpretation.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. social behavior and social action.

b. phenomena.

c. historical documents.

d. dogma.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 09

9) Polytheism is

Feedback: Polytheism is the belief in many gods.
Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. belief in one God.

b. belief in many Gods.

c. belief in the power of plants and animals.

d. an explanatory system of causation that does not follow naturalistic explanations.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 10

10) Which of the following is an example of American totemism?

Feedback: Totemism is a system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species called “totems” as an emblem.
Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. The cross

b. Money

c. Beauty

d. Sports team mascots

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 11

11) Which of these acts as objects for group ritual activity and represents powerful symbols for people to focus on?

Feedback: Totemism is a system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species called “totems” as an emblem.
Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. Totems

b. Mana

c. Magic

d. Religion

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 12

12) A voodoo doll is a good illustration of

Feedback: Frazer described the law of similarities as some point of similarity between an aspect of the magical rite and the desired goal. A good illustration is a “voodoo doll,” which is an image that represents the maker’s enemy. By poking or stabbing the image, they hope to produce pain in the corresponding part of the victim’s body. For the Inuit, this principle also applies to charms or fishhooks that represent a seal and allow fishermen or hunters to catch fish as easily as a seal does. Today, anthropologists often speak of these similarities as metaphors, since the charm or fishhook carved as a seal is not really a seal but merely an object that resembles a seal
Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

a. magic that follows the law of contagion.

b. magic that follows the law of similarity.

c. animism.

d. totemism.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 13

13) A trance is

Feedback: Trance is a semi-conscious state typically brought on by hypnosis, ritual drumming and singing, or hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline or peyote.
Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. a semiconscious state typically brought on by hypnosis, ritual drumming, and singing, or hallucinogenic drugs such as mescaline or peyote.

b. an incantation and the manipulation of special objects.

c. a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life.

d. raw supernatural power.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 14

14) In some Pentecostal and charismatic Christian religions adherents experience an ecstatic religious happening (often associated with shamanism), which is known as

Feedback: Speaking in tongues is the phenomenon of speaking in an apparently unknown language, often in an energetic and fast-paced way.
Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. praying.

b. speaking in tongues.

c. pilgrimage.

d. meditation.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 15

15) Anthropologist George Gmelch studied which sport where he found that players used a lot of magic?

Feedback: Magic is an explanatory system of causation that does not follow naturalistic explanations, often working at a distance without direct physical contact.
Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

a. Soccer

b. Basketball

c. Baseball

d. Hockey

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 16

16) What is a life cycle ritual that marks a person's or group of persons' transition from one social state to another?

Feedback: Rite of passage is any life cycle rite that marks a person’s or group’s transition from one social state to another.
Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

a. Magic

b. Animism

c. Totemism

d. Rite of passage

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 17

17) What are people who belong to conservative religious movements that advocate a return to traditional principles called?

Feedback: A fundamentalist is a person belonging to a religious movement that advocates a return to fundamental or traditional principles.
Page reference: How Is Religion Linked to Political and Social Action?

a. Believers

b. Practitioners

c. Faithful

d. Fundamentalists

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 18

18) For early anthropologists, primitive religions were based on a fundamental error in thinking.

Feedback: Religion is a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life that relate to ultimate issues of humankind’s existence.
Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 19

19) Beliefs get most of their power from being socially enacted repeatedly through rituals and other religious behaviors.

Feedback: Religious beliefs and the rituals that support them differ strikingly in their details across the major world religions, but also among the diverse societies of Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands. Common to all, however, is the fact that religious beliefs offer people a roadmap for how people should live and how they should understand other people’s behaviors, actions, and ideas.
Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 20

20) Most anthropologists currently see the traditional religions of small-scale tribal societies as “primitive,” based on simpleminded ideas not linked to reality.

Feedback: Religion is a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life that relate to ultimate issues of humankind’s existence.
Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 21

21) Judaism, Christianity, and Islam became state religions, whose religious message and ritual supported the government of the state.

Feedback: Most of us are more familiar with the universal monotheistic world religions—or religions that claim to be universally significant to all people—of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, than with the small-scale religions discussed previously. All three of these monotheistic world religions provided a general message that was applicable to all people, not just the members of a small clan or social group. For the most part, all three provided a positive, uplifting message for adherents, and all three became identified with the ruling governments. All three also became state religions, whose religious message and ritual supported the government of the state.

Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 24

24) A limitation of Wallace's definition of religion is that it is

Feedback: At the core of Wallace’s definition of religion was belief in the supernatural. But in surveying societies around the world, he recognized that some peoples believed in gods or spirits, while others, like the ancient Hawaiians, were concerned with much more amorphous powers and forces that anthropologists had come to call mana, which can be understood as raw supernatural power. Just touching things—such as a possession of the chief or even a chief’s person—permeated with mana could cause sickness or death for any commoner. High-ranking chiefs, whose bodies were believed to possess mana, could unintentionally cause harm to any commoner who touched the royal body or who sat at a level higher than that of the chief.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. too flexible.

b. not ethnographically informed.

c. too static.

d. too variable.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 25

25) Until the 1920s anthropologists interpreted totemism as evidence of a group's

Feedback: Early anthropologists studying American Indian societies observed that people identified with particular animals, often claiming to be descended from them. These people indicated their clans, lineages, tribes, or other social groups with emblems, usually animals, plants, places, and geographic or meteorological features. Anthropologists usually refer to these emblems as totems, and totemism as the system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species. Totems help create social cohesiveness by stressing group identity, focusing group and private rituals on totems. Some Native American societies simultaneously employed color symbolism, directional symbols, and species as totems. Until the 1920s, anthropologists interpreted totemism as evidence of a group’s limited intellectual capacity, since people could not possibly be descended from eagles, wolves, or pythons.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. spiritual flexibility.

b. sophistication.

c. solidarity.

d. limited intellectual capacity.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 26

26) Anthropologist Ralph Linton reported that Americans in the military during the First World War adopted a reverential attitude toward the rainbow emblem that represented their military units that resembled the ways tribal people revered their

Feedback: Totemism is a system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species called “totems” as an emblem.
Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

a. totems.

b. witchcraft.

c. bush spirits.

d. rites of passage.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 27

27) Which of the following is not a feature of sympathetic magic?

Feedback: Sympathetic magic is any magical rite that relies on the supernatural to produce its outcome without working through a specific supernatural being such as a spirit, demon, or deity. It operates on the behaviour of imitation.
Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

a. It works with the help of a specific supernatural being.

b. It relies on supernatural powers to produce its outcome.

c. It works on the principles of similarity contagion.

d. Informally, it can also be called imitative magic.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 28

28) An example of the law of contagion is

Feedback: Frazer described the law of similarities as some point of similarity between an aspect of the magical rite and the desired goal. A good illustration is a “voodoo doll,” which is an image that represents the maker’s enemy. By poking or stabbing the image, they hope to produce pain in the corresponding part of the victim’s body. For the Inuit, this principle also applies to charms or fishhooks that represent a seal and allow fishermen or hunters to catch fish as easily as a seal does. Today, anthropologists often speak of these similarities as metaphors, since the charm or fishhook carved as a seal is not really a seal but merely an object that resembles a seal
Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

a. throwing darts at a picture of your enemy.

b. creating a voodoo doll.

c. casting a love spell using a shirt of the person you have a crush on.

d. dressing like your idol.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 29

29) A rise in fundamentalism is often seen when

Feedback: Since the 1960s, the most significant change in U.S. religion has been how much more active religious organizations have become in public life, particularly among the conservative churches that call themselves fundamentalist, people belonging to conservative religious movements that advocate a return to fundamental or traditional principles. Fundamentalist TV preachers have expanded their broadcasting since the early 1980s, and conservative religious groups and religious organizations have been as deeply involved in elections and politics as ever. The rise of fundamentalism is not unique to the United States, either. Across the world, conservative groups have turned to fundamentalism to make sense of and to confront changes that are happening all around them. As in the United States, fundamentalist religion and politics are deeply engaged with one another in other societies as well.
Page reference: How Is Religion Linked to Political and Social Action?

a. things are stable.

b. there are many changes in society.

c. there is peacetime.

d. people are in rural settings.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 30

30) A common element among fundamentalists is a

Feedback: What we do see in fundamentalism is that membership and a sense of belonging to a community is an important feature of religious organizations in industrial societies where it is easy for individuals to feel anonymous. Indeed, part of the power of any religious organizations (churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious centers) is that they bring people together, provide them social support, and give them an identity within a broader secular world. Anthropologists have long understood that this process of belonging and the social action associated with group membership is bolstered by important symbols.
Page reference: How Is Religion Linked to Political and Social Action?

a. desire to be violent.

b. disregard for the law and for science.

c. pervasive sense of belonging to their group.

d. superficial understanding of religious texts.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 31

31) Hawaiians and other Polynesian islanders traditionally believed that mana, sacred or supernatural power, existed within certain objects, at sacred spaces, and in persons, including all of the following except

Feedback: At the core of Wallace’s definition of religion was belief in the supernatural. But in surveying societies around the world, he recognized that some peoples believed in gods or spirits, while others, like the ancient Hawaiians, were concerned with much more amorphous powers and forces that anthropologists had come to call mana, which can be understood as raw supernatural power. Just touching things—such as a possession of the chief or even a chief’s person—permeated with mana could cause sickness or death for any commoner. High-ranking chiefs, whose bodies were believed to possess mana, could unintentionally cause harm to any commoner who touched the royal body or who sat at a level higher than that of the chief.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. the chief's shadow.

b. things the chief had touched.

c. the sites where rituals were performed.

d. the sun.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 32

32) Which approach to religious beliefs and behaviors do the textbook authors feel is most effective at explaining why people engage in religious behaviors, especially behaviors?

Feedback: A key feature of religious beliefs and behavior is that they are rooted in social behavior and social action. Beliefs get most of their power from being socially enacted repeatedly through rituals and other religious behaviors. By acting together, the community of believers begins to accept the group’s symbolic interpretations of the world as if they were tangible, authentic, and real rather than merely interpretation.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

a. The idea that religion began with a belief in spirits

b. The notion that religion concerns beliefs and behaviors about the supernatural

c. The idea that religion is a system of symbols

d. The idea that religion is a system of social action

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 38

38) Shamans usually act simultaneously as political leaders and healers in their communities.

Feedback: As early as the sixteenth century, European travelers from Russia and central Europe encountered tribes in Siberia whose religious rituals involved spiritual leaders called shamans, religious leaders who communicate the needs of the living to the spirit world, usually through some form of ritual trance or other altered state of consciousness. These specialists were not political leaders but focused on healing and ensuring the health and prosperity of the community using drum rituals to connect with the spirits.

Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 39

39) Nearly all of the ancient societies in the Middle East and the Mediterranean were monotheistic.

Feedback: Nearly all of the ancient societies in the Middle East and Mediterranean were polytheistic, with complex state rituals that promoted an image of the state and its human leaders as superior to ordinary men. The main exception to polytheism in the ancient world was the ancient Hebrews, whose religion focused on a single god called Yahweh. In all likelihood, Yahweh began as a local deity that was worshiped and venerated by one of the tribes of Israel that became the ancient Hebrews. It seems likely that Yahweh was the deity of Moses’ tribe, and after the exodus from Egypt under Ramses the Great of the nineteenth dynasty, his clan or tribal deity gradually pushed out the other gods.

Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 40

40) Buddhism is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic.

Feedback: Buddhism encourages its members to strive toward greater enlightenment. In this sense, Buddhism is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic, but is as much a moral code of conduct as a religion. The rituals often involve meditation and devotional acts aimed at turning people from this-worldly desires (wealth, sex, power, etc.) to concern for other people and all other creatures, and a state of enlightenment called Nirvana.

Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 13 Question 41

41) Secular rituals that celebrate the state or nation, particular occupations, or other identities may achieve many of the same ends as religious rituals.

Feedback: Rituals are stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities. For some, secular rituals that celebrate the state or nation, particular occupations, or other identities may achieve many of the same ends as religious rituals. For others, practicing scientific research may construct a worldview similar to that of people with more traditional religious beliefs. Geertz’s definition of religion was specifically designed to be as useful for secular worldviews with a rich array of secular symbols as it is for more traditional religions.

Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 42

42) Religious ideas are typically associated with beliefs about the supernatural. What argument can be used to explain the beliefs and worldviews of physicists or geneticists, who may consider themselves nonreligious?

Feedback: Practicing scientific research may construct a worldview similar to that of people with more traditional religious beliefs. Geertz’s definition of religion was specifically designed to be as useful for secular worldviews with a rich array of secular symbols as it is for more traditional religions.

Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. Most religions are really no more than a particular worldview.

b. It would be unfair to leave scientist out of the afterlife, even if they do not believe in it.

c. Nonbelievers may not have a religion, but deep down they must believe in something.

d. We don't need to study physicists or geneticists because they are well educated and it would be better to learn from their experiences.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 43

43) Which of the theories of totemism discussed in the text could help us understand the importance of mascots in American sports?

Feedback: Totemism is a system of thought that associates particular social groups with specific animal or plant species called “totems” as an emblem.
Page reference: What Forms Does Religion Take?

a. Mascots are not religious icons, so religious theories cannot help us understand them.

b. Mascots are symbols of the team and celebrate team identity.

c. Sports fans are so enthusiastic about their sports that they think that their mascots actually are spiritually connected with their teams.

d. Mascots are organized on vertical poles as well.

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 13 Question 48

48) Does Anthony F. C. Wallace's definition of religion as beliefs and behaviors with respect to the supernatural cause us to abandon E. B. Tylor's notion that the core of religion is the belief in spirits?

Feedback: At the core of Wallace’s definition of religion was belief in the supernatural. But in surveying societies around the world, he recognized that some peoples believed in gods or spirits, while others, like the ancient Hawaiians, were concerned with much more amorphous powers and forces that anthropologists had come to call mana, which can be understood as raw supernatural power. The British anthropologist EB Tylor suggested that religion had to do with belief in spiritual beings. For him, primitive religions were based on a fundamental error in thinking. He reasoned that people in all societies had dreams, but the so-called primitive peoples had misinterpreted their dreams as reality, transforming the characters in their dreams into souls or spirits. Tylor called such beliefs in spirits animism, which refers to the belief that inanimate objects such as trees, rocks, cliffs, hills, and rivers are animated by spiritual forces or beings.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 13 Question 49

49) Why would baseball players be particularly prone to using various kinds of personal magic, while football player tend not to do so?

Feedback: Americans tend to believe that modernization has eliminated magical thought in our culture. Yet many of the elements observed in non-Western societies also occur in contemporary America. In his study of baseball players, for example, anthropologist George Gmelch (1978) noted that players often have lucky jerseys, good luck fetishes, or other objects that become charms. For these players, ordinary objects acquire power by being connected to exceptionally hot batting or pitching streaks. These charms follow the law of similarity. For three months during a winning season, one pitcher Gmelch interviewed followed the exact same routine: at lunch he went to the same restaurant, had two glasses of iced tea and a tuna fish sandwich, and for an hour before the game wore the same sweatshirt and jock strap he had worn the first day of the streak. He was afraid that changing anything he had done before the first winning game might produce a bad result.

Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 13 Question 50

50) Most Americans associate the Arabic term jihad (which literally means “struggle”) with terrorists and suicide bombers, but for most Muslims the term jihad also refers to the personal struggle that good Muslims have following God's will. How can these two conflicting meanings help us achieve a better understanding of what motivates the groups currently fighting to overthrow the Syrian government?

Feedback: France has seen various kinds of terrorist attacks for the past two centuries. For the most part, the motivations behind these attacks have been clearly political. In the 1960s, for example, during the Algerian struggle for independence, France experienced a series of attacks conducted by right-wing French nationalist groups opposed to Algerian independence. In recent years, France and other European countries have experienced a series of jihadist attacks, much as the United States has. What differentiates these contemporary attacks is that the motivations behind them are largely tied to religious views, and that the attackers seem so willing to put aside their personal safety—and even die—for their cause.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 51

51) Religious rituals are powerful ways of creating the sense of belonging and being part of a special group. How are rituals enhanced by making them frequent events (such as a daily ritual), and how can the meaning of these rituals be made more powerful by having them be almost unique events (such as the pope's visit to Brazil)?

Feedback: Rituals are stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities. For some, secular rituals that celebrate the state or nation, particular occupations, or other identities may achieve many of the same ends as religious rituals. For others, practicing scientific research may construct a worldview similar to that of people with more traditional religious beliefs. Geertz’s definition of religion was specifically designed to be as useful for secular worldviews with a rich array of secular symbols as it is for more traditional religions.

Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 52

52) Why do you think religious institutions have been historically associated with the arts? Why are the arts something that is good to “think” with?

Feedback: This could be connected from references in the test to religion and artistic renderings. The first high-profile jihadist attack in France came in 2015 at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing twelve and wounding eleven people. It was apparently motivated by the fact that the magazine had published a satirical cartoon on its cover featuring a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. Nowhere in the Quran, the holy scripture of Islam, is there any overt prohibition on artistic images of the Prophet. However, prohibitions against figural art, especially images of the Prophet, do appear in certain hadiths—sayings attributed to the Prophet that were recorded by his followers after his death and have been used as legal precedent where the Quran is silent. Nevertheless, some jihadist groups saw these images as mocking the Prophet and making fun of Islam.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 53

53) If you were working with administrators at your school to encourage college students to feel more connected to the academic goals of your college or university, what kind of ritual might you propose that might enhance the feeling of belonging?

Feedback: Rituals are stylized performances involving symbols that are associated with social, political, and religious activities. For some, secular rituals that celebrate the state or nation, particular occupations, or other identities may achieve many of the same ends as religious rituals. For others, practicing scientific research may construct a worldview similar to that of people with more traditional religious beliefs. Geertz’s definition of religion was specifically designed to be as useful for secular worldviews with a rich array of secular symbols as it is for more traditional religions.

Page reference: How Do Rituals Work?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 54

54) Is symbolic analysis restricted to analysis of religious behavior, or can it also be used to explain most human phenomena? Explain your answer and give one example.

Feedback: Unsatisfied with Wallace’s notion of religion as simply belief in the supernatural, American cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz proposed another kind of definition that could help explain why beliefs are deeply held and motivational, even to the point of risking harm to oneself. Geertz argued that religion was a cultural system, or as he put it a “system of symbols,” consisting of five elements: Religion is (1) a system of symbols which act to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 55

55) If religious beliefs and practices are as diverse as they have been presented in this chapter, what is the justification for calling all of them religious beliefs and practices?

Feedback: the social experience of religious practice is what gives the beliefs, the organization of religion in daily life, and the religious symbols meaning for every person present. Most people do not have regular contact with the supernatural. Neither God nor Jesus—to continue with this pair of Catholic ritual experiences introduced here—regularly appears in person to most of the congregants in Rio or to the nuns who devote their lives to the Church. But the personal meaning these Catholics attach to the importance of the intense experiences of the pope’s public mass or their private prayers reinforces for them, individually and communally, that God and Jesus are real and present in their lives. Thus, when we speak of religion in this book, we define it as a symbolic system that is socially enacted through rituals and other aspects of social life that relate to ultimate issues of humankind’s existence.

Page reference: How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 13 Question 56

56) How can we explain the rise of fundamentalism both in the Middle East and in the United States over the past four decades. In your answer identify the factors that are economic, political, and religious.

Feedback: Since the 1960s, the most significant change in U.S. religion has been how much more active religious organizations have become in public life, particularly among the conservative churches that call themselves fundamentalist, people belonging to conservative religious movements that advocate a return to fundamental or traditional principles. Fundamentalist TV preachers have expanded their broadcasting since the early 1980s, and conservative religious groups and religious organizations have been as deeply involved in elections and politics as ever. The rise of fundamentalism is not unique to the United States, either. Across the world, conservative groups have turned to fundamentalism to make sense of and to confront changes that are happening all around them. As in the United States, fundamentalist religion and politics are deeply engaged with one another in other societies as well.
Page reference: How Is Religion Linked to Political and Social Action?