Introduction
As a group phenomenon, religiousness puts together people with foreseeable trends through which members interact. The conventional blueprints create status systems within which the respective members function. Persons within the groupings share norms, goals, and objectives. The clear outline helps people through their assigned duties albeit collectively. As a group, the common features shared by members include among others perception, values, considerable beliefs, and prescriptions of behavior. In addition, they also share the order of authority along with the specified ways in which the goals can be reached. All these processes entail striking equilibrium between personal spirituality and acquisition of identity in the society.
Religion as a group phenomenon
Religion and its beliefs are strong forces in humanity that are not easy to understand based on how people practice as a group. It gives people focus in life from either a group or personal perspective. This extensively covers sacredness. Religious beliefs have been held through evolution stages to date. From the group perspective, religion is a characteristic feature in the present-day mind of people. Through it, groups accept facts without direct instructions in all respects that the mind of people can tell the difference.
As a social phenomenon humans engage in religious activities through group settings. From this point of view, religiousness has characteristically the following features. It gives people the ability to find links between different observable facts (Edward, 1998). It guides human beings on how they relate and associate as biological organisms. Here, a factor that denominates people into religious groupings is sometimes said to be natural.
Through religion, groups of people can express their feelings in forms that include secret languages. Using the same, humans solve their problems in addition to allowing co-existence by treating each other in a humanely way. This creates group settings in which human beings live. Religion sustains, nurtures, and holds together people hence fostering unity in diversity. Groups associate religious experiences with a supernatural power. Power that operates in a way individuals and groups cannot easily understand. This makes persons within groups to relate to sacred issues in the following levels, at a collective level where fellowships take precedence.
Various groups come together to dissect and address sacred issues. The second level of association is the denominational level. Groups of religious phenomena are separated into smaller inclinations. The causes are always minor matters of doctrine. Secret level of religiousness is another level that is sometimes addressed by philosophy. Finally, groups also relate to sacred issues at private levels.
At all levels groups subscribe to a set of beliefs and carry out particular practices as long as they feel the issues are sacred and therefore supernatural. The practices authenticate group morals, give strength to the members, and satisfy the desire in their conscious minds. This creates a culture in members to contact their supreme being directly. This in turn gives the most favorable rewards in all proportions. The contact can be in form of either prayers, rituals or both.
Rewards come in various forms that include fellow members giving consolation to other members in times of deep grief (Johnston, 2007). This helps to avoid too much thinking over what people cannot interpret or decode meaning by leaving it to the most high. In such incidences, communion makes sense as it elevates hope where the human conscience expects success and healing thereby relieving the mind.
The process of becoming religious
Religion being a set of beliefs, ideals, and practices by humans is complex in the way of identifying how people join and fully become practicing members. This is because religion cuts across all humans. Furthermore, there are no other animal groups known to have such phenomenon that could be associated with religion. Suggestions have been put forward that religion came along with evolution. Proponents of this argument hold that man right from childhood forms important relations with characters that appear to be supernatural or otherwise their agents. Some of these characters could be fictitious but the relationships remain stable.
The power behind religion is invisible and intangible but people declare their loyalty to the same force. This quickly degenerates into faith. The assumptions underlying faith are present in all humans in the world irrespective of the forms that may differ. In this argument, one becomes religious after the ideology is integrated cognitively into the brain. This is done through social and poignant communications following exceptional combination of a series of evolutionary cognitive processes perceived to be important. This therefore makes man naturally associate with faith.
The other way through which one becomes religious is through Rise. In this argument, it is believed that people are raised religiously. This is a regular occurrence and in various ways restricts people to grow through restrained and controlled environments. This perspective of thinking also explains that people are brought up religiously and can be said to be members of an extended family. They are hence not introduced to beliefs like those held by atheists.
Members may later in life change denominations but will remain religious. Some of the beliefs held by members of a particular denomination may sharply contrast with those held by others but as long as their actions do not interfere with existence and practices of others then they will be permitted to proclaim their faith. The leaders of these denominations persuasively use their authority to hold onto members. Since the power they subscribe to is supernatural, they do not ask many questions. Some unexplained issues are left to the superior invincible powers as members resort to consolations in moments of grief.
The human brain is not given opportunity to digest facts that will make people understand religion. Indoctrination is done both formally and informally. Children raised within such environments find it difficult to change to other sets of beliefs. Their brains are not always ready for fresh programming. Attempts to convince adults to change denominations are rarely successful and such success comes after a heavy investment in time.
The difficulty encountered in converting adult people from one denomination to another is solved in the other method through which people become religious i.e. fall. Fall, a reverse of rise as method of becoming religious, avers that the only adults who can be converted are those who are interested. This category of people joins religion in their later stages of life (Putnam, 2010). They are faced with situations they cannot cope with and therefore seek for alternatives.
In other instances, they could be described as people interested in escaping from circumstances instead of confronting them. The traumatic events they face serve to throw them into joining some form of religion. They believe that that some form of supernatural power would help explain what man cannot explain. People who lose wealth, jobs, and those who become ill later in their lives are some of the likely members who fall in this category.
References:
Edward, W (1998). The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage books Publishers.
Johnston, R (2007). Religion in Society. New York: Pearson Publishers.
Putnam, R (2010). How Religion Divides Us. New York: Simon & Schuster Publishers.