Religious Tradition Analysis

There are a couple of critical issues when it comes to the study of what a religious tradition says. The first is to make a distinction between the oral tradition and the written tradition. Many well-developed, world religions have an established canon of sacred texts, as well as an oral tradition. In some cases, this also has come to be written down. For instance, in Judaism, there is the tradition of the Oral Torah and the written Torah. The written Torah has become the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible as we know it. The Oral Torah has also been written down in established commentaries in the Talmud. However, many indigenous religions have not written down their oral traditions. In fact, there are still some indigenous people that do not
have a written language, and so their entire religious tradition is passed down orally from generation to generation. These oral traditions are more difficult for scholars to study and to follow over time.

Another critical issue is to determine what the teaching or text or story or myth is doing for the religion.
That is, how is it functioning for the group of people? Whether it is an established doctrine, as in a creed, or a mythical story that has been passed down orally, through the generations, what a religion says usually functions in a couple of common ways. They define the group as a community and bring a sense of unity to the group. There are two main ways that religious expressions do this. The first is that they explain where the world, the universe or cosmos has come from. Sometimes they are very explicit about this. For instance, in the Shinto religion of Japan, the origins of the Japanese islands are explained by the divine couple Izanagi and Izanami stirring up the ocean floor with a trident from the heavens, and the drippings became the Japanese islands. The Japanese people are also the descendents of these semi-divine beings. So the second ways that these stories work are that they explain where the people came from, the origins of the
people.

What a religion does is usually organized around a couple of themes, and the key critical issues come from these. One major theme is the religious rituals or actions surrounding important moments in the life cycle, such as birth, coming of age, mating and having children, growing old and dying. Life transitions are usually surrounded by religious actions that give a transcendent meaning and help the individual and the community through these changes. For instance, the vision quest of the Lakota people is an example of a transition from the Lakota boy to manhood. In his connection with the sacred, the Lakota boy will receive a guiding spirit, who will be with him and guide him through his adult life.

Another critical issue concerning religious practices is how they function for giving both the individual and the community access to the sacred, especially at important times for the community.
For an agricultural community, these important times may be seasonal, such as planting and harvest time. The winter and summer solstice may be times when the community celebrates the seasonal progressions of nature with religious practices that makes these times sacred. As an example, the Christian celebration of Christmas honors the incarnation of God into the world and it is practiced at the time of the winter solstice (December 21/22), which is the time when the days begin to be longer and the seeds are germinating within the ground to bring new life to nature in the
spring.
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There couple of critical issues when it comes to studying how a religion organizes its leadership. The main one is to see how the leader intercedes for the people and becomes a channel of divine communication and aid to the people. There is a designated line of shamans, who act as the community's conduit with the sacred. The position as shaman can be handed down from parent to child, but it can also be designated by some kind of religious experience of an individual, whom the community accepts as their leader. Quite often there is the ritualistic use of herbs or hallucinogens to facilitate the shaman's connection with the sacred spirits. Sacred communication and power are organized into the religious institution in many different ways. The sophisticated world religions also have specific ways of doing this. For instance, in Hinduism, there is the guru. Disciples can ask those questions and imitate their practices. Just being in the physical presence of the guru is often considered as contact with the sacred. In the Roman Catholic Church, there is a very established institutional hierarchy. However, the same mechanism is at work. When the believer goes into the confessional and confesses their sins, the priest is a conduit of divine forgiveness to the believer. Contact with the sacred here is administered through the sacraments. Interestingly enough, many of the sacraments occur around the major life transitions, such as birth and marriage and death.