Folk religion
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Folk religion consists of any cultural practices without a guiding authority which are deemed "religious" by outside observers, including beliefs, superstitions and rituals. It could be contrasted with an organized religion or historical religion in which founders, creed, theology and ecclesiastical organizations are present.
The category of folk religion also includes those traditions which were once relegated to "ethnic religion". There was once an academic dichotomy of "world religions" which could be spread to any group and "ethnic religions" which are limited to a specific culture, but it is now recognized that all religious practices, no matter their philosophical origin, are ethnic and culturally bound in nature.[1][2][3] Folk religion can therefore be thought of as any practice of religion by lay people outside of the control of clergy or the supervision of theologians (e.g. outside of organized religion). Don Yoder has defined "folk religion" as "the totality of all those views and practices of religion that exist among the people apart from and alongside the strictly theological and liturgical forms of the official religion." There is occasionally tension between the practice of folk religion and the formally taught doctrines and teachings of a faith. For "folk religion" to be a meaningful category, there must be an institutional religion with a traditional teaching or professional clergy to contrast it against; in cultures that lack these things, it is difficult to speak of folk religion as a meaningful category. [4]
The term is also applied to the blending of folk practice with those of major religions (otherwise known as "syncretism"), so that folk practices among people in Christian countries are called "folk Christianity", in Islamic countries "folk Islam", and so on. The term is also used, especially by the clergy of the faiths involved, to describe the desire of people who otherwise infrequently attend religious worship, do not belong to a church or similar religious society, and who have not made a formal profession of faith in a particular creed, to have religious weddings or funerals, or (among Christians) to have their children baptised. [5]
Folk religion answers human needs for reassurance in times of trouble, and many of its rituals are aimed at mundane goals like seeking healing or averting misfortune. Many elements of folk religion stem from animistic or fetishistic practices, which is almost inevitable given its mundane goals and ritualistic nature. Folk religion also often aims at divination to foresee the future. The line is often blurry between the practice of folk religion and the practice of magic. (see magic and religion)
Examples of folk religion would include:
- Popular theophanies, and similar phenomena like Marian apparitions, originating outside the formal liturgy and hierarchy of the faiths in question.
- Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena
- ancestor worship
- amulets, protective qualities ascribed to religious objects like the Bible or a crucifix; hex signs
- animism, or belief in spiritual beings associated with landscape or specific human domains
- belief in traditional systems of magic (hoodoo, voodoo, pow-wow, Benedicaria, Palo Monte and Santería)
- blessing of animals and crops (fertility rites), food, vehicles, buildings etc.
- rituals to ward off the Evil Eye, curses, demons, witchcraft etc.
With the rise of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, folk religions came to be marginalized as "leftover" traditions in rural areas, referred to as paganism or shirk (idolatry).
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[edit] Neopagan revivals
[edit] See also
- Animism
- Appalachian Granny Magic
- Ancestor worship
- Civil religion
- Folketro
- Folklore
- Folk medicine
- Magic
- Nature worship
- Paganism
- Pre-Christian Alpine traditions
- Shamanism
- Totemism
[edit] References
- ^ Timothy Fitzgerald. The Ideology of Religious Studies. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2000.
- ^ Craig R. Prentiss. Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity. New York: NYU Press, 2003. ISBN 081476701X
- ^ Tomoko Masuzawa. The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. ISBN 0226509885
- ^ Marion Bowman, "Phenomenology, Fieldwork, and Folk Religion," in Steven Sutcliffe, ed., Religion: Empirical Studies (Ashgate, 2004: ISBN 0754641589), p. 3
- ^ Bowman, supra, p. 4.
[edit] Literature
- Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic. Studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth century England, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson (1971).
- Yoder, Don, 'Toward a Definition of Folk Religion', Western Folklore 33.1 (January 1974): 1-15.
- Nepstad, Sharon Erickson. 1996. “Popular Religion, Protest, and Revolt: The Emergence of Political Insurgency in the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran Churches of the 1960s-80s,” in Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism, by Christian Smith. New York: Routledge.
- Nash, June. 1996. "Religious Rituals of Resistance and Class Consciousness in Bolivian Tin-Mining Communities," in Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social Movement Activism, by Christian Smith. New York: Routledge.
[edit] External links
- African Folk in Jamaica
- Folk Christianity in the Philippines
- Folk Islam in Somalia
- Introduction to Folk Religion
- Traditions Magazine
- Myths over Miami: A account of the folk religion of children living in homeless shelters in Miami, circa 1997.
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