Siddhartha Gautama was born about 563 BC in what is now modern Nepal. His father, Suddhodana, was the ruler of the Sakya people and Siddhartha grew up living the extravagant life of a young prince. According to custom, he married at the young age of sixteen to a girl named Yasodhara. His father had ordered…
The Shinto religion was started in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) of Japanese history. The Tokugawa Enlightenment inspired a group of people who studied kokugaku, which roughly translated means nativism, Japanese Studies, or Native Studies. Kokugakus intent was to recover Japanese character to what it was before the early influences of foreigners, especially the Chinese. Some…
The position of priesthood in the church has been evident since the earliest existence of the church. Jewish priests first were established in the seventh century BC performing religious ceremonies. They were even more established around 950 BC due to the establishment of the Temple in Jerusalem. The major role of the traditional Jewish priest…
Mormonism is a way of life that is practiced by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over two-thirds of the church’s membership is in the United States. However, members are also located in many other countries around the world. Mormons use the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and two other books…
Monasticism, also commonly called Monarchism, is a special form of religious community life where the people separate themselves from normal the ways of life to pursue an idea of perfection or a higher religious experience. Monasticism entails Asceticism, the practice of disciplined self-denial. This asceticism may include fasting, silence, a prohibition against personal ownership, and…
The four Gospels are neither histories of the life of Christ nor biographies. They are portraits of the person and work of the long-promised Messiah, Israel’s King and the world’s Savior. As portraits, they present four different poses of one unique personality. Matthew by the Holy Spirit presents Christ as King, Mark as Servant, Luke…
Joseph was born in the royal line of King David, but in his time the descendents of David no longer held power or wealth. He left his ancestral home of Bethlehem in Judea to become a builder and carpenter in the town of Nazareth in Galilee. There he met Mary and became engaged to her.…
Introduction Hinduism – stands for the faith and the way of life for most of the people who live in India. Hinduism is such an ancient religion that it had many types of beliefs and religious practices. Around 1750 BC Aryan invaders from central Asia settled in North – West India and introduced their own…
Yom Kippur is the most important holidays for the Jewish. It is a time for people to seek forgiveness from others. Yom Kippur is important because it comes just before the Jewish New Year so that people can have a fresh start for the New Year. Yom Kippur also gives people a chance to look…
Among world leaders, there is no one like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, religious and political leader of Tibet and winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. Brought up from an unusual childhood, he became head of the state of Tibet at age 16, and was later forced into exile by the Chinese government. Despite…
Corinthians, the seventh book of the New Testament, was written by Paul to get across that Jesus is alive (15:3-18) and that we will be resurrected (15:35-38), among other things. Today there is no dispute that Paul is the author of I Corinthians. “Both external and the internal evidence for the Pauline authorship are so…
“The term “Conservative” had been attached to the moderates by the Reformers because the moderates had branded them as radicals. This name hardly describes the movement aptly. Conservative Judaism, is the American version of the principles of positive historical Judaism. The conservatives accept the findings of modern scholarship that Judaism is the product of a…
Paganism is an ancient type of religion which has quite an inauspicious reputation today. There are many types of paganism, most date back thousands of years, which include Wicca, Witchcraft, Paganism, and a few other lesser known and practiced variations. Yet all of these religions are similar and share common beliefs. Wicca is the most…
Bishop Francis X. Ford was a well educated, enormously gentle man that was kicked, beaten, insulted, and surrounded by hatred. All this because of one man’s beliefs. He was born in Brooklyn in 1892. He was the founder of the Maryknoll Missionaries and was the first bishop of Kwantung, China. He was killed in the…
The Bhagavad-Gita begins with the preparation of battle between the two opposing sides: on the left stands the collected armies of the one hundred sons of Dhritarashtra and on the right lie the soldiers of the Pandava brothers. Warring relatives feuding over the right to govern the land of Kurukshetra, both forces stand poised and…
A heresy which arose in the fourth century, and denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ. DOCTRINE First among the doctrinal disputes which troubled Christians after Constantine had recognized the Church in A.D. 313, and the parent of many more during some three centuries, Arianism occupies a large place in ecclesiastical history. It is not a…
The Unity of the Unknown and the Eternal Security: The Anglo-Saxon Belief in Christianity and Fate Imagine a life in which one is simply a pawn at the hands of a mysterious higher force stumbling and meandering through life’s tribulations. Until Pope Gregory the Great was sent to spread Christianity throughout England, the Anglo- Saxons…
Abraham, also known as Abram is most commonly known for being the Father of the Jewish people. The majority of the information found on Abraham is located in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis. Other than that, there are no real historical records on the life of Abraham, so the history of his life was…
The positive libidinal feelings of a child to the parent of the opposite sex and hostile or jealous feelings toward the parent of the same sex that may be a source of adult personality disorder when unresolved. It is a pattern of profound emotional ambivalence, a troublesome mixture of love and hate. The Oedipus Complex…
Fetishism is a perversion that is found, primarily in men, in which genital discharge is impossible without the presence of their fetish. A fetish, however can be a variety of things, yet there are three basic types of fetishes: an inanimate object (e.g. women’s clothing, shoes, gloves, underwear), a part of the human body (e.g.…