VCE Religion and Society

Across history and cultures, people have asked the same small set of questions about existence. What is the origin of the world and of people? Is there a being or power greater than humanity, an ultimate reality? What is human life for? How ought a person to live? Why is there suffering? Does anything follow death? These are called the big questions of life, and the attempt to answer them is the human search for meaning. Religion is one of several ways people have pursued that search, alongside philosophical, scientific and ideological worldviews.

Worldviews that answer the big questions

A worldview is a set of basic assumptions about reality, value and purpose through which a person makes sense of experience. Religious worldviews are only one kind. Philosophical worldviews, such as Stoicism or existentialism, reason about meaning without necessarily appealing to a divine being. Scientific worldviews explain how the universe and life came to be, and are generally silent on questions of ultimate purpose, which is why some people hold a scientific and a religious worldview together. Ideological worldviews, such as humanism, nationalism or communism, offer a vision of how society should be organised and what gives life significance.

In a society where several worldviews coexist, as in Australia, people meet beliefs different from their own every day. Religion in such a society has to hold its place among alternatives, and its adherents negotiate between their tradition and the wider culture.

What religion is

There is no single agreed definition of religion, and scholars define it in different ways. Some start from belief in a divine or transcendent being. Others start from what religion does: it binds a community together, supports a moral code and gives a shape to life and death. A useful working description covers both. A religion is a system of beliefs about ultimate reality and the meaning of human life, together with practices, stories, symbols, ethical teachings and community structures through which those beliefs are expressed and lived.

Not every tradition fits a definition built around a single creator god. Theravada Buddhism has no creator deity and treats the cosmos as governed by cause and effect, while Jainism and some forms of Hinduism hold views of the divine that differ sharply from Abrahamic monotheism. A definition of religion in general has to allow for this range.

Ultimate reality

The term ultimate reality names whatever a tradition holds to be the final source, ground or truth of existence. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam it is one God, who creates and sustains the world. In Sikhism it is Ik Onkar, one reality that is both beyond the world and present in it. In Hinduism it is understood in several ways, from Brahman as the one underlying reality to personal gods such as Vishnu and Shiva. In Buddhism the nearest equivalent is the Dhamma, the truth about how things are, with nirvana as the final liberation.

Transcendent and immanent

Traditions differ over whether ultimate reality is mainly beyond the world or within it. A transcendent reality exists apart from and above creation, as in much Jewish and Islamic teaching about God. An immanent reality is present within creation, as in the Hindu idea that Brahman is the self of all things. Many traditions hold both, so that God is beyond the universe and also near to each person.

The purposes of religion

Religion serves several purposes at once, and they overlap.

• It provides a truth narrative: an account of where the world came from, what it is for and where it is heading, which answers the big questions with authority.
• It gives a sense of identity and belonging, by joining individuals into a community with shared memory, practice and obligation.
• It offers a moral framework, telling adherents how to live and treat others and the natural world.
• It helps people respond to significant life experiences such as birth, illness, suffering, loss and death, supplying rituals, explanations and consolation.
• It maintains a relationship with ultimate reality, through worship, prayer, meditation and obedience.
• It gives a sense of purpose by placing individual lives inside a larger story.

Some thinkers also point to social functions that adherents themselves may not name, such as supporting social order or giving a community a shared calendar. A study of religion in general can discuss these while recognising that adherents understand their tradition in terms of truth and relationship to ultimate reality.

Religion, spirituality and tradition

Spirituality is a wider and looser word. It describes a person's search for meaning and connection, which may or may not be organised in a religion. The spiritualities of First Nations peoples, for example, are tied to land, kinship and ancestral law, and do not always separate a religious sphere from the rest of life. A religious tradition, such as Islam or Buddhism, is a long-lived body of beliefs and practices passed on across generations and regions. A religious denomination is a subgroup within a tradition that shares its core but differs in interpretation, practice or authority, such as Orthodox and Reform Judaism or Roman Catholic and Pentecostal Christianity.

Why people look to religion in a time of change

Religion's answers come with different degrees of certainty, and the search for meaning is not finished when someone adopts a tradition. Members ask questions, test teachings against experience and sometimes change their understanding. This is part of why religions are described as living: they carry inherited answers but also take part in an ongoing conversation with members and with the society around them.