It is theoretically possible to be a good man without participation in the
life of a religious community, but in practice the difficulties are enormous.
When I said earlier, for instance, that it was «as if» our methods forced us to conceive
of religious communities as silent worlds, what did I mean?
Current awareness of the importance to the health of a family's relationships with the extended family (including the church) accents the significance of these ancient
practices of the religious community.
Faith - based organizing shows the enormous potentials found in grass - roots America and particularly in the rich
web of religious communities.
By exploring the contradictions between official theologies and the actual
behavior of religious communities, sociologists of religion help religious people to view themselves more honestly — a sometimes deflating and...
It is important to realize that there is this dimension to the
notion of the religious community because the secularized understanding of many modern Westerners can not conceive of it except in purely sociological terms.
It has not, however, been as prominent in the actual life and
thought of religious communities — even in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the argument from design was frequently presented by Christian apologists.
If the full
values of religious communities can not be transmitted through pluralistic schools, there is an important place for religious schools, paralleling the public schools, despite the valid questions that can be raised about them.
It emerged as the concept of Secular Nationalism in opposition to the nationalism based on the interests of one or
other of the religious communities, therefore also called communalism.
Bonhoeffer answers: «The individual personal spirit lives solely by virtue of sociality, and the «social spirit» becomes real only in individual embodiment.10 Therefore Bonhoeffer can speak of both the individual and a collective being.11 The design of God for men to live in community leads to the natural
question of the religious community.
Today I blogged about» Renewal», a new documentary on the surge of environmental activism across a widespread
of religious communities all over the US.
Nevertheless, although this interior level is where the
heart of each religious community must be recognized and guarded, it is not wholly sufficient for the full life of that community in the world.