What is the difference between culture and religion

Likewise, when religion has been expelled from the public domain, religious actors and interests go underground waiting for a chance to re-emerge. The second element of religion are rituals that re-order the world according to religious principle. Our senses are portals to the spirit. Therefore, rituals function as tangible symbols of the intangible realm. For examples of different studies that consider the public rituals of Judaism, Islam and Hinduism respectively see Beck , Bronner and Haider While some religious rituals are private or hidden, many are performed in public spaces or in ways that are openly accessible to wider society.

As such, they are a part of public life — which is one of the original definitions of the word politics. For religious adherents, rituals symbolise spiritual truths but they can also redefine how power can be understood in the material world. Thomas Merton once described his experience of watching Trappist monks perform the rituals of the Catholic Mass in very political terms. He wrote:. The eloquence of this liturgy [communicated] one, simple, cogent, tremendous truth: this church, the court of the Queen of Heaven, is the real capital of the country in which we are living.

These men, hidden in the anonymity of their choir and their white cowls, are doing for their land what no army, no congress, no president could ever do as such: they are winning for it the grace and the protection and the friendship of God.

Merton , Beyond the experience of individuals, states also seek divine blessing. For example, over one-fifth of states today have a monarch such as a king, queen or emperor. Although monarchs differ in the extent of their powers — from figureheads controlled by parliaments to absolute rulers to variations of these — they all draw their power from some form of religious or spiritual authority. The elaborate rituals of monarchies worldwide are understood by their subjects to symbolise divine blessing for the realm and its citizens, redefining where the real power lies.

The third element of religion is teaching traditions based on stories of significant figures, events and ideas from the past and beliefs about the future of time itself — like a spoiler alert about the end of the world.

For some religions, however, time itself is an illusion and the main focus is living in the now according to sacred ideas rather than the connection of past—present—future. These elements — interpreting the past, projecting the future, living now — are basic to the development of political ideologies also. Therefore, sometimes religious and political groups can appeal to the same stories or ideas even though the interpretation or intent may differ significantly.

In the s members of both communities appealed to one aspect of Jubilee — a tradition of debt cancellation found in the Hebrew Bible — as the basis for addressing the debt crisis facing developing nations. Only a few years later, this sacred story was used for very different purposes by US president George W. Sacred stories, ideas and teachings from the past have a richness and power that can influence political affairs today and the aspirations we hold for tomorrow.

The fourth element common to most religions is the need for believers to belong to a faith community in order to practice sacred rituals and reinforce the truth of sacred stories. Some religious traditions could be described as high demand, requiring strict adherence to rules and standards in order to maintain membership of the faith community. Other traditions are low demand, adopting a more flexible approach to the requirements for belonging faithfully to the community.

The connection between religion and identity politics can have individual and international significance. For instance, empowered by belonging to a faith community, individuals can act in ways that they might not otherwise have done in isolation. Rosa Parks, an African American woman who famously refused to obey American racial segregation laws and sparked a nation-wide civil rights movement in the s, is often lauded as a heroic individual.

This may be true, but as a member of a religious community that affirmed human dignity and the divine principles of racial equality, Rosa Parks was never acting in isolation Thomas , — The four elements of religion described above — the significance of gods and spirits, the power of holy rituals, the telling of sacred stories and belonging to faith communities — seem in their own ways to be a core aspect of the human condition in the twenty-first century.

We can approach the term culture in the same way we have considered religion. There are many proposed meanings of culture, and these vary from the simple to the complex. While each approach has real value for understanding the social world around us, we will opt for a simple version that still gives us plenty to work with.

As such, we begin with an understanding of culture as the combined effect of humanly constructed social elements that help people live together. We will explore four elements of culture, illustrating each element through individual and international political experience. The first element of culture has to do with common or shared life.

While media reporting seems to constantly prioritise stories of war, conflict and controversy, it is equally the case that local, national and international society requires a remarkable degree of cooperation. How do we live together? Yet, there are other bonds that are forged at the social level as peoples of difference find ways to live together in the same space by forging common beliefs, habits and values.

It is from this practice of common life that culture often emerges. Sport provides good examples of culture as common life. Let us think about football also known as soccer.

Local football clubs can be founded on distinct community identity. For example, local Australian players from a Greek background can play for a team sponsored by the Hellenic Association. Clubs can equally represent a locality rather than a particular group.

Regardless of background, at the international level all players in these clubs have a loyalty to the Australian football team. Football is the common bond — a sporting pastime but also cultural practice. Think about the way entire nations can be said to embody the activities of its national sporting heroes. There is a lot of confusion between similar terms. As a group of people think there is no difference between religion and culture, they are the same.

Let me tell you that they are not the same, and there are many differences between them. The difference between religion and culture is that religion is related to the almighty or the creator who created the whole universe.

On the other hand, culture is related to the evolution of humans and their practices and beliefs. The words religion can be defined as to believe in God or several gods; it is a system of beliefs in rules and ceremonies used to pray to God or some gods. It is a belief, interest, or activity that is very important to a person or a group of people. A culture can tell as a word for the way of life for several people.

It means how a group of people do things like excellence in the taste of fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture. Religion is defined as the relationship of every person to the spiritual things which are regarded as holy and worthy of their highest reverence. It is also referred to as the comfort of the person whenever they have to deal with the truth of life and death, anything in between.

Many religions in the world follow their sacred text as the guidance and authority for spiritual and moral conduct. Comparing these words is not only steeped within your own belief system that proposed by the university , or is, essentially, a means of reducing religion to cultural differences. I am going with the older anthropologists: human cultures can only emerge from, and be emanations of something of an entirely different order than "culture".

Alas, because few decent attempts to understand what "religion" is as a distinct socio-anthropological entity - distinct from culture and ideology based solely on its inherent structure and emanations that are a complex array of systems that deal with the most fundamental issues of being human - issues that must be at least "implicitly" established within an interpreting community - for any culture to develop.

From this respect, there is really almost little connection between religion and culture - they are distinct and almost independent sets of semiosis of complex meaning systems for a community located in time and space. Your last statement that trying to create religion as a separate entity in its own right is a kind of theological point of view, is at once entirely correct and entirely wrong. The idea that religion is something completely different in nature from culture is far more scientifically viable argument, albeit a theological statement.

Alas to state that your statement and view is "scientific" is a theological statement in that theology is concerned with the types of statements or claims we can make about knowledge and truth within a religion. As for your interpretation of Clifford Geertz article, I suggest you might want to reread it and then read my own papers including my M. Thesis dedicated to understanding and applying the theory to consumer culture.

Alas, I have not found any article or paper written about Clifford Geertz's paper that come close to understanding the primary premise which is that reality itself is at once a model for that reality and a model of that reality - both articulating themselves simultaneously on the cusp of a paradox.

I am reaction to this comment as it is rampant throughout academia and represents the most violent form of ethnocentrism possible: science leads to proper thinking while religion, a cultural artifact, can only be a set of transient beliefs and ideas.

The condescension is so blatant that no one sees it - unless you are a muslim living in americal It depends on what you are trying to do, of course. Your religion column draws heavily, but not uniquely, from Judeo-Christian belief systems. Buddhist or Hindu and do not map well with Islamic beliefs.

Several of the other comparisons are problematic -- for instance, I would not counterpose aesthetics and ethics, since any culture presupposes a form of ethics, whether it is based on scientific rationalism or divine command. Similarly, prayer is only one form of the larger concept of communication, and vocation a religious word means the same thing as call. Nor would I contrast market and temple, since there are very few "temple-centric" religions in existence today.

As a thinking believer, I would never place reason and faith as polar opposites. If you think that is how religion describes itself, you need a richer understanding of the place of religion in people's lives. Your two lists presuppose that religion is somehow opposed to culture, which goes counter to most of history, the experience of individuals, and the nature of culture and religion.

When comparing the two, a useful sociological approach is that of Richard Niebhuhr's "Christ and Culture" which uses historical examples to create a typology of five different relationships between religion and culture, ranging from a complete opposition to a complete synthesis. My sense is that you are trying to describe a non-religious culture, which could be useful, but this approach of contrasting "all religion" to "uniquely secular" seems to fail in several ways.

Even to take the first item in your list presupposes that religion is opposed to science and reason as I've pointed out before, simply not true and ignores the fact that a secular culture is not in any way uniquely based on scientific reasoning, but has a whole cluster of unexamined beliefs and faith such as the belief in progress, faith in relativism, and a fundamentalist a priori denial of spirituality that is often just as irrational as any religious belief.

A good start, but not concretely grounded enough. I would imagine that in every case where marriage where it exists at all has become part of the cultural norm, it has been through the aegis of the endemic religious system.

The mores and customs of marriage are in fact a microcosm of the binding quality of religion the literal meaning of which comes from the word "bind". A system which through dogma binds to followers to accept the authority of the church hierarchy, and by extension bound also to god.

As man is bound to god, the wife is bound to the man. Thus in a modern context where the link with religion has been broken the ritual and meaning of marriage remains. The binding might be vocalised as love, but it is a binding nonetheless. These tools are powered by two things. The first is the fact that the majority of humans can be hardwired at childhood with only very few escaping this hard wiring and continue thinking to develop new ideas that improve the survival of the group. The process is a dynamic one.

So you have certain survival experiences hard wired in childhood that are considered absolute truth and essential for living -continuously tested by everyday experience, Then comes a wise person.. Part of the society do not get convinced and keep the old knowledge- leading to cultural, religious and lingual splits and fragmentation. Thus what we see is only a mix of the various stages- the old and the new and the very new of this ongoing process- leading to this mix up between culture and religion.

It seems to me that a rudimentary table of differences, that only classifies without proper explanation, creates to large a room for misunderstanding and confusion. When I put Science or Reason in Culture, I point out to the non-dogmatic nature of culture, which is open to change.

This doesn't mean that religion doesn't embrace or is not born in cultures. It only tries to separate the one from the other. For instance, the gods and goddesses of Hinduism are still always portrayed as wearing Sarees and Dhotis General Hindu Dress.

It might be considered an offence to portray them in Western clothes. This talks about the stagnancy of "religion's culture". However, Hindus don't necessarily wear only sarees and dhotis. They don't find wearing jeans or western coats as offensive.

But, in a ceremony where religion its stagnancy is dominant, for instance during a Hindu marriage, what one wears can be an ethical issue. Similarly, modern armies use guns and bombs, but the gods and goddesses of religion may still be only pictured with swords and arrows. That depicts the difference between what culture is by itself in historical development and how religion differs from it in its conservative holding to the "original culture" in which it originated.

Another example would be the dynamics of linguistic development versus the language-culture of religion. For instance, in Islam Arabic is considered to be the divine language. However, modern Arabic has a dynamic history of development and modern Arabic is not totally the same as the Arabic of the 4th century. Similarly, in Vedic Hinduism, Sanskrit is considered the language of the gods; but, in modern times Sanskrit is no longer used for conversation.

It is taught in the schools but never used. That talks about the dynamics of culture versus culturalism of religion and should highlight that their difference. Religion will have to use cultural elements for sure, because it is always born in some culture or the other.

However, cultures don't remain stagnant; they progress, inter-change, embrace new patterns. But, there is a kind of dogmatic stance, an absolutist aspect to religion in general. There are many such examples that can be cited in this regard. When I say culture is about aesthetics, but religion is about ethics, I mean that cultural context plays an important role in what is considered beautiful or valuable and what is not for instance, in some cultures a long neck would be considered beautiful and in some cultures girls are fed to make them look stout because leanness is considered unattractive.

For instance, one cannot say that in modern American culture, homosexuality is not wrong. One can say that most Conservative Evangelicals believe homosexuality is sin; and, many liberals and atheists consider homosexuality to be okay. When I put entertainment in culture and worship in religion, I am using the terms only as exemplary symbolic representations. Culture contains entertaining elements like dance, arts, drama, and music. Religion will use these elements and give them a particular form for instance, church music or Hindu bhakti bhajan.

In some cultures, religion even becomes the patron of some form of arts. For instance, the god Shiva Hinduism is called the god of dance. But, those are religious attempts to claim cultural elements. Shiva has only a particular form of dance; and for sure, the orthodox dance-system doesn't approve modern dance or non-traditional dance forms even the Western.

Yet, one sees as fact of matter that the common man not the traditionalist would be more attuned to modern and popular art-forms and appeals of entertainment than to the traditional. I know that the elaboration is too short; but, I hope it helps in clarifying some misunderstandings and provide some rationale for the differentiation.

I would request scholars who comment to kindly cite some empirical cases when trying to disagree with this proposal. This will help in providing more empirical footing to the discussion here. Thanks to all! It is a respectful greeting to you all. Second, I have had one or two issues getting access to these forums, so please forgive me for reviving this topic. When considering the differences between culture and religion, I think it is worthwhile starting at the beginning, and there are two perspectives on religion, which I want to articulate.

This is best seen in the Judaeo-Christian traditions which includes Islam , in that the prophets have revelations from a divine source, and in the actual presence of the divine in the physicality of Jesus of Nazareth in the Christian tradition. Mohammed, Isaiah, John of Patmos, John the baptist, all received divine revelations from the perspective of a believer.

This, then, means that religion has a source other than this world. For believers, each religion has a metaphysical origin. In that sense it is quite different to culture, though most religions, from this perspective, inform culture. The biblical Acts of the Apostles and the Qu'ran both give clear messages of the type of society, and therefore the culture, which is legitimized and expected by adherents to that religion.

The religion establishes the type of culture which is acceptable 2 For non-believers religion has a source in this world, with no actual reference to a metaphysic. Cultures change and develop in response to the physical world, and in negotiation with other members of the group. Religion is part of the interactions of people and environments that give rise to culture and religion. There are major interactions between religion and culture, but they are of this world.

So, when the question is asked "What is the difference between religion and culture? The two positions lead to quite different answers. Apologies that I just noticed your reply.

I agree with Wittgenstein about usage. What is Culture? Difference between Culture and Religion Confused as some people may be in their characteristics but, the reality is religion is just one of the many subsets of culture and not the other way around.

Culture is the bigger picture. Culture is a body of knowledge that is acquired by people through years of being together in one society, while religion is the belief system directed towards the supreme deity and yet this is something that may or may not be accepted by each person in a culture.

Two individuals may have the same culture and yet practice different religious practices. Culture focuses on the human beings which is its social heritage, while religion is associated with the God or the Creator of the whole universe.

Culture is concerned with the evolution of humans and their beliefs and practices. On the other hand, religion is wholly concerned with revelation that comes from the Supreme Being to the people. The existence of religion is formally written in holy scriptures that came from God; while culture is more practical as the way people behave in a community shows what kind of culture they have.

Culture tends to change as time passes by while the fundamentals of religion is fixed from the start. Table of Comparison of Culture Vs. Religion Summary of Culture Vs. Religion To summarize all the things discussed in this article, it is easier to illustrate that religion can be likened to a manuscript while culture is to the amendments when the manuscript is being kept. Author Recent Posts. Julian Angelo. Latest posts by Julian Angelo see all. Help us improve.

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