Beliefs and Believers
Religions are sustained by beliefs and believers. E.g. central beliefs in Christianity include that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of god, the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins.
The notion of ‘believers’ varies from tradition to tradition.
Example 1:
Sacred texts and writings
All religions have at their centre oral and written sacred texts, writings, or other types of stories. In Buddhism, these are the Tripitaka or Pali Canon, as well as a huge collection of sutras. In Islam the Qur’an is the central sacred text.
Ethics
Ethics can be understood as the explicit, philosophical and religious reflection on moral beliefs within a tradition. They are central to any religion. Their purpose is to clarify what is right and wrong, and what the followers of a religion should freely do, or refrain from doing. Significant ethical teachings in Hinduism include the individual life duty of dharma.
Rituals and Ceremonies
Rituals and ceremonies are enactments or systems of actions and beliefs that each have a beginning, a middle and end. They are directly linked to superhuman beings or forces. Rituals in Judaism include male circumcision and Bar Mitzvah.
Religion
Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. Page 4 Text book.
Buddhism
Buddhism is a nontheistic religion that encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the Buddha, meaning "the awakened one".
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and oral teachings of Jesus as presented in the New Testament. Christianity is the world's largest religion, with approximately 2.2 billion adherents, known as Christians.
Hinduism
Hinduism is the dominant religion of the Indian subcontinent, particularly of India and Nepal, which consists of many diverse traditions. It includes Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism among numerous other traditions, and a wide spectrum of laws and prescriptions of "daily morality" based on karma, dharma, and societal norms.
Islam is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion articulated by the Qur'an, a book considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of Godand by the teachings and normative example (called the Sunnah and composed of hadith) of Muhammad, considered by them to be the last prophet of God. An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim.
Judaism
Judaism is a monotheistic religion, with its foundational text, the Torah (also known as the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible), and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Mishnah and the Talmud. This is the star of David. In Judaism it is often called the Magen David, which means the "shield of David" in Hebrew. most commonly associated with the Jewish people.
A religion or religious system is a dynamic, living reality.
As dynamic, living realities, religions help provide meaning for those who follow them.
All religions need key tenets or doctrines which act as a general guide and hence unify the different communities which follow this religion.
On the other hand, these key beliefs allow individual groups to re-interpret the universal meaning to make it applicable for their particular community.
Sacred texts interact with the key doctrines, as these key doctrines are contained in and expressed through these sacred writings.
In order for religion to exist as a dynamic, living entity this doctrinal dimension, as contained in the sacred texts, must also be applicable to the practical demands of daily life.
This is where ethics comes into play, as it is ethics, which embodies the doctrines in the form of laws and precepts thus allowing for the practical application of religion.
In other words, ethics, which is a system of specific standards by which moral conduct can be judged, is derived from values,
