We explain what religious norms are, who they affect, their characteristics and examples. Also, other types of standards.
What are religious norms?
A norm is a guideline or prohibition that serves to regulate behavior or human behavior in a specific area of life. And we also know that there are many types of regulations, depending on the authority that issues them and the order of things that they aspire to control.
So, Religious norms are those emanated from some religious authoritysuch as a church, priestly bureaucracy, or spiritual leader. Consequently, they are accepted and practiced by their parishioners, with the aim of respecting some type of mystical or spiritual principles, which constitute the doctrine of their faith.
In simpler terms, religious norms are those to which a community or individual adheres to respect the vital guidelines that their God, or their set of beliefs, determines to be correct or moral. Therefore, They only concern those who practice that specific faith or they follow that specific cult.
Generally they do not have legal significance, nor are they capable of inflicting on those who disrespect them greater punishment than rejection from the religious community. However, in some countries with theocratic government, religious norms may coincide with the legal norms that govern political, economic and social life.
See also: Religious knowledge
Characteristics of religious norms
Generally, religious norms They have to do with intimate life, relationships with others and ways of organizing prayer.as well as general attitudes towards life and existence.
They can be very different from each other, depending on the religion to which they belong, and in general terms they serve to reinforce the philosophy or world vision that it, deep down, proposes. Depending on the strictness of the religion, therefore, the rules can be more prohibitive or more lax, more specific or more general.
Generally, religious norms are:
- Incoercible. That is, no one can force us to follow them, but we must submit to them voluntarily.
- Internal. Well, generally we ourselves are the ones who know if we have fulfilled them or not in our daily lives.
- Unilateral. Since they come from a moral and cultural tradition, and are not the result of social consensus.
Examples of religious norms
Some examples of religious norms are the following:
- Practitioners of the Jewish and Islamic religions have eating pork is prohibited. In the case of the latter, also the intake of alcohol.
- According to the Bible and therefore the Christian and Jewish creed, the moral conduct of the faithful must be governed by the 10 commandments proposed by the prophet Moses.
- Women of the Jewish and Islamic cults must cover your hair and other parts of the body considered modest.
- In Jewish tradition, circumcision It is carried out in male children on the eighth day after being born, while in Christian women they must be baptized in a church.
- The traditional Chinese religion requires of its followers the respect for ancestors and its veneration on a family home altar.
Other types of standards
Normative rules or orders can be of many types, according to the authority that issues them or the vital space they try to regulate or control. Thus, it is possible to also talk about:
- Legal norms. They are created by judicial institutions. They regulate the lives of the individuals of a nation, according to a set of laws that the State reinforces through the monopoly of violence.
- Moral standards. They govern the behavior of individuals according to what each society understands as “good”, “bad” or “adequate”, based on its particular tradition.
- Social norms. They facilitate the coexistence of individuals in a community, based on mutual agreement and consensus.
Continue with: Rules of coexistence
References
- “Religious norms” in Legal Encyclopedia.
- “Religious norms” in The Law Guide.
- “Classes of standards” in the Learning Support Unit of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
- “Religion” on Wikipedia.
