Social Institutions and Religions Essay

Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam are a few of the "universal" or "universalizing" religions. Strayer frames the universalizing religions in terms of the spread of different cultures and ideas throughout the world. Religions are integral to social and political power and control, and thus have a transformative effect on society as well as on the individuals within that society. The nature of universalizing religion is such that they can be all-pervasive, permeating almost every dimension of life including political, economic, and social institutions. However, universalizing religions are distinct in that they actively seek new followers; they believe their message is indeed universal and contains universal truths embedded within it.

Although universalizing religions use different methods of spreading their faiths, they share in common the desire to influence human thought and even public discourse. Of the universalizing religions, Christianity and Islam have historically revealed the most aggressive evangelical tendencies but Hinduism and Buddhism have at times engaged in colonial activities and proselytism too, which is why Buddhism penetrated into the farthest reaches of East, Southeast, and Central Asia from its initial hub in India, and why Hindu kingdoms flourished for some time in Southeast Asia.

When universalizing religions engage in colonial activities, they actively and permanently transform their target cultures and communities, in addition to individuals. As Premawardhana points out, religious conversion has a "plurality of meanings," (21). Conversion is occasionally forced, as during periods of crusades by Christians and Muslims or the colonial enterprises of European Christian nations in the Americas and the Muslim Ottoman Empire throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Kong shows how Christianity has continually been able to reinvent itself, repackaging itself and changing its evangelical methods to remain relevant. Universalizing religions need to update themselves in order to attract followers from each generation.

In addition to their practice of colonialism and cultural transformation, there are specific doctrinal elements to universalizing religions that give them their "universal" characteristics or universal appeal. For one, religions that appeal to the desire of all humans to be free from fear and suffering are bound to have universal appeal. All of the universalizing religions promise that ascription to the faith will offer the practitioner liberation of some sort. The type of liberation and the way it is presented to the individual is different for each of these faiths. For the Christian, liberation comes only in death. For the Buddhist, the opposite is true -- liberation comes from cultivating Buddha-nature now. As Strayer points out, Buddhism had a strong popular appeal throughout East Asia in part because the religion was able to integrate itself well with existing religions and worldviews. When…