Methodological strategies of conceptualizing the religious tradition: from binarism to integral approach

Annotation

The article raises the question of what the religious tradition is in its substance, content and functioning in the context of the binary and the trinitarian approaches. According to the dualistic scheme of “tradition-modernization” determined by the earlier theories of modernization the religious tradition is viewed exclusively at the level of opposition to the qualitative and organizational descriptions of “modernity”: individualization, freedom and creativity. The religious tradition positioned as a “stiff form” which serves as the foundation for its objectification, sacralization or archaization depending on the content and direction of the discourse (secularism, confessiocentrism, traditionalism).<br> On the contrary, the trinitarian approach based upon the idea of the dynamic establishment of unity of the systemic formation by means of achieving the «third state», emphasizes the constitutive nature of the religious tradition. In this perspective the religious tradition is viewed as a dynamic metasystem where the subjective and the objective factors are inseparable. The religious tradition enables religious self-understanding and gaining the religious identity. At the same time it constitutes their limits even though this self- understanding and identity is born and defined by the “rebellion” against the religious tradition. Collectively this testifies of the inherent ambivalence of the religious tradition: it is both ancient and modern to the same extant. The existence and stability of the religious tradition is not secured by repetition through reproduction but rather by the reflexive perception of the past as a result of the continuous interpretation by its adherents.

Keywords

tradition, religious tradition, modernization, archaization, binarism, trinitarism, religious reform, religious modernism, religious fundamentalism, traditionalism.

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