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Sacred Vs Profane Religion

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Sacred Vs Profane Religion
The sacred and its opposite the profane are distinguishable from within a certain religion, by it’s followers. Sacred objects, places or concepts are believed by followers to be intimately connected with God or a divinity and are thus greatly revered.

For a devotee or believer the world is split into the sacred or the profane. The German theologian Rudolf Otto, in The Idea of the Holy stated that the sacred was, derived from a sense of the numinous. The numinous is explained as a"non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self"1. According to Otto, the holy was grounded in individual feeling, the apprehension of something outside the individual and infinitely greater. The sacred is described
…show more content…
The idea of the holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2 Durkheim, Emile (1915) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin.

3 Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (December 4, 1963). Sacrosanctum Concilium. Retrieved March 31, 2008, from Adoremus Web site: http://www.adoremus.org/SacrosanctumConcilium.html

4 Rev. Benzmiller, James T. (June 2003). What's so Sacred about Sacred Music?. Retrieved March 15, 2008, from Adoremus Web site: http://www.adoremus.org/0603SacredMusic.html

5 Eliade, Mircea (1959). Introduction. In The sacred and the profane: the nature of religion. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, pages 8 – 18.

Reading List :

Otto, Rudolf (1958). The idea of the holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Durkheim, Emile (1915) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (December 4, 1963). Sacrosanctum Concilium. Retrieved March 31, 2008, from Adoremus Web site: http://www.adoremus.org/SacrosanctumConcilium.html

Rev. Benzmiller, James T. (June 2003). What's so Sacred about Sacred Music?. Retrieved March 15, 2008, from Adoremus Web site:

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