Religion

Each faith is best defined by a combination of beliefs (or doctrine) and practices. Beliefs include both articulated (spoken or written) and unarticulated thoughts about the nature of the spiritual world and the individual adherent’s place in that order. Practices include most of the human activities and patterns of ritual that express and realize these beliefs. Isolating practices and beliefs from each other, however, is problematic, for they become so intertwined that both have equal weight in...