IB MYP World Religions

9:03 PM, Saturday, December 7, 2013
Eve of the Feast of Immaculate Concepcion
Imus City, Philippines

In observance of the Feast of the Immaculate Concepcion, the Patron Saint of the Philippines, I am posting a YouTube video below about The Immaculate Concepcion.



Queen of Heaven, Pray for us!

In God,
TBM

2:36 PM, Sunday. September 8, 2013
Feast of the Nativity of Mother Mary
Imus City
Philippines 

In observance of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I am posting my lecture notes for my World Religions class about the three forms of religious expressions:

Three Forms of Religious Expression

The sociologist of religion Joachim r (1898-1955) has provided one useful description of these constants. While the essence of religion may be beyond words, the religious experience, he tells us, expresses itself in human life in three ways. These three forms of religious expression are:

1.    Theoretical Expression

The first level of religious expression, the theoretical, embraces essentially the verbal expression: what is said.  Religions say things about certain basic, ultimate issues – how the universe is set up, what ultimate reality is, where the world came from and where it is going, and where humans came from and where we are going. Religions talk about how we know the ultimate truth and how we are helped to get from here to the ultimate. They say these things in two fundamental ways: myth (or narrative story), and doctrine.

In the history of religions, the term myth is used in a special way to denote stories that express in narrative form the central values of the society and the way it views what the world is and means.

THIS USAGE IS DIFFERENT FROM THE POPULAR DENOTATION OF THE WORD MYTH AS A FABLE OR STORY THAT IS NOT TRUE. THE USE OF THE WORD MYTH IS ONLY A STATEMENT OF ITS FUNCTION, AND NO JUDGEMENT IS PASSED ON ITS TRUTH.

Myths	Doctrines
Creation stories Hero story	Biblical account Creeds/Cathechisms Incarnation of God General statements from church councils and theologians Great cycles of creation Cycles of creation and destruction

2.    Practical Expression: What Is Done in Religion

The practices of religion—worship, rite, pilgrimage, forms of devotion or meditation, and other personal or group activities – constitute the form of religious expression Joachim Wach referred to as the practical expression of religion. This form of religious expression covers the visible and performed side of faith. To stand out as especially religious actions, things done have to have an appearance that makes their religious character evident, and this is likely to be the case only if they follow patterns recognizable in the culture as “religious,” neither just meeting ordinary needs in an ordinary way nor merely peculiar.  It will have to be a gesture that is traditionally religious and so something that comes out of the religious past.

EVEN THE SIMPLEST RELIGIOUS SEVICES ARE GENERALLY PERFORMED IN SPECIAL PLACES AND EMPLOY A FEW SET WORDS AND PHRASES THAT MARK THEM AS RELIGIOUS ACCORDING TO THAT TRADITION.

 

Practical
What is Expected of Humans: Worship, Practices, Behavior	What we ourselves must do.

  

3.    Sociological Expression: Kinds of Groups Formed by Religion

Forms of organization, and the way they relate to the broader social context, are also part of religion, the sociological expression of religion. Generally, religion’s structures fall into to types. These may be called the church type and the withdrawal-group type. The church, in this sense, is the broadly based religion that represents the normative values of a society, and in which most people are involved by the virtue of their membership in the society—Hinduism in India or Catholicism in Spain. This is the faith a person in a society belongs to if he or she has not made a self-conscious, deliberate choice to be something else.

Sociological
Major Social Institutions	How the religion is set up to preserve and implement its teaching and practice; what kind of leadership it has; how it interacts with the larger society.

4:30 PM, Friday. September 6, 2013

Classroom # 1

Beacon School, Taguig City

Philippines

This is the first year I am teaching World Religion's class in an IB MYP school and I am truly grateful to do so. Teaching the subject within the curriculum framework of IB MYP-Humanities will show you that you can study history through the following concepts.  

World Religions Key Concepts

Time, Place and Space

TIME

Is more than the measurement of years or time periods

·       Is a continuum of the past, present and future

PLACES

·       

      Are socially constructed

·       Can be explored in terms of constraints and opportunities afforded by location

·       Have value and meaning defined by humans

SPACE

·       

      Relates to where and why places and landscapes are located

·        Includes the social, economic, political processes that interact through or across space

·       Results in patterns and networks such as migration or trade flows

Challenges related to “place/space” can be on a local, national and global scale.

 Global Interactions

·       Are points of departure for understanding one’s own culture

·       Refers to the inter-connectedness of the world as a whole

·       Addresses the relationship between societies and cultures in broader global contexts

Systems

·       Provide structure and order in both natural and human environments

·       Are dynamic and complex

·       Rely on a state of equilibrium, which is vulnerable to change

·       Connect everything

      

     Change

·       Can be natural and artificial, intentional and unintentional, positive and negative

·       Has causes, is a process and has consequences

·       Involves forces that shape the world, past, present and future

·       Is universal