e-learning @ Divine Word University: Courses

This unit explores the institutions of traditional tribal or village religion in the context of anthropological field research. The religions will be reviewed as systematic and structured social responses to what is holy. The main focus of the material is on Melanesia with comparative reference to Africa, but other areas of the anthropological discipline will be discussed also. Because the contemporary religious problem is the co-existence of traditional village religion and the Christian churches, the unit will investigate the attitudes of biblical and church authorities to the tradition, and will specifically take up the question of monotheism in the Bible to look at its historical development. Finally the relation of traditional religious ways of thinking to the methodology of science will be taken up.

What the europeans were like before modern times. We see many of the obstacles they encountered before becoming modern nations.