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Religion : The Ways Of Being A Human Person

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David Chidester defines religion as the ways of being a human person in a human place. He further goes on to describe it as “the practices and discourses that negotiate what it is to be human in person in relation to the superhuman or in relation to whatever might be treated as subhuman” (Chidester). As such religion can be said to encompass the beliefs customs and even the cultures of the people. It defines and shapes the human out view to life and how they relate to each other based on the morals and ethical guidelines outlined in the various doctrines governing the religions. Over the years, religion has been interpreted from different perspectives. Over time in history, religion was directly intertwined with the activities and the lives of the people. For instance, where the people practiced farming, they had deities or gods which were thought to control and protect the seasons which were an integral part of the farming activities. The same case applied to those who practiced pastoralism activities. In all aspects, the religion was in tandem with their activities.
In the current dispensation, there are new forms of religion which have developed away from the past kind of religions which relied solely on the deities and cosmic beings which utterly out of place in this physical world as it’s known. In the book Authentic Fakes, Chidester outlines how the society today has developed a culture which is fake but which practices an authentic form of religious activities. He

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