Holiness, or sanctity, is the state of being holy or sacred, that is, set apart for the worship or service of God or gods. It could also mean being set apart to pursue (or to already have achieved) a sacred state or goal, such as Nirvana. It is often ascribed to people, objects, times, or places. The Sacred in Comparative Religion The French sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized the social nature of religion, in contrast to other leading thinkers of day such as William James, who emphasized individual experience. Based on studies of Indigenous Australians, Durkheim proposed that most central to religion was not deity but the distinction between sacred and profane: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden."Durkheim 1915, p.47 In Durkheim's theory, the sacred represented the interests of th

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z # TAGS