How Far Do You Think Observing a Visible Religious Activity, Such as a Festival, Can Help You Understand the Part a Religion Plays in the Life of an Individual or a Community?

To fully understand the part a religion plays in the life of an individual or a community, I would suggest that we need to examine it from several different points of view, only some of which can be addressed by observing a visible religious activity. Using Ninian Smart's 'dimensional model' as a starting point, we can examine the different dimensions of a religion and discover how much insight into each of them the observation of …

…part a religion plays in the life of an individual or community, and some would argue that even Ninian Smart's dimensional model offers us a less than complete picture. Still, it seems clear that to gain any kind of understanding of the part a religion plays in the life of an individual or a community we need to take a much broader view than that offered by the observation of a visible religious activity alone.