Author(s):
Becker, Dieter
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Gerstenberger, Erhard S.
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Osiek, Carolyn
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Klein, Birgit
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Heun, Werner
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Et al.
[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Medieval and Modern Judaism – V. The Law – VI. History and Sociology – VII. Social Ethics – VIII. Socialization Theory – IX. Education – X. Practical Theology
I. Religious Studies The term family describes a varied network of relationships between parents, children and other persons in a social system. In ethnically shaped small-scale societies, family groups are bearers of religious rituals (Rite and Ritual) and centers of religious community. Family should not be understood as an exclusively biological given. In matrilinear relations (Matriarchate), in particular, the role of father may pass onto another male. In ¶ many religions, fatherhood, motherhood and childhood are a metaphor of the relationship between God and man. Members of societies shaped by clans are convinced that death takes the family on into the hereafter. In western civilization, the family is no longer a religious system, no longer an object of religious reverence, and no longer a guarantee of a uniform religious and ideological transmission. Nevertheless, the nuclear family also shapes attitudes pertaining to religions and ideologies; under these conditions also, domestic rituals in a rudimentary form prove to be stable, and terms to describe familial relationships continue to be an element of religious language…