“Religion of the self” can be understood as all beliefs and/or religious practices that are somehow placed under the management tutelage of the individual, who experiences it assuming a considerable or total autonomy from the institutions and religious traditions where his references are. The process by which the empowerment of the self occurs in response to religion has a long history in the West. Its roots can be found in the classical antiquity, according to Peter Berger, more particularly in the Jewish tradition. According to this author, it is through the revolutionary emergence of this monotheism that “a religious frame of reference is created for the conception of the individual, his dignity and his freedom of action” (Berger 1985, p. 131).
This relative autonomization of the individual, a social person who happens to be the only one responsible for the moral and religious decisions that mark his biographical trajectory – having to choose between the saving virtue and the...
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References
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Jungblut, A.L. (2015). Religions of the Self. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_72-1
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