Free The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions by John Bowker

which no feast or festival (despite Lat., feria , ‘feast’) falls. The word ‘weekday’ is now more common than feria.
     
Back   -    
New Search

Festival of Light .
    Interdenominational movement founded in 1971 to promote action based on informed Christian opinion concerning declining moral values, particularly in the field of family ethics. It was renamed CARE (Christian Action Research and Education) in 1983.
     
Back   -    
New Search

Fetish
    (Port., feitiço , ‘made thing’). An object held in awe or reverence. The term has had a wide range of uses and meanings. In origin, it derives from the observations made by early traders and travellers in W. Africa of objects (often worn) held in high regard. From this it was concluded that a fetish was an idol. It was then recognized that these objects were not so much worshipped as used to exercise power, and the word began to be used of objects containing force. Beyond that, the word ‘fetish’ was taken up in psychoanalysis to refer to a sexual tendency to obtain erotic satisfaction from objects rather than people, even if only of objects associated with people. Colloquially, a fetish is an object of obsessive preoccupation, ‘making a fetish of something’.
     
Back   -    
New Search

Feuerbach, Ludwig
    (1804–72).
German philosopher and religious thinker whose theory of projection greatly influenced, among others, Karl Marx . In The Essence of Christianity (1841) and then again in Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843), Feuerbach argued that God is humanity's self-alienated essence projected onto a cosmic screen: in worshipping God, people are simply worshipping themselves. Theology is reduced without remainder to anthropology. Anything less leads necessarily to contradictions.
     
Back   -    
New Search

Fideism .
    The view that true knowledge of God can be attained only by faith on the basis of revelation. Reason is therefore subordinated to faith where otherwise problematic issues or questions arise.
     
Back   -    
New Search

Fides quaerens intellectum (‘faith seeking understanding’) :
    see ANSELM .
     
Back   -    
New Search

Fifth Monarchy Men .
    Members of a short-lived elitist millennarian movement in England in the mid-17th cent. Its members, mainly artisans, journeymen, and apprentices, anticipated the establishment of the ‘fifth monarchy’ of Daniel 2. 44. Following Venner's rebellion (1661) the movement died out.
     
Back   -    
New Search

Filaret of Moscow
    (1782–1867). Russian Orthodox renewer of the Church, and Metropolitan of Moscow. Through the Holy Synod from 1819, he worked for the independence of Church from State, but in 1842 he was excluded from the synod because of his support for translations of scripture into modern Russian. He devoted much time to the reform of clergy education, producing The Longer Catechism (1823, rev., 1839).
     
Back   -    
New Search

Filial piety (Confucian influenced virtue in E. Asian ethics) :
    see HSIAO .
     
Back   -    
New Search

Final solution .
    Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jews. The expression ‘final solution’ was first used in 1941. After the Wannsee Conference of 1942, Adolph Eichmann was authorized to implement the total destruction of European Jewry in the occupied lands. See HOLOCAUST .
     
Back   -    
New Search

Firdawsi, Abu-l-Qasim Mansur
    (940–1020 (AH 328–411)).
Iranian poet who preserved many Zoroastrian traditions. He placed little emphasis on religion beyond a vague monotheism compatible with Islam. He was called Firdawsi by the Sultan Mamd of Ghaznah, who said that his compositions turned the court into the rooms of paradise ( firdaws , see PARADISE (ISLAM)).
     
Back   -    
New Search

Fire (in Hinduism) :
    see AGNI .
     
Back   -    
New Search

Fire ‘worship’ (Zoroastrian) :
    see ATAS .
     
Back   -    
New Search

First Amendment .
    The first amendment to the US