Why Should One Want to Participate in a Religious Tradition?

Abstract

In this article, I apply the theory of tradition Karl Popper developed in an article on the rationalist tradition to Christianity. Popper helps us to distinguish between four functions of the Christian tradition. (1) The Christian tradition helps people to order their perceptions by suggesting distinctions between what is important and what is less important. (2) The Christian tradition provides people with guidelines for their (moral) behaviour. (3) The Christian tradition provides a framework that helps us to understand the past of our own culture, and can also function as a background against which we may form our own authentic views of life. (4) The Christian tradition is closely connected to the Christian community, which functions as a social group to which people may belong and by reference to which they can define their identity. These four functions shed light on the question why people attach value to participating in the Christian tradition, and why they deplore the decline of the Christian tradition.