Eliot directly questions the purpose of organized religion, but is less emphatic in questioning God, and tends to not refer directly to God (both literally and figuratively as the word “God” appears twenty-four times throughout the entire book, and most of these are general expressions.) Thus, the book is an impartial observer of the way religion is practiced and the way God is evidenced in the popular beliefs rather than a direct attack on the validity of religion and the concept of God. Eliot is very careful to never attack the existence of God, so even when Silas feels betrayed, he keeps his faith in the existence of God, but he believes that “there is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies.” Silas gains a “shaken trust in God” which quickly assures that the existence of God is never questioned by Marner or any other inhabitant of Raveloe or Lantern Yard. This allows Eliot to focus on the way characters believe in God through the practice of religion rather than the deeper theological issue of the existence of God.

Eliot observes that even within Christianity the interpretations of God are very different. She states that Marner “was quite unable, by means of anything he heard or saw, to identify the Raveloe religion with his old faith,” but even within Raveloe, Eliot illustrates different modes of belief: one a God of precise laws and moral absolutes and another impersonal, parental God. These beliefs coexist within Raveloe because the focus of the community is not on how religious one is — “to go to church every Sunday in the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with Heaven” — but on how one behaves.

Within Raveloe, the popular interpretation of God is of the impersonal yet parental God — an interpretation very different from Lantern Yard’s belief in an active God. Alongside their belief in a Christian God, Raveloe’s beliefs incorporate some elements of paganism such as the belief in and desire for charms. Even with a faith in God, these people want a little extra assurance that things will be better for them, and they are willing to look away from Christianity and God to find it. Eliot uses these folk beliefs to demonstrate that the inhabitants of Raveloe are not entirely convinced of God’s manipulation of events and they do not share Lantern Yard’s belief that God is active in their lives, so even though the inhabitants of Raveloe trust in charms, they would never have drawn lots to determine a person’s guilt because Raveloe’s God as an almost deistic god who creates and judges, but one who is not actively involved in day-to-day matters. God to Dolly is not entirely Deistic because she allows that he may have guided Marner to Raveloe to care for Eppie, but she and the other lay members of the community are not concerned with God or religion beyond a secondary experience.

Eliot seems to suggest that this view is the correct view of religion because she warns against placing too much faith in God as do the inhabitants of Lantern Yard. She argues that once one places too much faith in God, God is in a position to be blamed for any negative event in one’s life rather than focusing on human causes. Silas Marner was betrayed by his friend; however, the lots and God decided for the community that he was guilty, so Marner believes he was betrayed by both his God and his friend because he was assured that God would reveal the truth (he even declares “God will clear me” three times.) Had the lots turned the other way, his faith would have remained, but Marner is placed in a position where his faith in God is destroyed because of the Lantern Yard belief that God is responsible for all actions. Marner eventually regains his faith in God saying to Eppie that he believes that “God was good to me” in delivering her to him, but he never fully regains a personal belief and faith in God. God remains on the outside of his life because Marner can never fully trust in him again.

Eliot warns that focusing too much on God can retard a person’s life and places one at a disadvantage in this world. The negative effects of this are demonstrated by the inhabitants of Lantern Yard’s quick belief in Marner’s guilt and their inability to see that William Dane had manipulated events. The negative traits of this are contrasted with the positive aspects of life in Raveloe where the community gathers at the Rainbow and interacts with each other rather than just with God.

Martin says that mentioning ones religious beliefs in public are part of the evidence for American politician’s extremist views, but I disagree. The way a politician follows their religion is extremely important, and before making any decisions, it is better to know for sure that a politician is going to follow all 10 commandments and most of Leviticus than have them ignore the issue whilst they campaign, and eventually force their secret beliefs on their constituents who didn’t have the chance to hear them. European politicians are more private in their beliefs, but all of one’s beliefs — either in the open or in private — affect their decisions. He mentions the Christian Democrat party in Sweden as evidence of private beliefs, but their beliefs are literally the banner under which they run; they may not mention them, but they are there, and they do affect the decision-making process.

Beyond this point, the issue devolves into Socialism vs. Liberalism vs. Conservatism — for simplicity I’ll define liberalism as the half-way mark between socialism and conservatism even though, as Martin notes, it isn’t. The American and European countries have always had one humongous difference: the European countries have a lineage and a population who is often part of the same country for generations, America doesn’t. America is quote unquote a “melting pot” where diverse groups come together to work and play, but often keep to themselves. There is an overreaching American culture through which people are united, but on a deeper more social level, many Americans couldn’t care less about the rest of America: more people vote for American Idol than the next president, and relatively few people vote in local elections. It can often seem that the way America is run only matters for a few short weeks and it is back to focusing on one’s own life with a few “bursts” of charity and caring, so one feels good about themselves. It seems that Americans tend to not have a good reason to care about all the other Americans, so in the American mindset there is no reason to take from oneself to ensure everyone is happy.

However, the issue is deeper than perceptions of a people. American politics are heavily based on Equality of Opportunity while European politics are based on Equality of Outcome. In America, the individual overrules the group, but in Europe, the group overrules the individual. America favours the hard-luck cases where someone drags themselves out from a lowly start into positions of wealth and influence — before tearing them down for daring to overreach the rest — because this is the ideal on which America was founded. So, yes, America has lower taxes, and Europeans have free health care or all, but it is the philosophical foundations of a society that dictates how it is run, not any egotistical desire or innate “betterness.” It is only time that can say which one is preferable.

The first question in this series comes from an American using Windows and Internet Explorer, and they ask “What religion did the People of the Roman Empire follow?” Well I’m glad you asked that… um…let’s call you Fred… while your search landed on a very popular article entitled Causes and Effects of the Popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, I’m afraid that it won’t answer your question entirely.

Yes, for a portion of its history the Roman Empire was Christian, but for most of its history Rome itself (including the period of the Republic and the Empire) followed a mythopoeic religion that was closely related the classical Greek religion. It wasn’t until Constantine realized that a single unified religion could revitalize the Roman empire that Christianity actually became a quasi-official religion. Prior to this the Roman Empire as a whole did not have an official religion: each culture was allowed to worship their own gods as long as they paid tribute to the gods of Rome and did not deny their existence. Even this requirement was ignored for a time and the Jewish peoples were allowed to live peaceably under Roman rule for many years. However, as the Roman economy degraded and the Empire spread to encompass many different cultures, it began to fracture and there was little to integrate the different groups or the classes. Read that article if you want to know more.)

For the rest of Roman history, the Romans followed a pagan religion and allowed people to believe whatever they wanted. That was the long way of saying: there was no one religion of the Roman empire, there were many.

My next question comes from … let’s say Sarah … who hails from Canada and also uses Windows and Internet Explorer. Sarah asks Did the church unite the Roman Empire?” Sarah landed on the same page as Fred and again the question is not fully answered. The real answer is both yes and no because individually the Eastern Empire and Western Empire were united through Christianity, but because they both had a slightly different view of Christianity (this is the divide between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic sects) the two parts of the empire slowly separate because of the religion.

You see Sarah, as Christianity spread in its early days, certain cities became the founding cities of the religion think Québec and Toronto or New York City and Boston, so they had a relatively large Christian population with widespread influence. However, in what was to become the Western Roman Empire, there was only one city: Rome, but in the Eastern Roman Empire there were several cities such as Jerusalem and Antioch.

Each of these major cities basically had someone, think a bishop, who was sort of a guide to the people under their influence, so while the Eastern Empire had several religious leaders to look up to, the Western Empire had only one: the Pope. As the two empires split the Western side looked only to their Pope for religious guidance and over time the two churches separated because the Western Pope was seen as the single most influential person in the religion by his own people, but the Eastern Empire was used to following several different religious leaders, so the religious structure of the two sides slowly separated.

So the short and sweet answer is yes, Christianity did unite the Roman Empire, but it united it in two slightly different styles.

Arguably the most important “power” that these writers attributed to the individual was the individual’s right to power over their own beings. The ability to self-determine one’s destiny was not only necessary to the underpinnings of enlightenment, but it was also necessary to advance society as a whole. By allowing individuals to have power over their individual being, they became their own masters: no longer subjected by the whims of a larger society. As an illustration of these principles, once released from the tenets of religion, Benjamin Franklin “conceiv’d the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection” (364). By believing in the power of the self and the equality of men he accomplished this without requiring a higher moral authority , Franklin defined his own moral perfection and strove to achieve it. The power the individual has over the self is absolute, but as Poe warns, this can be used for ill: in Poe’s tale of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” his protagonist envisions the world around him through the filter of his own demented mind. The conflicts in the character’s internal self become so profuse that he projects them externally and creates an old man whose eye haunts him, and he is eventually undone when he fails to recognize the beatings of his own heart. This absolute power is both the greatest curse and privilege of the Enlightenment and Romantic views of the self, so rather than leaving this power unchecked, they emphasized the power of Nature as both the antithesis to the self and the guide of the self.

Even though the release from mortal authority and the servitude of religion was central to the Enlightenment, they did not banish the Deities. Instead they either personified deities as part of the natural world which allowed the individual the opportunity to be “part or particle of God” (Emerson, 657) or defined the deities as separate from the world and as a creator but not a participatory member of the universe. Franklin was one of the original Deisitic writers in American Literature, and believed in the separation of religion from God because of the oppressive and meddlesome nature of churches which mixed their theology “with other Articles which without any tendency to inspire, promote or confirm Morality, serv’d principally to divide us & make us unfriendly to one another” (Franklin, 363). As Romantic writing developed it moved the Enlightened Deity from the role of creator into the natural world by blending the deity into Nature and science. This natural view of God continued the deistic way of thinking, and removed much of the remaining power of the organized churches allowing people to find and define their own personal church, and while some created cathedrals out of mountains and trees, others made theirs out of numbers, facts and figures creating the first conflicts between the mystical nature and the exacting sciences.

While the individual had the power to determine their own personal beliefs, some found that they were still oppressed by things they could not control: science became increasingly important, and to some, this was as oppressive as the monarchs and gods of the past. Their objection was that in becoming the absolute authority, science created a monochromatic image of the world which stifled the individual’s ability to perceive the world around him for what he believed it was; however, others quickly realized that science allowed them to open their eyes and see the world both as it was and how it could be. Poe and Thoreau, in a clash between bright and dark romanticism, viewed science differently with the more middle-of-the-road approach being attributed to to the bright romantics. In Poe’s “Sonnet “” to Science” he attacks the mundane aspects of science and refers to it as a “Vulture! whose wings are dull realities” (1223), but Thoreau, in his journals, embraces science, but believes that one can only truly appreciate something when one “forget[s] all [their] learning and get[s] rid of what is called knowledge”. Poe believes that the science accosts his creativity and stifles his ability to be an individual and exercise his hard-won individualism, but Thoreau is capable of independently appreciating nature even if his opinions are invalidated by science because he believes that his power over his own perceptions is absolute, so balancing the science with the mystery of Nature and the joy of poetic expression is not difficult him or other “bright” romantics. These two different views of science are brought about by the way the writers treat science: Poe personified science and held it blamable rather than as a tool, but Thoreau treats science as a tool and because of this, he is able to cast it aside when it is unnecessary while Poe’s creations and imaginings are constantly surrounded, attacked and restrained by a personified science which replaces the monarchs and gods. For writers of similar beliefs to Poe, this restriction by science was contrary to the ideals of Romanticism, and created a stumbling block that hemmed in the powers of the individual.

The only restrictions on the individual, other than the perception of a restrictive science and or those self-imposed, were the restrictions of society itself. These societal restrictions are not the same as the restrictions of a Monarch, but are the attempts of society to control the individual and harness their powers for the good of society itself. To the Romantics, this acceptance of societal pressures was a sort of voluntary defeat which according to some, like Thoreau, was necessary because not all were capable of fully controlling their own lives (820). Thoreau believed that most people spent their lives “sleeping” only using their minds for menial pursuits and living lives “of quiet desperation” (813). However, while Thoreau allowed for control of these sleepers, he believed that should a man wish to remove themselves from the societal order, they should be allowed to: regardless of its effects on the society itself. Thus, the individual is simultaneously an integral component of society, but also transcends such mean concerns when it is necessary for the individual to exercise their powers of reason, imagination, logic and creation.

The writers of the the Enlightenment and Romantic period defined the individual as the reasoning and logical self which interacts with the larger external world, and the powers they attributed to their creation were immense, but they tempered the powers of the individual with the power and mystery of nature. This individualistic view of the self replaced the mean collectivism of European society and formed the foundation of modern perceptions of the individual.

While Thomas Paine was referred to as a “a dirty little atheist” by Theodore Roosevelt, he did not disbelieve in a supreme god as the creator of everything: he believed that man could not be trusted with religion; therefore, any religions texts written down by humans were also contaminated by them. ((“His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.”)) Paine also argued that “it is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand,” so rather than believing in adhering to a particular religious doctrine, he believed, as stated by Thomas Edison, “[that the] Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills.” Paine believed that “[his] own mind is [his] own church” and required no religious texts to indicate how he should live nor did he require four thousand year old scrawlings to dictate his morality. He believed that morality comes from within. ((“I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”))

We can see the rise of deism in western societies by taking America as a middle-of-the-road country. ((Yes, I know that most of us consider America to be very religious, but it really isn’t 100% true.)) The majority of Americans today also tend towards these ideas— the recent Baylor Religion Survey conducted by the Gallup Organization found that 88% of those living in America believe in a God. Of that 88%, 75% absolutely believed totally and 13% believed that it was probable that a God exists; however, a Gallup poll in 2006 found that only 43% of residents actually attended religious services more frequently than “almost weekly.” While these numbers could be indicative of any number of causes, the most obvious is a lack of belief that attendance in religious services, as required in religious texts, is required to live a moral life. Americans are beginning to see that weekly church services and a devout belief in god does not make men infallible and those who profess themselves to be religious leaders can have flaws whose consequences reverberate within an entire religion. While many Americans profess to believe in God, or the concept of a god, most see rituals as meaningless and the countless stories in the bible as stories meant not literally, but as a way to demonstrate morals.

These new tenets are demonstrated by the continued relaxing of America’s attitude towards other religions ((Of course, we must exclude religious animosity caused by non-religious events.)) and sects of Christianity, but the continued idea that atheism is the cause of most of societies ilks. The majority of Americans still value a belief in a god, but what god and how one worships the god is less important as long as the principles in the religion intersect with American cultural values and teach people moral behavior. The separation of religious morals from religion is not new: in the 1830’s Horace Mann argued, as part of the Board of Education for Massachusetts, that teaching religion in schools was not required to teach religious morals, but America’s separation of religious morals from religious belief has always had cycle and peaks and valleys based on events of that and the previous generation. However, it seems that religious doctrine is again giving way to scientific thought—evidenced by the continually changing tactics of those who want religion taught in classrooms—similarly to the way this occurred during the Age of Enlightenment.

Saint Augustine argues this idea by stating the difference between the two cities is in the goals of its inhabitants. According to Saint Augustine the inhabitants of the earthly city seek physical and financial wellbeing with their only goals being peace in wealth. (Just to stick my two sense in isn’t that a very good goal?) However, the inhabitance of the city of God do not seek peace but instead use peace to further the city of God. These people do not look for earthly peace or wealth, but rather look to the next life as their goal.

In general he says that the two cities are part of each other, but that the differences between them deal mainly with life goals and the important things in life.

Cyclical time is based on the idea that for everything there is a season, and that every outcome happens repeatedly. This theory is based on the ancient’s view of the cycle of the seasons and the cycle of life and death. For the ancient Greeks, Mesopotamians and Egyptians it seemed obvious that if the sun, moon, seasons, life, and history all have cycles, then time and the universe itself must also cycle in an endless loop of creation and destruction. The Greek festival of Demeter — the goddess of harvests — took place yearly to celebrate the changing of winter to spring; while in this case there is a reason for a yearly repeat — every fall Demeter’s daughter must descend into Hades for three months — other similar festivals such as the Egyptian celebration of the resurrection of Horus by Isis had no natural reason for the yearly repeat. While the Israelites (historically, the Jewish people are considered Israelites before they returned to the area after the Babylonian empire conquered Israel) also celebrated yearly events, these were considered anniversaries of the event itself rather than the mythopoeic view that the same event actually occurred over and over. This is revolutionary because it removed history from the cycles of nature, and declared that history is a single line from beginning to end. This had two major effects. History itself became far more important because events no longer happened in a cycle, and since they occurred only once individual events were worth remembering because — as the second effect — by remembering and studying one could then predict the future because all of history was controlled by one being, and by studying the past actions of this being one could predict the beings future actions.

As you can tell this leads us directly into Judaism’s second innovation: monotheism. (As an aside there is no direct evidence that Judaism itself is monotheistic (a single god) — many times it is considered to henotheistic (one god above all others.) This distinction is made because in the most well known parts of Torah — Judaism’s main religious texts — it never says that there are no other gods just that none should be held higher. Aside from the evidence in the texts themselves , at the time it was very common for there to be personal or familial gods; these two combined leave the distinction a little murky, but even still here we will assume the popular view.) Not only is the monotheism important in and of itself, but also, the Judaism’s god was theoretically perfect in all ways; unlike the gods of the mythopoeic religions which exhibited human like traits such as love, jealousy, anger, lust, and desire. Of course one can argue that Judaism’s god was also imperfect –as exhibited through acts of anger, but this is not how the Israelites themselves saw him. The Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians all saw their gods as slightly better versions of humans. In fact, in one of the Babylonian myths all of the gods worked together to destroy mankind and almost succeeded surprising even themselves of their own power; not only this, but the gods were also ashamed of what they did and regretted it later. Because the mythopoeic religions had human-like gods it showed that humans themselves are not that imperfect, and the separation beyond god and human was very thin; as a result, the gods were able to affect one’s life, but because of their human-like nature they were fickle which explained the seemingly randomness of life. In contrast, the Israelite’s god was much more powerful than a human being, which distanced them from his actions. The randomness in life was not explained as god being fickle, but rather that god has some plan that is beyond human understanding. This ties in with the single strand of time because every event that occurs was part of the Israelite’s god’s plan, and thus, by remembering past actions in this plan one could predict his future plans.

Finally, in mythopoeic religions the universe is animate or alive, and is a central tenet of most mythopoeic religions. Usually this idea evidences itself in the worship of animals and objects alongside gods because these animals and objects also have spirits that must be appeased. However, ancient Judaism declared that everything, aside from their god, is dead and nothing, aside from humans, has a spirit, and in doing so show that humans are meaningless beyond being puppets in gods show, but are still held above other creations because the are the only creation with a spirit.. This idea combined with the tenant that humans were created from the dirt contrasts with the mythopoeic view that all of creation were created from parts of the gods, and thus, humans are only slightly better than animals and slightly less than gods.

Overall ancient Judaism was revolutionary because it tied together all the facets of life, Unlike many cultures the Israelites saw their culture, history, laws, customs, and religion as one thing bound together making separation nearly impossible. This also worked to tie the group together in a whole because the cohesion of the parts made it impossible to be and Israeli without each of these parts which has made Judaism one of the most resilient religions in the world. in contrast the mythopoeic religions lasted for many generations in each of their cases, but each died out in time because in the end, unlike Judaism, they were not unified nor practical in the long term.

The climate of Israel is one of the major geographical causes behind the strife. As you can see on the map in many Palestine areas the land is infertile and unable to support large numbers of people. As a result many of the inhabitants of the Palestinian areas are unable to produce enough food or find work to support themselves and their families; because of this the less fortunate residents must turn to the various aid groups in the region who provide work, food, and entertainment to meet their basic needs. Unfortunately these groups are the same that organize both protests against Israel and the frequent bombings of civilians that plague the area. While most of the people that join these groups know there is a large difference between protesting and murder, as with any group there are those who are desperate enough to kill themselves and others to ensure their families financial well-being.

The lack of resources is further compounded by Israel’s policy of choking the Palestinian areas by continually building new settlements along and inside the borders of the green line and expanding existing towns far faster than is necessary. Because of this and the tight border that the country of Jordan keeps with the Palestinian areas the Palestinian town are unable to grow along with their populations forcing large numbers of people to live in close proximity with each other. Furthermore, emigration from these areas is also discouraged by surrounding countries creating a scenario where many people are forced to stay within a small area in which riots and violence can easy erupt, mirroring the recent situation in France.

In turn these problems all relate to the economic geography of the area. Economically most Palestinians living inside of the green line are poor compared to the Palestinians and Israelis living or working outside of the green line. For people living in Israel the GNP or Gross National Product on a per capita basis is $20,551.20, however the GNP is only $558.14 in the Gaza strip and $754.40 in the west bank. Furthermore while people living outside the green line are able to find work in white collar jobs or as business owners and other successful occupations, people living inside the line are forced to work at menial jobs at best. This evidences the severely impoverished state the Palestinians are forced to live in.

Political geography also has a hand in the turmoil of the region, being Palestinian is less a national identity and more of a regional identity; (this is analogous to being called Asian versus Chinese.) As you can see on the map, there are many different traditions that are all incorporated into the Palestinian identity without even including the non-Islamic cultures that have existed there for thousands of years. This has been caused by millennia of successive occupations by every world empire from the Romans to the Persians. The constant influx of new leaders, ideas and peoples throughout these occupations made it difficult for the inhabitants over the years to coalesce into a single entity rather than many different small groups whose only tie is the area they live in. Because of the separation of the region after World War 2 by the British and the French the groups that lived there were forced to pick sides as countries were formed without any concern for the stability of the region. Previously peaceful groups were then polarized by economic, regional and religious differences that have ever since been boiling over.

Before the separation in the region into British controlled and French controlled areas the majority of cities each functioned as its own small city-state. Cities in many areas would be primarily Christian, Muslim or Jewish but people would freely trade and travel between the cities. Unfortunately with the creation of the state of Israel as a home for the European Jews cities were then polarized for and against the new state and in turn stressing political relations between individual cities and in turn groups. Furthermore in the Israeli area the new Jewish immigrants were given preferential treatment over Palestinians who had lived there for generations. Also over time the Christian minority (which is about one fifteenth that of the number of Muslims) was also given preferential treatment over the Palestinians because of Israel’s desire to keep close ties with the United States and Europe. This has all coalesced into a scenario where Palestinians see themselves as an impoverished minority in their own homeland.

Geography itself has also been used over the last 50 years by both the Palestinians and Israelis as a tool to prevent the different groups from realizing that they are all equal with each other. For example many maps published in Palestine avoid direct references to anything having to do with Israel, sometimes even to the point of leaving major Israeli cities off the map. But countries other than Israel are clearly marked. Geography textbooks are also used by the Palestinians to support distension among the school children towards the state of Israel, a recent 7th grade textbook refers to Israel as the 1948 lands. However the Palestinians are not the only one who uses geography class to polarize the students, for much of their education students in Israeli schools use textbooks that focus primarily on Israeli history and the geography of the Israeli controlled areas. Furthermore Jerusalem itself is portrayed as a dark and dirty city in the days before the nation of Israel was created. In students this creates a highly emotional connection with the land by seeing Israel as theirs and theirs alone, and furthermore they are indoctrinated into the idea that without the Israelis in control the area would revert to a primitive state.

While the geography of the region plays only a minor role in the turmoil it does provide the catalyst that encourages droves of people to think that maybe they would be better off without Israel. However how much of this is Israel’s fault is left up to the individual, because while many of Israel’s actions help to promote the idea that they are an evil force, much of the animosity goes back generations to the beginning of Israel. Of course current Israelis leaders can not be held responsible for the actions of the British or French but on the same token they cannot be held blameless for their continual antagonism. Just as Palestinian leaders are responsible for the actions of the many terrorist groups in their territory.

Mahayana Tradition recognizes an infinite number of Buddhas who are able to help people achieve enlightenment or, for the lay followers, pray to in times of need. Theravadan tradition however only recognizes Gautama Buddha and prior Buddhas as legitimate. These Buddhas are accepted as men who found enlightenment, but not as supernatural beings. The Mahayanan tradition of accepting infinite Buddhas is beneficial to the religion overall because general practitioners can look to the different Buddhas for guidance and support in times of trouble which, in turn, has a profound positive influence on lay followers.

Theravada Buddhism only accepts Maitreya Bodhisattva as an “official” bodhisattva because he is the only one mentioned in the Pali language cannon. However, Mahayana teaches that all human beings have the opportunity to become a bodhisattva through many lifetimes worth of work. This act of becoming a bodhisattva is seen as an act of great compassion in Mahayanan tradition because the practitioner forestalls an easier road to nirvana to help others achieve enlightenment. Mahayanan tradition holds those who forestall their own ascension to nirvana in the highest regard; however, Theravadan tradition rewards those who focus on their own attainment of nirvana. As a result, Theravadan Buddhism tends to be seen as an elitist religion without much in the way of benefit for lay followers.

Theravadan Buddhism also does not allow local input or updating of traditions from the original Pali language; however, Mahayana allows local traditions to blend with the prior tradition. Mahayana also accepts all languages as part of their cannon while Theravada only allows for the original Pali texts as cannon. Theravadan furthers compounds this difference by only allowing the Tripitaka to be written in Pali unlike Mahayana’s acceptance of all languages. Without a blending of traditions and the ability to easily adopt the ideals of Buddhism to each new region or group, Theravadan Buddhism has had a much harder time spreading over a large area. Mahayana however, has continually spread, and, as a result, has become the dominant form of Buddhism in most areas.

Theravada tradition puts only minor emphasis on rituals. The rituals that are practiced only come from pre-Buddhist influences; local customs are cast aside in the practice of Theravadan Buddhism. Mahayana however greatly emphasizes rituals most of which are based on the local traditions of the area Mahayana migrated to. Emphasis on rituals causes Mahayana to be seen as a folk religion or words over substance and it also encourages the dilution of Mahayanan tradition with the influx of outside influences.

The differences within Mahayanan schools of Buddhism are striking. The three main schools: the pure land sect, the intuitive sect, and the rationalist sect each offer three very different but complementary views of Buddhist scripture and philosophy. Theravadan tradition has only a single school of thought which prevents the philosophy from being fully explored by practitioners. However, Theravadan tradition does have strength as it does not have the schisms in the religious community that has plagued Mahayanan tradition since its inception.

Overall, Mahayanan tradition is seen as a religion of the people while Theravadan tradition is a religion of the elders. Neither is entirely superior to the other as both traditions have their own strengths and weaknesses.