comparative religionis encouraged to seek refuge. The irony of the Buddhist monastic com-
munity is that a monk must renounce society before becoming a monk,
and he then becomes dependent upon it for his necessities.
During the formative period of Christianity, the evangelist Luke
defines the early Christian community in Acts (2.42) as a fellowship
(koinōnia) grounded in the members’ relationship to Jesus Christ, accep-
tance of the apostle’s message, sharing communal meals (eucharist), and
common prayer. Similar notions of a Christian community are evident in
the letters of Paul and Johannine literature. Later Christianity witnesses
the development of various monastic orders – Benedictines, Franciscans,
Dominicans, Jesuits and others – representing new kinds of religious
communities within the overarching structure of the Roman Catholic
Church.
In India, Hinduism is a collection of diverse communities that are dif-
ferentiated by caste affiliation, religious sect, temple association, village
identity, or ethnic identity. Often community identities coalesce around a
religious figure or teaching, and they form sampradāyas (sects). An
excellent example is the Bengali saint Caitanya and his inspired Gaudiya
Vaishnava Sampradāya, who worship the deity Krishna. More histori-
cally recent examples of Hindu communities are the so-called samāj
(society, tradition); for instance, the reform movements of the Brahmo
Samāj and Ārya Samāj in the nineteenth century.
Further reading: Olson (2005, 2008); Porterfield (1998); Wach (1944)COMPARATIVE RELIGION
Comparative religion is a subfield of Religious Studies concerned
with comparing one religious tradition with another with respect to
belief systems, myths, rituals, practices, artistic activities, social
aspects, and theologies. The discipline of comparative religion origi-
nates in the West during a period of colonialism and its accompanying
convictions about cultural superiority, adherence to the fundamental
presupposition about the superiority of Christianity, and embrace of
the theory of evolution, which induces scholars to look for patterns of
religious evolution. This threefold context falls into disfavor in more
recent times because it obstructs genuine understanding of a religious
tradition other than the one in which the scholar operates. With their
faith in science, some scholars also want to expose the magical and