THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE PROCESS OF INTERCULTURAL INTEGRATION
THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE PROCESS OF INTERCULTURAL INTEGRATION

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary ways of defining religion are most often associated with reductionist theories of religion, which grow out of a rejection of the need to accept the real, personal and transcendent object of religion as the foundation for its proper understanding and study. They see religions exclusively as a peculiar phenomenon of a social nature, a purely natural, cultural and historical phenomenon. Such a reduced understanding of religion with its inherent non￾specific functions (worldview functions, educational functions, political and ideological functions, cultural and aesthetic functions) makes it possible to use religion – especially institutionalised religion – instrumentally as a social and culture-creating element, including to antagonise and legitimise hostility, cruelty and violence in the name of the only truth and the realisation of the will of God. The modern world, although globalised, is multicultural. One of its constant elements, accompanying man since the dawn of time, is the phenomenon of religion. Religion, both institutionalised and non-institutionalised, plays an important role, not only in building and preserving the psychological well-being of the individual, but also in building societies and in interpersonal, intercultural, interracial and international relations. In this context, it is important that in the process of defining religion and within the framework of religious education, attention is paid to religion for its specific functions. By educating to define religion in this way, it is possible to understand that at the basis of religion is always the same revelation, given by the common object of religion. Man is a conceptual and aesthetic entity, living in a specific place and time, his description of reality is made on the basis of the cultural codes he possesses. It is no different with the reception of revelation, which has the character of an individualised experience of a profoundly aesthetic nature, but its description, the transition from the esoteric to the exoteric plane, is carried out on the basis of the conceptual resources at one's disposal and the ways of understanding and using them. It is therefore worth conditioning in religious education in such a way as to demonstrate the unity of revelation (such as the cosmological epiphany) – but at the same time to bear in mind the possibility of 258 different ways of reading, defining and understanding it as a result of cultural differences. This makes it possible to understand the existence of a multiplicity of institutionalised religions, despite the unity of revelation. It leads to an openness to the reality that there is no concept of a better or worse religion, since they all have the same source and the same goal. On the one hand, there is one religion, because there is one revelation given to all people regardless of time and place, but at the same time there are as many religions as there are people, because religion is man's response to divine revelation, the reception of which has the character of an individualised experience of a deeply aesthetic nature. Such an understanding can lay the foundation for a transcultural and trans-institutional understanding of the essence of religion, and thus for acceptance, tolerance, openness and mutual respect – for unity in diversity.

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