ABSTRACT
Apart from culture there could be no religion. Although religious faith may seek to transform culture, a religion can take shape for the faithful only as it develops some kind of cultural ‘body’ consisting in distinctive patterns of language, thought, art, ritual, and social organization. Thus every religion necessarily participates in culture by making and transmitting its own kind of cultural tradition, which may vary from place to place and time to time. Furthermore, every religion must respond to forms of culture it has neither made nor claimed for itself. As a religion develops, it must orient itself both in relation to the culture of its origins and in relation to the contemporary cultures it encounters—each of which presents alternative possibilities that a religion may reject, modify, or eventually adopt.
