As I was running today, I was thinking about the focus of various world religions and what there actual "practice" rather than cosmology or belief system was centered on. Thinking of Max Weber's landmark sociological study of Protestantism for example, in "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," it seems apparent that the core focus of the practice of Protestantism is Mastery, which has mostly expressed through market capitalism since the inception of this branch of Christianity. Continuing along this strain of thought I was musing that the following might be the core elements of practice in the various major religious movement of the world:
1) Protestantism: Mastery (The efforts of the individual being of paramount importance.)
2) Catholicism: Service (Doing your duty in attendance, giving to charity, vows of poverty, serving the poor.)
3) Judaism: Tribalism (Taking care of your brethren, supporting the homeland.)
4) Sunni Islam: Detachment (through the practice of prayer and fasting to detach from temporarily and materialism.)
5) Shia Islam: Support of Hierarchy (through annual self punishment for not protecting ancient leaders as a group, and through stringent familial and societal hierarchy reinforcement.)
6) Sufi Islam: Serenity (Through the exercise of perceptual discipline and introspective exercises.)
7) Hinduism: Acceptance? (Through knowing and behaving according to your karmic place and time?)
8) Buddhism: Harmlessness? (Through avoiding causes of pain or injury effecting oneself or others?)
9) Confucianism: Stability (Not rocking the boat anywhere or in anything when at all possible and respecting elders and everything they and society have established?)
10) Baha'ism: Education (Learning and then Teaching, viewed as the means towards world peace and unity)
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