A Critical Approach To The Concept Of Religion: A Survey On Wilfred Cantwell Smith.

In this study, critics of Wilfred Cantwell Smith to the concept of religion and the recent conceptual framework formed by him are analyzed. He tries to explain the religious life through concepts of faith and cumulative tradition with reference to views that there have been changes in the meaning of religion concept within the course of the history and that the concept of religion is ineligible to describe the faith concept due to such changes. He describes faith and cumulative tradition respectively as personal experience of love, existence and divine sources, symbols and belief propositions included in religious traditions. This recent conceptualization will have different implications in interpretation of religions and religious life. Therefore; the objective of the study, in consideration of this, is to examine how compatible the conceptual framework created by Smith is with the current the factual reality.