"From a sociological perspective, religious traditions represent and construct the collective values and systems of meaning of human societies. As such, religious traditions influence the way their adherents interpret their experience of the world and, consequently, influence their actions upon it. Religious ideologies, however, are themselves always in medias res. Even though their adherents may uphold an eternal vision of archaic principles handed down from the gods, in actuality this vision is continuously renegotiated and reconstructed in conversation with the changing demands of historical and cultural context."