In all honesty I had a problem with Chavez landscape of America. While I know there is much truth to it, I also believe there is a landscape that we are ignoring. This may only be due to the fact that I took a course last semester in which the purpose of the course was to question and redraw America’a religious landscape. With this in mind, I found our class discussion on Thursday interesting. We not only looked at the religions that are prevalent in the United States, but we also talked briefly about the history of the Christian church and the divisions which exist.

These divisions started very early in the church and were claimed as herasy. In Chapter 4 of McGuire, she talks about the importance of herasy in establishing a “religion.” I enjoy the class because I have never studied religion from a sociological point and as someone who has grown up with a religious background, it’s interesting to hear the different points. Jim mentioned in class that these different sects broke apart because of something small, that’s why he loved religion. From an outsiders perspective I feel like there might not be any importance of the splits. Because of the numerous Christian denominations, the more split there are, the less unified the church becomes. That is the importance of these splits. While this sounds very simple, for me, it holds great importance. I have grown up learning about all the saints who have defended and died for the Church because of these “small” things. I don’t know if it is something that contemporaries can understand. I look at the multiple splits of the different churches, yet they all belong to the “Christian” faith. Is each split as significant as the ones that do many died for?