When thinking about religion, we all know that there is a lot of conflict between different religions, their beliefs, and the society to which we belong, for example, the social viewpoint of Islamic Muslims and how that has brought conflict between the Islamic religion and society as a whole. But what we don’t necessarily always think about is how much conflict there is within each sect or denomination, both similar conflicts and different. McGuire points out that issues of deviance, control, authority, and heresy dictate the conflicts that are common within the church, within the synagogue, within the mosque, etc.. Issues of deviance arise when members don’t follow the beliefs to the standard that religions want them to, for example, I was always raised to believe that Christians aren’t to partake in common trends like tattoos and that anyone in the church who had them were seen as sinners in the eyes of God, but as I grew older I became a part of this trend myself and felt unsure of whether I was really a sinner, or the fact that the church couldn’t control my actions made me a sinner in the eyes of the church, but not necessarily in the eyes of God. As far as the issues of heresy, McGuire states that it is more than deviance as it is almost a complete change in beliefs and ideas that were set forth by authority figures in the church, which again, brought me to question whether the church was really led under an authority working for God, or just a figure of authority wanting to showcase that form of power, which is something I was witness to at an old church where my family was shunned because my mom was following through with a divorce and our pastor told her that she was wrong and needed counseling because it wasn’t right in the eyes of the Lord, although the pastor was also co-workers with my ex-step-father. So taking into consideration all issues of conflict within the church, I wonder whether the same issues are seen from and cause issues outside of the church.