This week was a very eventful one. On Monday we presented our congregation visits. It was truly fascinating to see the wide variety of differences, not only between the sectarian congregations and the denominational ones, but between the sectarian congregations and each other. The congregations held many positions on the spectrum between giant, loud services and very small congregations with no more than fifteen parishioners to their names. This highlighted an incredible diversity in the forms of religious worship.

On Wednesday we attended a symposium led by the teacher, which provided an interesting look at the religious lives of the catholic workers’ union and how their social activism tied into their methods of worship. This was a unique opportunity to learn more about an even more unique organization, and I greatly enjoyed the talk. The other two talks, while not as relevant to the class, were also interesting, and overall the symposium was an engaging event that I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to attend.

This next week the class is going to be discussing their religious interviews, and I can’t wait to see what people learned from the religious experts they chose to interview. I know that my interview, for one, gave me some fascinating insights into the life of the religious specialist and their worldview, and I greatly look forward to comparing what my interviewee said with what was learned by the rest of my classmates.