According to an article from Local12.com, officials in 6 different states, including Virginia and Florida, are reviewing bills that will allow Bible study within the classrooms of public schools, permitting that these are taught not as religious classes but teaching the literary, cultural, and historical significance of the Bible. President Trump tweeted his support of this.

A little bit of background on this topic is that in 1869 the Cincinnati School Board ended scripture reading because of the Catholic opposition, as the schools were reading the Protestant version of the Bible. This was an attempt to regain the Catholic children back into the public schools they had left. In 1963 the Supreme Court ruled Bible study in public school unconstitutional, yet today, many prominent conservative Christian leaders are attempting to undo this and continue pushing Bible literacy in schools.

This is an interesting discussion, as the Bible, whether one is a believer or not, has had an undeniable trend on American literature and society. Hundreds of thousands of works of art have allusions to the Bible within, especially literature and American classic works that many high schoolers will be exposed to. Teaching it as a strict piece of literature could be beneficial to developing critical analysis and insight among students, within English class. However, the strong support from so many conservative leaders leads me to believe that the emphasis would be less on literary significance and more on teaching it as truth, which is against the nature of the bill. Our country has always had freedom of religion, but how can we say that we uphold this value if our public schools push specific religion?

In a U.S. News article by Alexa Lardieri, they discuss and analyze the statistics of actively religious people reporting higher levels of happiness than people who are not religious.

Lardieri mentions:

“A Pew Research Center study of people in 26 countries published on Thursday found that participating members of religious congregations report higher levels of happiness than people who are not part of a congregation, with people in Mexico reporting the highest levels of happiness.”

They go on to explain how there is a trend of 71 percent of actively religious members saying the are very happy, compared to the 61 percent who are not affiliated across the 26 countries researched. This is an interesting finding to me because the question comes to mind is that does religious beliefs and followings make people happier or is it the community and people that make people happier? To what part of religion exactly does religion contribute to one’s happiness? Furthermore, the article discusses the possible relation of the percentage of people who drink and smoke frequently to those who do not and see similar patterns between the two that you would see with people who are religious  and people who are not. Does this mean the religion and drug and alcohol have to juxtapose or is there a middle ground and coming together of the two?

Below is the link to the article:

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2019-01-31/pew-actively-religious-people-are-happier-and-more-likely-to-vote

This past week my group and I were the first group to present our case study on Miller’s book “Reinventing American Protestantism”.  Throughout this book the author touches on three paradigm churches: Calvary Chapel, Vineyard Christian Fellowship, and Hope Chapel. After our presentation of the book, a few of our fellow classmates asked us some interesting questions that we were unable to answer due to the year that the book was published.  So I did some extra research after class and was able to find the answers.

A question that came up was if there are other Calvary Chapel’s worldwide or are they only in the United States. It turns out that there are tons of Calvary Chapel’s in each continent.  In the book, Miller only talked about the ones in the United States (Downey, Riverside, New York, etc.). I am not sure if Miller already knew that there were other Calvary Chapel’s worldwide or if he simply just didn’t state it in his book.  Nevertheless, it was crazy to me to see how many different Calvary Chapel’s there are worldwide.

Another question that came up was about how different the churches are from the book compared to today.  I also did some research on this and found the names of the current staff members who are at that church.  For the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, Brian Brodersen is the senior pastor. Unfortunately, Chuck Smith died on October 3, 2013.  For the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim, it seems that they have different people speaking every week. I also found that John Wimbers died on November 17, 1997.  Last but not least for the Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach, Zac Nazarian is still the current pastor.

These are just a few questions that I was able to finally find the answers to.  Miller’s book was very interesting to read and it was fascinating to see how these churches are currently doing today.  

Today in class we were given a presentation on Konieczny’s book, “The Spirit’s Tether: Family, Work, and Religion among American Catholics. ” The presentation focused on two Catholic churches that were discussed in the book: Our Lady of Assumption and Saint Brigitta. These two churches contrasted, one being more traditional and family oriented, the other more modern and community oriented. Though both Catholic, each church had different views and different interpretations of the Bible resulting in very different church environments. Being that Our Lady of Assumption is more traditional, they had more traditional views like the traditional family unit and pro-life, they also had more mandatory hours of confession, and the church architecture was more traditional with its saints and stained glass windows. On the other hand, Saint Brigitta is less traditional in that there are less hours of confession, they are pro-life and pro-choice, and their mass is held in a gym setting where they are more focused on creating a community. I found this presentation to be very interesting as it made me realize that even Catholicism can and is changing. I thought of Catholicism as the Catholicism I encountered in Mexico, the Catholic Church like Our Lady of Assumption. Our Lady of Brigitta is simply another example of the shifting paradigms that are occurring in the US in order to survive the religious decline. Denominations aren’t so black and white; they vary even within the same denomination and I think that comes to show how churches are adapting to different times and values that different generations carry.

After having heard about the history of Calvary Chapel and Hope Chapel today in class, I decided to look further into their current conditions since the text being presented was 21 years old. I have found that both of these churches have gotten themselves into some trouble, in recent years, and have had lawsuits filed against them.

The family of the former pastor and founder of Costa Mesa’s Calvary Chapel filed a lawsuit against the church, claiming elder abuse and wrongful takeover of his property. Founding Pastor Chuck Smith had been suffering from lung cancer and died in October 2013. The suit, filed in September of 2014, says Smith’s illness and resulting death was exacerbated by the negligent care of a nurse, chosen by his son-in-law, Brian Broderson. The suit also states paramedics told Smith’s family that not calling 911 was a mistake, as it likely would have helped to save his life and prevented his suffering. Broderson is Calvary Chapel’s president and chairman of its board of directors. Broderson and several others on the board used Smith’s failing health as an opportunity to take control of the church, including ownership and rights to The Word For Today (a nonprofit outreach of Calvary Chapel that receives donations and sells various products). Kay Smith, who had been receiving a monthly annuity from the church of between of about $10,000 to help support her and her husband, was not paid for one year after he died, and was not awarded any of Smith’s $1 million life insurance policy. Smith was pressured to change the beneficiary from his wife to Calvary Chapel several years prior to his death.

Meanwhile, Hope Chapel parishioners sued their ex-pastor for church investment fraud…

I believe part of the reasons as to why this became so corrupt is because of the initial way in which it was founded. As we mentioned in class, it was all very entrepreneurial, which made it inevitable that it revolved around money and so it was only a matter of time for it to be motivated by greed.

In chapter 3 of American Religion: Contemporary Trends, Chaves discusses the phenomenon of more and more people claiming to be ‘spiritual, but not religious’. Given other statistics relayed in the reading, such as the declining confident belief in G-d and declining religious socialization, this makes a lot of sense.

Although there seems to be trouble in the scientific community differentiating between religion and spirituality, my experience with both has helped me define the difference. To me, being spiritual means seeking familiarity with your soul and your place and purpose in the universe. It means searching for the meaning of life, and for inner peace. Many religions provide answers to these inquiries, often relating directly to belief in a higher power, but religion is also much more than that. Religion is also tradition, ritual, and community. My experience growing up in a Reform synagogue was largely centered around these latter components. While G-d and belief were discussed, my Jewish identity began with celebrating Chanukah and Passover every year. Simply participating in these traditions made me feel distinctly Jewish. In addition, every year of elementary school my mother would come into school and teach the history of Chanukah to my class. This fueled me with pride in my community and our history, and had nothing to do with belief or spirituality.

While spirituality is an essential part of religion, spirituality can (and does) exist outside of religion. When people say they are ‘spiritual, but not religious’, I think this means they don’t participate in the traditions or rituals of a certain religious community, but they might believe in a higher power or seek the meaning of life.

There are two things I would like to cover in this post, one is how applicable McGuire’s chapter 5 is in terms of my experience in my visit to Pathway and the second is the nature determining what is and is not official religion. Visiting Pathway on Sunday has opened my eyes to how vastly different two sects of the same religion are. While at Pathway, I noticed a lot of differences in how people dress to how the mass is organized. While Pathway has, what McGuire describes in ch. 5, an ‘official’ religion model, it did not feel entirely like an official religion. This is mainly due to how the institutional organization is, well, organized. If one does not do research prior to walking into Pathway, you will not know what the structure is and you will feel lost during the first 20 minutes of mass. If you do research prior to mass, you will find that there is a lot of organization in terms of pastors, directors, and volunteers.

Concerning the determination of what is and isn’t an official religion, I believe that this is completely arbitrary. McGuire describes the difference official and non-official (popular) religions as being under the control of official religious organizations and uses the U.S. as an example of a nation that has many popular religions (p.116). This argument, to me, says that in order for a religion to be official, it must have some sort of organized entity (group, politically backed, etc.) that supports it. This would throw out religions that are just beginning or those who aren’t as big as Christianity. I suppose an example would be the Nestorians and how Western Christianity would refer to them as ‘heretics.’ I bring this up because while the Nestorians were not the largest sect of Christianity, they did have the support of the Mongolian Empire (though it was not the official religion of the Empire). Of course, my personal opinions aren’t to be taken as fact, I’m just stating that it is up to the individual that experiences other religions to determine if said religion is official or not.

In class right now we have been discussing a lot of charts and looking at the trends such as the populations of Protestant and Catholic churches, over many years. Overall one connection that can be drawn is that the populations in churches have decreased over many years and the population of unaffiliated people has increased. Although we can deduce this correlation from the chart, it does not tell us the reason for this decline. One might be able to speculate, but cannot prove causation based on the graph. One topic that was brought up in class that intrigued me was the discussion of someone identifying themselves as spiritual or religious. One chart from Chaves novel showed that there is a growing minority of people becoming more spiritual and less religious. He states that one interpretation of the graph would be that more people are concerned with spiritual matters, whatever that might mean to them, and less concerned with being a part of organized religion. He goes on to claim that as this group of individuals continues to grow, that it may give rise to a new type of religion. I found this to be very fascinating that we could be witness to a new, completely different form of worship. A new form of religion that has been becoming more popular among individuals is the Calvary Church, a new paradigm church mentioned in Millers novel, “Reinventing American Protestantism”. Here it is much more laid back, people can dress as they want, and the music is less traditional than what you would consider “typical” gospel music. I think that if spiritual individuals were to begin to congregate and share their beliefs it would be similar to the laid-back structure of the Calvary Churches. However, it would be very interesting to see how they ran their meetings, to see how closely they resembled churches now, and what they felt were important, core features to their new spiritual religion.

This week we read about religious involvement in America. This chapter made me think about the future of religion in our country. Chaves states that less children today are raised in religiously active households, and religious involvement as a child is one of the biggest predictors for religious involvement as an adult. Most of my friends/ peers would not describe themselves as religious and if they did, most would not be able to say they are religiously involved. However, I know that for my age group it is typical for religion not to be a big part of our lives, and I also know that many of my peers were religiously involved as children. It makes me wonder how many people I know now who brush off religion will again become religiously involved as adults. I also wonder the reasons as to why people who stray from religious involvement come back to it. It was also interesting to me when Chaves explained how although elderly people are considered a highly religiously involved group, these are also people who were raised in religiously involved households. When the elderly group one day consists of people who were not raised religiously involved, will they still be a highly religiously involved group?

I was very interested to see the various statistical mappings of religious involvement in the United States. What stood out me is that religious “nones” are becoming a larger percentage of religious diversity in America. “After 1990 more people thought that saying you were religious was tantamount to saying you were conservative Republican” (Chaves 17). Many people are abandoning organized religion because they refuse to be associated with the controversial conservative political party. I tested this notion on the Pew Forum website to determine whether or not Chaves was correct in his statement. The data on the Pew Forum revealed that the religious “nones” overwhelmingly supported the liberal political agenda. I have met many people who have abandoned their past religions because they would rather stick with their liberalism. I have to admit that I am one of these people. In addition to avoiding the Republican party, I think that young people are becoming more wary of religion because science is becoming more advanced. People previously used religion and faith to explain things they did not understand. Modern science has provided explanations for things that were once considered supernatural. Some people are faithful enough to look past some of these scientific explanations. There can be major contention when there is a pressure to choose religion v. science or religious conservatism v. liberalism. This contention can cause people to avoid conflict altogether by becoming a religious “none” (even if they still have spirituality). It is unfortunate that there does not seem to be much progress in having these different mindsets coexist. I am interested to see if the trend of religious “nones” will increase in the future.