This article, written in January of 2017, says that the 500th anniversary of  Luther’s 95 Theses is this year. I thought this article was timely because of our class discussion on Luther and the beginning of the Protestant reformation. This historic year is recognized in Germany, as the Protestant reformation has shaped modern German culture. While Germany is primarily a secular country, Luther’s influence today can be seen in the aesthetics of Germany, love for books,  language, and frugalness with money. For instance, only 30% of Germany is either Protestant or Catholic, while in America about 70% of the population is Christian. Something interesting to note is that the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is considered Lutheran as well. However, Luther had some negative attributes as well like his anti-semitic views. It is even said that Luther blamed Jews for the illness that eventually killed him. While Germany does not identify as just a Christian country anymore, it has drastically changed since the Protestant reformation, as the increase of the Muslim population has created a new religious pluralism.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21713843-500th-anniversary-95-theses-finds-country-moralistic-ever-how-martin-luther-has?zid=315&ah=ee087c5cc3198fc82970cd65083f5281

With the recent name drop for the new Star Wars movie, there has been some religious fact tied into it. The New York Times published an article stating the growth of the religion of Jediism, yes like the Star Wars Jedi. It first began to show interest in the 1990s but grew to popularity in 2001 when the local census caused people to jokingly list Jediism as their religion which unknowingly paved the way for the actual creation of the organized religion. The plot of the movie, as well as phrases and terms used, have been adapted by those claiming the religion as their own. In 2005, the first Temple of the Jedi Order was founded and those who believe in this religion say that it’s still about living a better life and receiving a better death through an eight step program where one learns the importance of myths, other religions and religious tips as well as how to interact within a community, before receiving a mentor to work with one-on-one through religious growth. Followers identify the religion as a way for people who identify as religious to separate from traditional organized religion and described it at being similar to Taoism where the Tao is linked to the Force. Although the movies were the inspiration and the basis for the religion, with leaders to come out with Jedi scriptures, majority of its leaders aren’t necessary lovers of the movies, but were looking for something outside of tradition. So where do we draw the line at what is considered a religion and what isn’t?

On Friday, January 20th, religion popped up on the front pages of most news websites and TV channels in the country, soon followed by virtually every daily piece of print journalism. Most of these stories on Trump’s inauguration came with large pictures depicting his swearing-in, but each of them also included the Bibles on which he laid his hand. Melania held two Bibles, one that Lincoln had used for his own inauguration and one that Trump’s mother had given him when he graduated from Presbyterian Sunday School in 1955.
The first Bible from Lincoln seems a strange choice, given the disparity between Lincoln’s legacy of uniting the country and Trump’s divisive political style. The choice appears even more odd given that using the Bible is far from Presidential tradition; Obama is the only previous president to have sworn in on it. However, the chairman of the Inauguration Committee explained that the Bible harkened back to moment when President Lincoln “appealed to the ‘better angels’ of our nature,” suggesting vaguely that Trump wanted to echo Lincoln’s request.
The other Bible harkens back to Trump’s childhood. After graduating from his Confirmation class in 1959 in Jamaica, New York, Trump’s mother gifted him with his own Bible. On the campaign trail, he referenced that Bible several times and even used it in a video to his evangelical supporters, touting it as a proof of his longstanding faith. In a way, then, this Bible acknowledges the evangelical electorate that is largely responsible for his election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/01/18/the-symbolism-of-trumps-two-inaugural-bible-choices-from-lincoln-to-his-mother/?utm_term=.0b7f70d3795f

Religious locations of practice often called churches are places in which a community is able to gather and share a common set of beliefs. It is the “hub” of spiritual practices for many religions including Christians (churches), Islam (Mosques), Judaism (Synagogues) and Buddhism (Temples). The investment in maintaining and establishing a facility in which to practice and preach is worth it. With words to describe theses places such as “the house of god” seen in the bible it is hard for people not to create elaborate and decorative worship centers. In the article “Restoring Old Churches Inspires a New Philanthropy” written by Allison Smale in the New York Times, the article discuses how a small community in Russia gathered together with the help of Elina Longinova to bring the life back to a local church. The sense of community used to restore and take part in the creation of the church was very similar to the church in San Antonio that was talked about in lecture Monday. Both of these churches have been built through many efforts made through the community. They have both recreated the way of worship so that instead of focusing on individual improvement the focus shifted to that of community improvement.

There is a lawsuit happening where an unnamed parent of a Mercer County kindergarten student who is an atheist, referred to as “Jane Doe”, wishes to raise her child (Jamie doe), without religion. Jane Doe believes that her child risks ostracism from Jamie’s peers or even school staff if she doesn’t participate in the Bible classes. “The program endorses one religion, improperly entangles public schools in religious affairs, and violates the personal consciences of nonreligious and non-Christian parents and student”, states the lawsuit.

Students may be taught about religion, but public schools may not teach religion. This is so interesting because societies image of religion is changing so rapidly. We can teach the literature, history, poetry of the Bible and its impact on the world but the religion itself cannot be taught. This relates to our reading because this could be a beginning or example of a movement organization. It is an example of how religious collectivities change as they interact with their social environments.

I with our social environment is in a time of great change and I think this grey area of public schools teaching the Bible to students should generally be avoided. I don’t believe that it should be up to the schools to interpret the Bible. I think the students should learn and affiliate themselves with religion of any sort on their free time. Whether it be from their parents, Sunday school, or watching Youtube videos. I don’t think its very fair for students to feel excluded if they don’t want to affiliate themselves with religious studies or be treated any differently for their beliefs.

Paulo Freire coined a term that I cherish: critical consciousness. This concept encourages us to see keenly the patterns and structures that exist in our social realities that create and sustain oppression. I thoroughly appreciated Chapter 4 of Religion: The Social Context because it details the multitude of ways that religion and power intersect.

For one, the chapter discusses the tension between official and non-official religions. Official religions in both a historical and contemporary context marginalize other religious expressions in order to further legitimate the dominant religious institution. The construction of categories is a means to reinforce that sense of legitimacy. Historically, the concept of official religion was equated with the sacred and all that exists beyond that categorization was associated with profanity. Thus, socially constructed values have become embedded in how we conceptualize religions.

Secondly, gender roles are embedded in religious institutions and rituals. They have symbolic value that reaffirms the role of women as subordinate. Additionally, individuals within the religious community will sabotage the success of women members to conserve the present social structure. On page 137, McGuire asserts that male members of the clergy will inhibit female clergy members who demonstrate high performance. Despite these internal efforts to maintain the status quo, the women who acquire high vocational positions use the position to actively rework those roles for greater equality. McGuire affirms that women in high clergy positions model new ways of interaction that embody values of egalitarianism.

When illuminating these structures of inequality, formulating a solution is the next logical step to take. McGuire suggests that non-official religion, or popular religion, offers a nexus for oppressed individuals and groups to congregate in solidarity. In these collectives, self-sufficiency (and subsequently independence) and alternative production of knowledge serve as avenues for resistance. I look forward to continuously applying this concept and spirit of critical consciousness to illuminate the ways in which religion (and the process of sociological production of knowledge) maintain inequality and oppression.

Note: Absentmindedly, I mixed up the blog post assignments for this past week. I submitted today’s religion-in-the-news article on Sunday. So, this post is to fulfill the Sunday post assignment.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/01/22/when-horse-diapers-and-freedom-religion-collide.html

Okay, I don’t know if this article is too funny(I mean, they are serious but at least title is funny to me…) for this assignment, but I just can’t forget about this article so I decided to write about this one.

This article, “When horse diapers and freedom of religion collide” is about Amish people and the city government. The city ordinance decided to make it requirement horses to wear diapers. Two Amish man said that the order violating Amish religious standards.

First I needed to look up Amish because I didn’t know about them. As it says in article, Amish is religious group that “believe in shunning things that are ‘of the world,'”and in this case, the “plaintiffs are members of the Old Order Swartzentruber Amish religion, one of the most conservative Amish orders.” They don’t use technology (some Amish accept some of technologies), so they don’t use car and use carriage with horse instead.

As I was reading the article, I was wondering which of four categories(church, sect, denomination, cult) it fells. In this case, this conservative Amish looks like sect since with self-conceived legitimacy and has negative tension towards society since they are accusing the city. However, when I was looking up the word Amish, not every Amish doesn’t look like that way. Some of them just stay away from society, not necessary with negative/aggressive attitude toward society. If they are less conservative, then they are more like church? Although it’s same religion, Amish, if the community is different, the category that it falls different?

Due to the inauguration of our new President, the already rising concerns regarding the discontinuation of federal funding for Planned Parenthood has boiled over. In response to the restriction of women’s access to health care, the worldwide Women’s March demonstrated the disapproval of a variety of potential acts.It is common to find that those believe in a religion lean towards the pro-life side of the controversy, however, in, “Yes, People Of Faith Can Absolutely Support Planned Parenthood”, Carol Kuruvilla interview people in religious leadership positions who are pro-choice. Amnita Kilawan, the co-founder of Sadhana: Coalition of progressive Hindus argues that by refusing women the right of choosing whether to have an abortion or not, “‘denies the equality the Bhagavad Gita call upon [them] to carry out’” (Kuruvilla). Ani Zonneveld the president of Muslim for Progressive Views describes that the first 120 days of a pregnancy (before God gives soul to the baby) is open to abortion, but afterwards it is not favored unless the baby is harming the mother, the pillar of family structure. The article also interviews Pagans, Jews, and Christians all describing how when viewed in a different light, they could believe in their religion and still remain pro-choice.

This article showed me that while religion can reflect itself within every aspect of who someone is and the decisions they make, it is possible to find an individuality. Not all religious people are pro-life and not all non-believers are pro-choice. Some people view this controversy as a result of a diminishing separation between the church and state, but every correlation has an outlier.

In the article I looked at this week, “The Changing Nature of America’s Irreligious Explained,” Richard Flory of Religion News Service takes a look at the increasing percentage of US citizens who claim to have no religious affiliation. This is, of course, very relevant to what we have discussed in class, as it talks about religious “nones” and reasons for their increasing numbers. It discusses the diversity of individuals identifying as nones, including those who identify as spiritual and not religious (potentially also identifying as a member of what McGuire would term a non-official religion) and those who are open to the existence of God or some similar higher power.

Flory distills his argument down to five major reasons for the increase in religious nones in America. His first reason is that with the more widespread access to knowledge granted by the internet, traditional authority structures have been weakened (he mentions a nameless pastor whose sermons were fact-checked by her parishioners as she gave them). His second reason is that important social institutions, religion included, are no longer viewed as frequently as having a positive impact on society. Thirdly, issues such as widely televised sex scandals have given religion a bad name. Fourthly, increasing competition for the attention of the average citizen has rubbed out organized religion for a lot of people, and finally, many new parents have been stressing personal choice for their children when it comes to religion, and, perhaps for one of the other four reasons listed above, less children are choosing organized religion. This article is obviously connected very deeply to some of the issues we’ve been discussing in class, and I thought it would be interesting to see a contemporary, real-world take on the issues that we have been covering.

The article I came across is from the New York Times and is titled ‘The Last Jedi’? In Real Life, Jedi Can Be a Religion. I instantly was intrigued by the title because in one of our first classes you mentioned that because of the complexity of defining religion, some people have written things like Jedi on their census’. Even though for many it was a joke to identify as a Jedi there were many people who took that seriously and decided to actively start expressing their religion. This article focused specifically on talking to directors for the Jedi church, Temple of the Jedi Order where they practice Jediism. For them the religion is just the same as any other. I researched the religion just a bit more to discover that in fact they do see themselves as having similar connections to other mainline religions. They say in the article that Jediism is all about “taking a journey” and having “a better life and a better death.” When you read about some of their key beliefs it seems to be a serious and concrete religion. This all ties back to what we have been trying so hard to do in class, define religion. It’s extremely difficult to try and tell someone else what religion is because you may never be able to see eye to eye. For example, I myself would never identify as practicing Jediism, I would identify as practicing Christianity. If practicing Jediism makes someone comfortable and its fulfilling to their life then I have no right to tell them their viewpoint is wrong. Like Chapter 5 in McGuire’s book stated, the dynamic in all religions is going to differ. Putting all religions together is taking a risk because they aren’t all the same but it is also empowering individuals to feel comfort in the decisions they make.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/movies/star-wars-jedi-temple.html?_r=0