Although I grew up in a somewhat religious household, I never thought to take a step back and reflect on religion from different perspectives. Just in a week’s time of observing from the outside, I have grown more aware of what determines personal religious/spiritual preference. Personal preference could stem out of family traditions and values or even from unexplainable and out of the ordinary life experiences. Similar to Dubner’s story in, “Choosing My Religion”, I was raised to follow one religion, in my case Catholicism, and instead I am beginning to carve my own spiritual path. My beliefs have not been solidified, but I do know that I believe in some form of higher being. Through reading this article and talking with my classmates about their religious backgrounds, I have learned that straining from traditional beliefs is growing more common. Very few people in our class are currently practicing the religion they grew up with and I would like to know why it is not more. Some people are raised to believe in one religion and while they make the choice to stop believing in the higher power, they hold onto the morals that the religion provided. While I find it interesting that some families stray away from religious traditions because of things such as tragedy, I also want to know why people are drawn to specific and new practices. It is interesting that monumental moments in our lives, positive and negative, can determine who and what we look to for guidance, if we look to anyone or anything at all.

In class this week we talked about our own religious backgrounds and we got to learn more about our classmate’s religious upbringings. The most surprising thing I learned in class is that California is one of the most unreligious states, and based on our class’s religious affiliations, I would agree to a certain extent. A lot of our classmates come from religious upbringings, but have strayed away as they’ve gotten older. This seemed to be true for the majority of the class, but there were a few who still are actively practicing their religion. A common theme seemed to be spirituality, as many described themselves as spiritual rather than religious. This is something I’d like to learn more about, as spirituality and religion seem to be synonymous to me. I’d be interested in discussing spirituality vs. religion in the upcoming week, since it seems to be a common theme among my classmates. In chapter one of Religion the Social Context by Meredith McGuire, she talks about how religion has not diminished in society, but rather, religious institutions. This aligns with the responses from our classmates because most have distanced themselves from their religious institutions, but many are spiritual and/or practice religion on an individual level. We also talked about how many believe that it is the millennial generation that has drifted apart from religion, but based on many of our classmate’s responses, it is actually our parents’ generation that has, as many millennials have grown up in nonreligious or non-practicing households.

Growing up, my brother has always been a strong atheist. We would often get into arguments surrounding the survival and importance of religion in a technologically changing world. He was convinced that religion was doomed to disappear within the next hundred years or so. However, listening to the discussion in class and through McGuire’s reading, I have come to see that religion as an institution may be dwindling, but spirituality is on the rise. Many students in our class identified with the fact that they grew up with institutionalized religion, then drifted to a more personal and spiritual practice. As McGuire points out in the first two chapters of her book, religion is inherent in human nature and practice. People need religion is explain the unexplainable and give them meaning and reason in an often complex world. Religion is also a tool for socialization, which groups use to develop a standard for culture, rules, and beliefs. While for some religion may seem outdated, it is going through a transition of evolving to a new generation of people.

Speaking as someone who has spent very little time exploring religion and spiritualism in general it surprised me to see just how prominent spirituality is in the community. Even disregarding the student responses we heard on Wednesday, the information that there are 59 religious organizations here in Redlands was shocking to me. It was also very interesting to see the trends of spirituality in the class. The most prominent trend I picked up on was the fact that quite a few students drifted away from the religious practices that they had been born into. Whether these students drifted to a different faith, a different idea of spirituality, or an absence of a faith system whatsoever, it seemed like there was a very prominent pattern in shifting from ancestral faith systems. This of course ties into what McGuire said about the need for close-knit religious organizations fading away. It was a very interesting experience to see this wide-ranging transition taking place on the individual level, and even more so to hear from the individuals in the class to whom this transition did not apply. Generally, however, it seems like students like myself, who don’t consider spirituality a major aspect of their life in any way, were rare. That would seem to suggest that religion as a concept is not fading away by any means, merely being restructured to suit a new generation and a new way of receiving information and faith. While this may, in the long term, lead to a diminishing of structured faith centers in the future, I find it hard to believe that the core tenets and ideas of any major faith system will be lost in any way.

It seems that the religious organizations are losing their influence. From what everyone shared in class, people are moving away from the rigidness of organized religion and moving towards a more personalized worship. Majority of people who grew up in a religious family and moved away from the organization still consider themselves a spiritual person. Others have never been involved with organized religion but still feel that there is something bigger then themselves. However, they do not feel that they need to show their devotion by going to a church or mosque.  Religion is becoming individualized, meaning that less people are going to church and more people are finding other ways to connect to their higher being that works for them. I believe this is due to people don’t want another person telling them how they can communicate with their God. I also believe that religion has gotten a bad reputation in the past few years due to how some people use it as ammunition to push their beliefs onto others and into our government. Some people don’t want to call themselves religious because of the stereotypes that come with that so they have started to call themselves spiritual. According to McGuire, religion itself is not fading away, but the need for established religious institutions are. People are finding the community they found in the church elsewhere. People are having deep religious experiences without having to go to a church. Organized religion is losing popularity as people realize that faith is inside of themselves, not within the churches walls.

This week was enlightening about the changing tides of religion. My fellow students and I each got a chance to share our family’s religious history and our current affiliations. Two or three other students and I were brought in different Christen denominations and are still practicing those faiths. However, a vast majority of the class was different. Some were still Christen, but questioned certain aspects of their faith and even developed their own ideas to make up for this. Others were raised in atheist or non-religious families and therefore weren’t religious themselves. Some were from religious families but they stopped practicing that faith, and others from non-religious families became religious or spiritual. Finally there were the people who weren’t necessarily religious but considered themselves spiritual. This brings up an interesting topic. There seems to be a developing group of people who are not actually religious nor belong to an established religious organization. Instead they have their own spiritual beliefs they’ve developed on their own. Some debate whether these peoples’ beliefs count as religions themselves or not. This of course depends on how one defines religion, which is another topic of debate. People also say that we’re becoming less religious. However, according to Meredith McGuire’s book she believes that religion itself is not fading away, but the need for established religious organizations, such as the different Christen denominations, is fading away. (McGuire, Pg. 4-5) Therefore, maybe it is fair to say that this developing group of spiritual people are religious in their own way after all.

In “Silence: Scorsese’s Spiritual Masterpiece,” Craig Detweiler reviews Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Silence. The film explores the nineteenth-century journey of several European priests to Japan to locate the “hidden Christians” there. Martyrdom, of priests and the Japanese Christians, holds an important place in the movie, haunted with images of men drowning or burning for their faith. However, ultimately, the movie explores questions of faith:  “Where is God in times of suffering?” “Is it better to pursue ideal faith, even if it means death, or is it better to stay alive and make some concessions to worldly authorities?”

The characters include Father Ferreira, a world-weary spiritual father who has kept the faith alive in Japan for many years, and Sebastiano Rodrigues, a young Portuguese priest just starting out in his missionary life. Both are Jesuits, part of a highly educated order of priests with a deep spiritual focus. As part of their preparation for the role, they took the Jesuit “spiritual exercises,” an intense 30-day retreat, under the guidance of real Jesuit priests. Detweiler notes the “complete spiritual catharsis” of Scorsese’s latest film, which reaches a level of depth that his previous religious works have not. The film is currently in theaters.