This past week in class, we read and discussed seven different articles, and took turns presenting the material to the rest of the class. My assigned article was “An Unsecular America” by Roger Finke, which argued that religion is not declining and disappearing as so many of us are inclined to believe. This reading was very interesting because it traced, from a sociological perspective, the prevalence and growth of religion and spirituality in America, and frequently used Europe as comparison to add more context to our perception of our current religious landscape. We have many more religious sects and denominations throughout America, because it is relatively low-cost to create a new church, and to gain new followers; in many parts of Europe religion and state are interconnected and therefore the government can influence how religious sects and denominations are formed. In Europe finding followers and instigating a new religious movement is much more difficult, not to mention costly.
I really enjoyed this particular article because it challenged our ideas of religion in America, and provided an alternative perspective. I feel like religion in America is oftentimes misconstrued, and there is a continuing public dialogue that religion and moral standards are declining in America, but this is not entirely true, as Finke illustrates. I know that for me and many others, religion is still just as much an important part of our lives, and regardless of what minor declines may state. I also appreciated hearing the stories of all the other student’s class articles that gave more context and counterpoints to my assigned article.

The article from Time magazine, “Religious Leaders Fear Armed Guards Must Now Become the Norm After the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting” by Katie Reilly discusses many religious places of worship have proposed and take action in getting regular professional security personnel after many shootings have occurred at churches.

Reilly mentions how the New Reform Temple in Kansas City, Missouri hasn’t hosted a single service without an armed off-duty officer present for the last 4 years ever since white supremacists killed three people outside a Jewish community center.

It is interesting and saddening to read of how temples, churches, and synagogues are now and have slowly been implementing more security breaches due to tragic violent events that have occurred at religious organizations. It is also interesting to hear  what the priest, preachers, and rabbis have to say about the gun policies regarding this issue. Some have stated that stricter gun laws would create an impact on preventing these shootings. Furthermore, some state that they want to push back on having armed guards at their places of worship since they believe that should not have to worry about the situation.

Politics and religion is perceived by many people as something that should be separate or that is separate yet there seems to be an abundance of situations where these two overlap and intertwine and how one is used in the other. Furthermore, there is much correlation between people’s religious affiliations and political party affiliation.

Here is the article below.

http://time.com/5439114/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-armed-guards-debate/

There are six sociological narratives for the views and aspects of religion. There is the idea of secularization which is the idea that religion is becoming less valuable and disappearing from modern world. Some examples include the decline of church affliction, and church attendance. This idea of secularization is being brought up by structural differentiation, politically, socially, due to privatization and also the decline of believe.

The second sociological narrative includes conservative resurgence that dominates the growth of Evangelical Protestantism as well as non-affliction. Also taking into consideration the increase of radical Islam in the Middle East As well as practice in the United States. The third is religions as local communities where for example teens look up to their congregations and adults to build a familiar community of people who practice the same religion, but also having a decline in denominations.

The fourth sociological narrative is religious individualism which is the idea that your actual religion is practiced. For example social relationships culturally and seeking individual meaning in a society that does not provide lasting roles. Also includes religious markets which change the religious structure who see religion as more of a business and members representing customers. So their idea is that the more member in a congregation then the more business produced and market their religion as well as religious products sold to members. In more of an economic point of view includes the sociological narrative of Globalization where the world is now more interconnected compared to past years. A major role that is played is the traditional approach where religion is seen as a safe sanctuary and source of faith for large numbers of immigrants who come to the United States?

This past week we did an activity where we split into different groups, depending on which article was assigned.  I was assigned to read “Religious America, Secular Europe?” by Berger. It was an interesting article as it mainly explained the similarities and differences of what religion is like between America and Europe.  

As we discussed in lecture, we defined secularization as the idea that religion is disappearing from the modern world.  Berger claims that Europe is a more secular society while America is a more religious one. In our class activity, my group and I used a venn diagram as an outline and drew creative characters and symbols that represented each similarity and difference.  For example, one similarity between the two was that both catholic and protestant churches must operate as voluntary associations. So we decided to draw a church with open doors. The whole idea of thinking of different ways we could represent each fact was very challenging, yet helpful at the same time.  

The “Gendering Secularization Theory” group’s presentation of their poster really caught my attention.  Their article’s main focus was about how gender plays a significant role in the secularization theory, more importantly women.  On the poster, they drew a “working” women which represented someone who is not as religious. On the opposite side of the paper, there was a “stay at home” women which represented someone who is more religious.  However, in the middle they drew a hybrid of the two different women and explained how it represented women today who are both but still consider themselves as religious. These women were considered “jugglers” as they juggled both their job and home life.  I found this article very interesting because it shows how secularization has and still do affect women till this day.

As it shows, this week’s emphasis was really about secularization and how it plays a big role in religion.  I believe that this activity allowed me to see the different ways in which the different authors see how secularization has been affected in society

This week’s case study, “Is Religion the Problem?”, is about  religious violence and the debate about it here in America. In it, the author Mark Juergensmeyer puts religion in two different lenses: religion as the problem— it causes religious violence, and religion as the victim— violent instances are done under the name of religion. Juergensmeyer says religion is not a problem, rather religion in public life is; religion in politics is. Found in all religions is “sacred warfare,” examples being battles in the Old Testament, epics of Hinduism and Buddhism, and so on. This notion of “sacred warfare” is misconstrued when taken out of context— especially when it is applied to the political. Religion can personalize conflict and provide personal reward for doing things in the name of religion. It provides an organizational network, is a vehicle of social mobilization, and can act as a justification for violence when applied to an outside context. However, religion can also be used for something positive in that it can offer images of a peaceful resolution and can offer justification for tolerating differences.

This week in the classroom we performed a Jigsaw activity. In this activity we were paired into groups and were instructed to read two articles, one assigned, and one chosen. My articles were Roger Finke’s “An Unsecular America” and Linda Woodhead’s “Gendering Secularization Theory”. Roger Finke’s “An Unsecular America” surrounded the topic of the traditional secularization model of the investable decay of religion.  Finke highlights the aspects of this model that may pertain to Europe but not the United States. He explains that these contradictions may be in place for a few reasons. A few of the main reasons being that the US has a separation of church and state and religious regulations are not in place in the US. He uses data and statistics to strengthen his argument that the United States’ religious beliefs are not decaying.

In contrast, Linda Woodhead’s “Gendering Secularization Theory” is an argument stating that men and women in the US have drastically different experiences with religion. She states that when observing the decline in religious attendance, you must look at the data with the realization that men and women have left at varying rates. She states that this difference in the relationship with religion is based on the roles in the household and in the workplace that women have. She states that there are now three different types of women today. The ones who are stay at home moms, the ones who are focused on the workplace and the women who are in-between.

This week presented many important aspects that a sociologist should and does apply in their research.  Most famously is that of the six sociological narratives that answers what is happening to religion and why?  I find each one to be rich with unique ideas that sometimes overlap with each other; but stay relatively separate throughout the data-gathering process.  Overall, the structural change and the cultural change of society is constantly evolving to the point that, I believe, the thought of religion is divided in two parts: those who feel it is no longer relevant; and those who feel the need to change it along with the times.  Whether or not people decide to follow a religious belief does not preclude the fact that religious settings can also be a place for community fellowship; and that individual choice is deeply personal.

Furthermore, the article that was chosen for me to read, and the one I chose, both had a foundation in at least one of the six narratives.  Steve Bruce’s “Christianity in Britain, R.I.P.” focused on the irrefutable decline of church membership in the U.K.—thus confirming his thesis of secularization increase.  Throughout his essay, he denies Rodney Stark’s claim that secularization does not exist by citing data gathered from 100 years of research.  The idea that religion is disappearing from the modern world is the exact definition of secularization; and it unfortunately is what many believe has happened.  The move for religion to be more private is undoubtedly why secularization is becoming more prominent.

Reading about the different religious narratives helped me to tie together a lot that we have learned in the course so far. I realized why it was somewhat difficult for me to summarize what I have learned- because the same data can be interpreted in so many different ways. The narratives of secularization, conservative resurgence, religions as local communities, increased individualism, religious markets, and globalization all have some validity to me and that is difficult for me to wrap my head around. All of these narratives invite support and critique, and there is no way that one can ever be proved the “correct” narrative.

This week in my theory class we read Michel Foucault and his thoughts on discourse seemed relevant to the debates between the different religious narratives. Discourse shapes and defines our reality and ideas. There is nothing pre-existing being discovered though discourse, but it is created through power and knowledge. When reading about the different religious narratives, I thought about how no one discovers some pre-existing truth and there are only interpretations of data. This also made me think of social construction and how scholars construct the reality of religious trends, and because they are constructions none can be classified as “true”.

In chapter 8 of McGuire’s book, she explains the different theories which sociologists have proposed to answer the question of how religion has changed in the United States and how it may change in the future. The first of these theories is secularization, which suggests that we no longer live in a society dominated by religion. Reasons which have been given for this shift include differentiation, societalization, and privatization. Institutional differentiation and societalization essentially suggest that we live in a a corporate society which is made up of many large-scale institutions and corporations. Government institutions such as welfare offices have now replaced small church organizations; people look to religion less and less to solve their problems. Privatization suggests that religion plays much less of a role in an individual’s social life. Instead, it is seen as a private aspect of life, and many are against religion playing a role in public policy and government. I wondered why McGuire proposed this reasoning for why Americans may now be less religious, considering she admits that this explanation doesn’t necessarily suggest that people are against religion or are less religious. Instead, it simply suggests that they may not make it as central to certain aspects of their lives, and they view it as a separate and private role. Privatization strikes me as being one of the central concepts in Ammerman’s “Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes” book that my group and I conducted our presentation on. While she seemed to suggest that the American people have become more private in their religious life, and are less willing to accept every part of one religion, she does not suggest that Americans are less religious. Instead, she observed that many of the people she interviewed did in fact find religion to play an important role in their lives; the role was more private and tended to be separate from their political and social lives, although it did seep in at times.

It is no doubt that we are living in a peculiar time where politics and religion intersect. With the recent events in New Zealand, I would like to address the increasing threat of radical Christianity. It is no doubt that the shooting that took place last week was based on race and religion. There was, of course, a narrative that was pushed with this recent shooting (which can be found in the manifesto left by the shooter). This narrative has many similarities to the Crusades from the 9th century and so on. The one main similarity is the narrative that the Islamic faith is a threat to Christianity. In this situation, there was a mention of a secret Christian group named “reborn Knights Templar.” Should this group exist, there is no question that they are a cult that expresses radical sectarian ideologies. In much of this, we can see an obvious trend and motivation to the shooting. The result that this murderer wanted was the balkanization of the western nations which indefinitely leads to a race war of sorts. It is clear that this attack was to provoke those that are radicalized to take action against a group of people. This attack will, unfortunately, create fear in the world, increase the cultural rift that we see occur, and drive us away from obtaining world peace. Thus leading to my claim that this event is one of many examples that we are going through a modern crusade and we are at the crossfire.