I have found myself pondering the role of religion in modern life as of late. For my case study earlier in the semester, I read Tradition in a Rootless World by Lynn Davidman. My findings from that study along with my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints makes me wonder how the role of traditional religions will adapt and change as times go on. I personally predict that traditional religions will gain membership as an almost counterculture movement. This may seemed rather far-fetched, but let me explain.

Popular counterculture movements, though typically rather liberal, have always been a direct result of society. Modern society has become increasingly more liberal and less structured. People who are attracted to order, rules, and form are beginning to feel ostracized from mainstream society. The polarization of the media does not help the moderate middle, who do not align themselves with both the structureless left and the close minded right. People are searching for a middleground. People are searching for order. People are searching for answers. Though the religious majority continues to be Protestant, statistics show that protestantism has been on a steady decline over the years.

Lynn Davidman revealed that those who converted to Orthodox Judaism did so because of confusion surrounding modern culture and a desire for order. I predict that as society continues to lose structure, more people will cling to religious ideologies that provide that. However, I do believe that this hypothesis is conditional. I do believe that more traditional religious organizations will gain membership in the future, but only if certain sacrifices are made. Modern Society has been shifting towards a more equality based belief system, and churches need to reflect that to some extent. Emphasizing the importance of women and People of Color in leadership will bring many more converts to these traditional churches.  These traditional churches need to make moves to appeal to the moderate middle. Failing to do so will lead to serious losses in membership, I believe.

I read the opinion based article Are we witnessing the triumph of evil on RNS (Religious News Service), and as much as the article lacked facts and fully fleshed out ideas it did bring a very interesting question to my attention. Are there good and bad people? The article did not hesitate to jump head first into our social climate and the tragedies that happened this week. The author talked about how he thinks that we are being overwhelmed with negative news and how he connects these ideas to Amalek (a nation in the Hebrew bible that are the enemy of the Israelites). He started the article with asking his 7th grade class if there are bad people, they responded with “No, there are just people who do bad things” the he proceeds to ask if there are good people and without hesitation they responded ” Of course there are”. Now I’m not saying that 7th graders are the forefront of ethics in society but they give a very straight forward answer. I would even say that most people would agree with them. The issue that I find with the article is that unlike the the students the author is too quick to jump to the conclusion that people are bad and that we as a society are witnessing evil triumph and control our society. I think that we need to establish a more neutral context while discussing ethics and the idea of good and evil doers. I am a strong  believer in that no one is inherently good or evil but we just make decisions that we think will best suit us.

Heading to a bible study this week changed the perspective on how I look at religion and really put me in a situation where I had to make personal choices. Being at a christian school all my life and having religion forced onto me has most likely effected my long term relationship with god and makes me wonder if their even is a god. Seeing the way god works in people is astonishing and being an active member of the religion is something I would like to do and make the commitment to do but its hard because of my past. I feel like I am not the only person who feels this way and not the only person who was forced into religion at a young age. I feel like being forced into a religion and to go to church at a young age changes how people make long term decisions about their religion. Seeing someone relationship with god develop over time is something beautiful and can help you make life changing decisions but this has to be made by yourself and not forced by family. Trying to force someone into doing something like going to church will effect them directly because maybe they do not know everything about the religion or they want to learn more. This is something that has personally affected my life and something I can see effecting other peoples life as well. Bringing this to light and making sure someone has good background information on the religion and have a well rounded knowledge of what hey are trying to do will help make your decision and it should be 100% personal for your life.

Two concepts that I found very interesting while reading McGuire’s chapter of “Religion in the Modern World” was the concepts of societalization and privatization. McGuire begins this chapter by discussing the overall decline of religion seen in individuals’ lives. One approach to explain this is the idea of societalization which is described by Bryan Wilson. He discusses the loss of power that religious organizations have when it comes to large corporations such as media, politics, television, sports, and so on. He claims that because of the rise of these corporations, religion cannot keep up and becomes comparatively weaker. I had never thought of religion as having to compete with corporations and found this comparison compelling. When I was growing up, my friends would often say that they didn’t want to go to church because they didn’t want to miss a birthday party, or a softball game, etc. Although these aren’t large corporations, it shows that religion still has to compete with everyday life activities that may be more exciting to someone that isn’t extremely religious. Another reason for the decline of religion on the social spectrum, is due to privatization. As religion has continued to change in recent centuries, it has become an increasingly private for individuals. It is used to act as a buffer for people to express their stress and issues from social life in a different aspect. I found that church I observed, The First Congressional Church of Redlands, showed this concept. Never in the service, did the pastor share personal experiences or ask for people to share with others. The service contained a lot of rhetorical questions and time for private prayer at the end. For these individuals, church was a very private matter and a way for them to communicate their everyday issues and stresses with God.

This past week we read chapter eight from McGuire for class, which discussed the topic of pluralism and secularism in our society, which led me to think of some topics we have been discussing in my other classes this semester. I am a religious studies major, and I enjoy getting a different look and learning about the different perspectives on religion in our society, and especially in America. In one of my classes, Women, Sex, and Society, we have been talking about where secular space starts and ends, and where this division lands for most people, specifically in the context of sexuality. Many are raised in a religious setting, and once they discover an LGBTQ+ identity, they start feeling like they need to keep their religion separate from that part of their sexuality/identity, especially if their religious tradition is more conservative. They don’t see a connection between their sexuality and spirituality, whether it be by society’s bounds, their tradition’s bounds, or ones they have created in their own head. It is difficult to imagine a space in which sexuality and spirituality can coincide, and this secular division extends to many other areas of life. We frequently don’t see where our religion can come into our lives, that it can be a part of our school, work, identity, and even our sexuality, and this is a way that we secularize our lives. It is fully possible to incorporate religion into all parts of our lives, and it doesn’t need to be totally separated and secularized.

Last week we read chapter eight from McGuire. McGuire and Spickard, in this chapter, talk about pluralism saying that when people are surrounded by different practices and beliefs they will in turn question their own. Furthermore, modern societies “brings together many people with many different views, and …expect them to behave civilly towards each other with toleration for difference.” (288) This made me think of modern politics and the discussions surrounding topics like immigration. Pluralism in religion seems comparable to pluralism in regards to political views. California for example, we have large immigrant populations as well as diversity in general and as a state we tend to be more liberal on issues surrounding immigration. Whereas we might see trends of states with low immigrant populations have opposite stances on immigration. And while I recognize this isn’t always the case (e.g. Texas), it has some of the same tones. Diversity forces us to challenge our perceptions of people, religion, etc. but as McGuire and Spickard makes a case the alternative, not challenging our own views, led to lack of freedom. “That same firm sense of tradition and community, however, also gravely restricted individual freedom: Choices of marriage partners, occupations, leisure-time activities, and political options were all controlled, sometimes subtly and often overtly.” (283) It was interesting to think of the decline in religion in terms of positive results. Often, the connotation of the loss of religion is a loss of some type of moral set of ideals, but instead this chapter frames the implications that other narratives might have on an individual level. Implications of individual freedom and tolerance of different views and practices.

The question of the afterlife recently has come up a few times in my life. Recently my partner’s grandmother has come down with a mysterious illness and this has caused her to question what will come afterlife. Similarly, my father has been struggling with an illness for quite some time and he has pondered the same question. I have listened to both of their ideas what will come afterlife and they both varied greatly. My partner’s grandmother explained that she believes that afterlife she will go to heaven. When asked why she thinks this, she stated that this was because the Bible said so. She also explained that she is confused about how it would be because it is stated that  heaven is a place in which there is no marriage. She went on to explain that we are not meant to know what comes after life and she believes that this is by design. When my father explains he believes of what comes after life, he describes a moment of darkness and peace followed by being born again. He states that he will most likely not be born again as a human but as a bird living in the trees of the tropics or as a dolphin jumping through the waves.

While listening to these two differing opinions is interesting, I believe that they are strongly attributed to a person’s religious beliefs. My boyfriend’s grandmother was a Christian in her twenties to late thirties who attended church consistently, while my father has attended a handful of services and mixes often between praying and practicing his own spiritual techniques.

The article “Why Morality Makes Us Free,” by Martin Hägglund in the New York Times discusses how the heart of spiritual life stems from Buddhism since it recognizes that life is our purpose instead of nirvana or heaven. He goes on to discuss how salvation in Buddhism is simply to be able to have an end to life instead of eternity.

This article made me think about how religion in many people’s live is based off of being able to have a “better life” when they leave this Earth. It is fascinating for me to realize how people dedicate time, money, energy and resources into their religion in the daily lives that they are currently in, in order to achieve so other worldly place such as nirvana or heaven. From a personal perspective, recognizing my biases, it is puzzling to understand why people dedicate their lives to a future unknown. Yet, from a sociologist perspective it makes sense that one’s religious beliefs are to be respected in their entirety as most do deal with great faith.

I am curious as to how many people who follow Buddhism, thinks about their “life after death” or is it insignificant thought?

Here is the link to the article below.

This past week we took our midterm.  The midterm consisted of 3 questions and I was very intrigued by the questions that were asked.  The one question that stood out to me was about my first congregation visit, New Life Redlands Church, and it asked questions from that McGuire’s or Chave’s book can answer.  For example, one of the questions was “Which of the contemporary trends by Chaves can you see operating in this congregation’s religious life?” In my essay, I explained mainly two trends of Chaves that I’ve noticed that I can see operating in this congregation’s life.  The first trend that I saw during my visit was the increase in technology. As I explained in my first congregation visit essay, the church Facetime called another church from a different location. I’m almost certain that churches back in the days were unable to do that because their technology was not as advanced as today’s society.  I also noticed that many people were on their phones. I couldn’t tell if they were using their phones as a distraction or they were on some sort of bible app. However, they were still using technology and people back in the day were not even able to use a bible app. The second trend that I noticed was the increase of attendance of more older people.  There were only about 3 youth age members, 8-10 high school through college age members, and the rest of the members were around 40+ years old. I’m still not sure if it’s because majority of the people have been going to that church ever since they were little kids or not. Though I did have a conversation with a two people and the women did say that she has been going to the church ever since she was a little girl.  She even pointed out her mother to me. Nevertheless, these were the two major trends of Chaves that I was able to see that was occurring at New Life of Redlands Church. I’m eager to see what other trends I can identify during my second congregation and compare and contrast the two.

In his book, American Religion: Contemporary Trends, Mark Chaves describes America’s changing religious landscape, one aspect of this being diversity within religion. Chaves explains how immigrants moving from their home country have diversified the religious congregations here in the United States. The rise of ethnic churches has become something crucial to the integration of immigrants in the U.S., as even Meredith McGuire— author of Religion: The Social Context— acknowledges in chapter 8 of her book, that congregation-level religious groups have provided an important site for integration of immigrants. Several recent studies of immigrant churches have “documented the importance of religious communities in giving new immigrants both a connection with their former countries and a toehold in the new” (Religion: The Social Context, 291). This was illustrated to me at my congregation visit where I attended a service at the Indonesian Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Within this traditional, Protestant Christian denomination, an outsider could visibly see the community fostered within the church walls. I had never been in a religious setting that was not solely Hispanic or a combination of different ethnicities, but I had stepped into a church made up of a homogenous group different from my own brownness. The congregation was full of South East Asians and the only signs of diversity were myself, another student, and a white man all attending the service. Now, I do not know and cannot say if many, if at all, of these members are immigrants, but I had never really been in an ethnic church other than my own. In my own church experiences, I hadn’t paid much attention to the fact that I was among those like me, I simply was; I was comfortable in a space. Much like my experience, the members at the Indonesian SDA church appeared to be just as comfortable having found a community with people of a similar culture. Having this support allows one to feel welcomed and accepted— something new immigrants seek out in a new and uncomfortable space. A church for immigrants to go to helps them establish new and meaningful relationships while undergoing the process of integration in a new location; it is important to have such spaces to feel welcomed and seen, and as more ethnic churches arise we continue to take more progressive steps.