At work this weekend, I told one of my coworkers how I had to visit a congregation as an assignment for this class. She was very interested, and we began to have a deeper conversation about religion in society. She brought up an article she had read and told me about it. She said that when looking at religious views and geographical locations, you can find specific religious beliefs in certain geographical locations on earth. She continued to say that depending on where you are born, you would be raised in a specific religion. Although this can be true for the most part, it is becoming less and less true as time goes on. In the case study I read for our presentations, Peggy Levitt makes a compelling argument about how immigrants coming to America bring their religious beliefs and culture with them and reshape America’s religious landscape. Levitt tells how the integration of these different beliefs has created less borders between religions. As religions spread further around the globe, the lines that divide each religion fade. Today, you can be born in Japan and raised Christian, or you can be born in America and raised Muslim. Of course, the culture you are born in plays a big part of your religious upbringing, but the culture that you are born into can be different than the country of which you are a citizen of. Although it’s no question that culture shapes religion,  we can also see that religion shapes culture.

Yesterday I did my congregation visit at Redlands United Church of Christ, and brought along my friend Zayda for moral support. She and I have very different religious backgrounds, and I didn’t realize how much that would affect our individual takeaways from the service.

I am used to attending a conservative synagogue, where services mainly consisted of traditional prayers in Hebrew and interpreting part of the Torah. From my point of view, the service was very laid back and fairly secular: Those attending the service dressed casually– there were no ties or dresses in sight. A couple of hymns were chanted, but the majority of songs were about love rather than about Jesus, and even written by popular artists like The Beatles and John Lennon– I would never hear their voices at my temple. The church’s ideology seemed to be focused around acceptance of everyone, like Jesus, but again, G-d and Jesus were hardly mentioned directly. The sermon wasn’t even about an explicit bible story, which baffled me.

Zayda’s religious experience was very different from mine– her family attends a nondenominational church, where services are very lively, often beginning with a near-concert, and singing along to songs about Jesus is crucial. In contrast to my experience, she described the service as very formal and “churchy”. The first difference she noticed was that they sat in pews– while comfortable to me, she was used to worshipping in chairs and felt very exposed. She found the fact that aside from two hymns the congregation didn’t sing along very traditional, and even expressed that the chanting of any hymns was unheard of in her place of worship.

If Zayda hadn’t accompanied me, I would not have realized that anyone might consider the RUCC service “traditional”. Before this experience I was unaware of how different modern, progressive churches could be in such a small geographic area.

The group who presented Ammerman’s Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes handed out a few of Ammerman’s survey questions. We had briefly discussed after their presentation that these questions were quite suggestive in the way that they assume that the person answering is religious. I definitely feel that way when reading these questions; that they are specifically written for individuals who identify with a religion. I also feel like these questions follow the stereotype that people turn to religion in times of trouble, tragedy, and great change. It seems to be universally understood that individuals are either raised in a religion or they turn to religion in times of crisis. You do not often hear from groups of people who are religious simply because they felt some sort of connection or believed in a higher power because they “just do” or that is what makes sense to them. There are always these intricate and emotional conversion stories which give Nicholas Sparks a run for his money. On the other hand there are people who have stories of going to church with grandma and grandpa and all of their cousins and it is a huge tradition. Religion is part of what makes them a family. Personally, I do not have either of these stories. I go to a baptist church in which conversion stories are spoken of and celebrated often. Sometimes I wonder if I do not have some huge saving grace story or epiphany that perhaps I have not truly found God or connected with my religion. However, I remind myself that one does not necessarily have to have a tragic backstory in order to identify with a religion or subscribe to a certain belief. If it helps me to make sense of my life then that is enough.

I was very interested to hear about the various roles of women in the case studies that were presented this week. It amazed me how different religious experiences can be for women. There was a wide range of experiences, some women had complete freedom while others were completely confined. The women who converted to Orthodox Judaism were under very strict regulations. They were told to repress their sexual urges and were encouraged to have domestic life be their sole purpose. In addition, they were almost completely controlled by patriarchal influences. In contrast, women who joined the cult  were escaping domestic life to find a greater purpose. They were told to experiment sexually and were given full freedom to express themselves. They were still under the influence of a patriarchal figure, however, he urged them to live life under their own conditions. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Church I studied (Mosaic Church) is also making efforts to include women. They are currently making a special retreat just for girls. It is refreshing to see a Christian church making an effort to overcome traditional gender roles. As a feminist, it is important to me that women get to choose their religious paths. Even though the Jewish women’s experiences were disturbing to me, I had to remind myself that they made a conscious choice to live that way. I think that there are still many boundaries for women to cross in the religious realm. Women need to be free from coercion and abuse, and it would be empowering if they could have more leadership roles. These case studies proved to me that there is social progress being made because women are starting to have more power to choose their religious lifestyles.

The presentation on the Lincoln square synagogue and the bais chana was interesting to learn about because of the perception of this religion seen as a cult by nonmembers. The bais chana consisted of young woman and teens who needed to fin their true identity. The fact that women who start attending the Bais Chana religion encourage Jewish women to continue their education. From the description given in the presentation it gave the sense that this synagogue was more strict on their women due to the fact that they were sent to institutions and are removed from society. The organization of this institution does imply their ideals rapidly but does provide the needs of their members. Since these women were removed from society it is difficult for them to date someone out of their religion unless they are of the same religious belief.

This “cult” ideal religion does have the similarity of only having people of the same religion to date or even marry like in Christianity and Catholics when a couple wants to get married by church.

While the Lincoln square synagogue shared more of a modern value when contact with secular society. Thus being the complete opposite from the Bais Chana. It is not a religion where conversion is rapid and strict but rather consists of a limited commitment from their members. This religion does have less social pressure but more resistance for gradual conversion.

In conclusion this presentation was interesting to learn about more of the brighter internal view of the religion from the members perspective instead of the cult view of that outsiders describe the religion as.

This weekend I attended my normal church service with my parents at Calvary Chapel Pomona Valley yesterday, while normally when I am at school I go to Citizens Church at the in the campus chapel. It was interesting to go from one different church to another within a time span of two weeks. Going back to back like that really had me comparing the church I go to in Redlands and the church I belong to. It’s so interesting to see how even though my home church is Evangelical Christian and Citizens is also Evangelical, how different they are. my home church is very small and probably has about 300 people in attendance maximum. Citizens Church, now that I have been in this class and compared similarities, is definitely a Mega Church. For me, the message that is being told is one of the most important parts of a church, and even seeing the differences in the way scripture is being told is just super odd. At my home church, we go through a chapter at a time in chronological order, and go through scripture by scripture, as we compare the scripture to the message. Meanwhile, at Citizens, the pastor has a message for the congregation and then takes different verses from the scripture and uses that as evidence of what he is preaching. Overall, I think that they are both very similar in the main messages they are trying to give out, yet there is so much different about the style and size of each church.

In the early 2000s, Erwin McManus authored several bestselling books, saturated the Christian conference speaking circuit, and grew a distinct church in Los Angeles, CA called Mosaic. He became known as a leading voice among Christian creatives and religious innovators during that time. In 2008, at the height of his popularity, Erwin McManus retrieved back into the shadows and stopped writing books, attended fewer speaking engagements, and held far less public interaction. Six years later, McManus decided to reemerge with the release of a new book, “The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art.” In this book, his message is simple: people were created to be creative. This became a controversial idea in the church, since those who were not conventionally creative felt like they were “just there,”. Therefore, it is important to recognize how this idea applies to those who aren’t naturally artistic, and why McManus retreated from public life to begin with. In an interview, McManus explained that his brief period of absence from the Xian scene was due to many variables and factors. One of these was that he wanted to affect the world outside of the church and be a voice to an unbelieving world. McManus describe, “we so often focus on Sunday and hope we are changing the world. I felt compelled to tell great art and tell great stories and allow beauty to point to truth,” (2014).

This week I visited the First Missionary Baptist Church for my first congregation visit. This was a really interesting visit for me in comparison to my own Catholic upbringing. My experiences with Christian Mass up until this point were, as a result, largely in a Catholic context. When I was growing up going to Mass consisted on being silent while the pastor spoke. Because of that, I was immediately surprised when many parishioners would speak out in agreement during the service. Furthermore, I was surprised by the familiarity between parishioners and the pastor. Many times the pastor referenced specific members of the church, usually in small jokes or in examples. This was really indicative of the small community present in First Missionary, which was sometime I was unable to experience in my history with larger Catholic parishes.

In this sense, it was difficult for me to get comfortable in the parish at first. Many people introduced themselves to me and it was encouraged to speak out your opinions during the sermon. At the end of the service, different congregation members chose to speak of their own familial struggles so that other members of the congregation would pray for them. Furthermore, I was interested to see that the sermon delivered by the pastor had relatively little use of Biblical texts, rather, the Pastor utilized personal anecdotes to lead the congregation into his point. In addition, the sermon itself was based largely on the concept of correct action and intention, rather than a focus on religious texts. Overall, I was really impressed by the intimacy between the parishioners and the pastor. This congregation demonstrated a strong sense of community that I had not experienced myself in my own religious background.