One of the articles I read this week was  Redefining the Boundaries of Belonging by Peggy Levitt. She explores transnational economic and political practices and gives her audience a model examining three broad goals of transnational religiosity. These three goals look at extended, negotiated, and recreated transnational religious organizations. I was mostly interested in the recreated transnational religious organizations and how they are formed. It was interesting to learn how these religious organizations start their own groups when they come to America and thrive in this new country. These congregations can be created with guidance from the religion’s home country’s leaders or they have religious leaders come to these areas with large transnational people. It also interesting to relate this to other readings because it all shows how these organizations create a safe place and a sense of community to people who have just moved.  This also ties into what we have been learning about this entire semester in terms of religion being a main source of finding a sense of community and identity. Whether someone just moved here from India or just ended their long term relationship, people turn to religion for a sense of community and a way to find themselves.

This week went to a church called Brookside and they were a sectarian Methodist congregation. There were very few people in such a large church and it was definitely different from the denominational methodist church I went to a few weeks ago. The sermon wasn’t specifically about being “born-again” and didn’t mention the two words in particular at any point of the sermon. However, over the past few weeks they have been talking about this “armor-plate” that one needs to wear with them at all times to deviate from the temptations of satan.

The article I read for last class was Reproducing Ethnicity by Ebaugh. How it explains religion’s role for immigrants was interesting, because it was something that I can relate to. It explains people reproduce their ethnicity using religion, as way to create safe place for ethnicity and continuing culture. The idea of how immigrants use their religion in foreign place is something that Levitt was explaining in her book. However, Reproducing ethnicity focused on immigrants that create safe space for themselves to stay in community that they belong and to conserve their identity, while Levitt focused on how bringing those values has effect on US.

I think I understand those who reproduce ethnicity by religion because I use to need my safe place, which means staying with people who talks my language, and my parent still tend to avoid English-speaker sometimes (for example, she always tries to find barber who speak Japanese…). Whether it’s good or bad for them, people who came to new place need their own safe place. Those people in this article choose church as their safe place, but it can be just small group of people around you or home. Also having cultural food is important than people think. I might be more americanized if I wasn’t eating Japanese food that my mother made.

This week we learned about religion becoming more individualized, as well as it being a source of community. The former was an interesting, if rushed, look at how people are taking preconceived notions of religion and changing them to better suit their own needs and desires. Fascinating stories like those of the Gospel Hour and the Dragon Festival were incredibly unique real-world perspectives on how radically personalized religion can be, and the essays by McGuire, Woodhead, and Zimbauer were really interesting discussions of how and why these trends are being introduced. The discussion of religion being used as a source of community also raised some interesting new viewpoints. It was a valuable experience for me because I have recently been having doubts regarding religion’s place in this world, but the idea of religion fostering a sense of community growth and acceptance illuminates quite a bit for me. The article I was assigned, regarding the reproduction of an ethnically faithful space for immigrants to America, was particularly helpful in this regard, showing me just how valuable religion can be as a way of bringing people together when everything else in their environment is strange and foreign to them.

Going forward into this next week we will be discussing our second congregation visits. I am very excited to see how other people experienced this vastly different religious world. I know that when it comes to me personally, this was the first time I’d ever visited a sectarian congregation, and the contrast between it and the congregations I’m used to was very startling. I look forward to comparing notes with the rest of the class.

Last Wednesday night, I attended my second congregation visit at the Redlands Christian Center. Because I am not a Christian and have never attended a secular church service before, I  was a little anxious and curious to see what it would be like. I had certain expectations set because of the movie we watched in class, “Born Again”, but I wanted to walk in with an open and to fully embrace the people and the atmosphere of the church. When we walked in we were immediately greeted and hugged by two women at the front of the small church. Everyone in the church introduced themselves and immediately told us that we were welcomed anytime. The service started with three songs performed by the pastor, his son, and the two women that greeted us in the beginning. The rest of the service was a sermon given by the pastor that followed teachings directly from the bible. He compared the Bible to an instruction manual for a machine and that we were to follow it as literally and as directly as possible. He compared their congregation and other followers of God, to the rest of the people of the world and described them as sinners who had been led astray by Satan. These two aspects of the teachings were very different from the other more progressive congregation we went to, The United Church of Christ and actually resembled some of the ideas shown in the, “Born Again” movie. Ideas from McGuire’s book, such as a woman’s more subservient role in a church were also apparent in this congregation as we saw the differences between the jobs of the women and the men in the church. Overall, it was a good learning opportunity, but it was definitely different from other services and congregations I have been to.

This week in class we presented different articles that we were assigned to read. On Monday, many of the articles that were assigned focused on the effects of gender and sexuality in religion, and how they can affect personal religious beliefs. The article that my group read was called “Queering the Dragonfest” and it focused on the relationship between sexuality and religious beliefs. The author of this article noticed that throughout her study, her viewpoint changed, and she started looking at the way sexuality and gender are connected with religion, rather than focusing on feminism in religion. The second article I read on Wednesday was “At East With Our Own Kind” and it was about the relationship between social class and religion. This article really intrigued me because I previously assumed that religion was very separate from social class, but I realized how influential it actually is when deciding upon a religious organization to join. While both of these articles seem to be very different in topic, they both focus on the many outside factors that affect religion and religious beliefs, such as gender and social class. I found these articles to be very interesting because they both shed light on the outside factors that influence religion that I never gave much thought to previously.

For this week’s blog reflection post I wanted to write about my friend Sarah’s experience in her Sociology course this past week. Last Wednesday, we were getting lunch and she was telling me about a conversation she had just had in class. Her professor had asked the class something along the lines of ‘do you think people/society could function without religion’. Having essentially the same viewpoints as one another, Sarah took the affirmative saying that yes, people and society could function without religion, that aspect wasn’t a surprise to me. Why she had brought up the class discussion to me in the first place was to share other people’s opposing beliefs in the class and how they were the clear majority. Sarah spoke to me of one girl in particular who voiced her opinion, saying that being brought up in a devoutly religious family made her who she is, saying religion gives her purpose in life and provides a ‘reason for the bad things’ that happen in the world. Many others followed in her footsteps in terms of having religion in their lives as a purpose or a reason as to why life/things are the way that they are. People would also express how they “don’t understand” atheists or how people can live with this mentality. Growing up, both Sarah and I did not live with any religious presence in our lives, and it’s quite frustrating at times when people who equate their belief in God as the reason they exist then undermine people (like Sarah and I) who feel differently than they. Though the correlation is a fuzzy one, I am somewhat reminded of the religious presence in America and American families versus that in Europe and European families. Being raised by immigrants and spending a large majority of my childhood growing up in France makes me question if there’s a link between these two separate realities and their devoutness towards religion.

In class this past week we focused on the different topics brought up by the articles our groups read. What I found most interesting is how the French government handled religious affairs within their society: the French government decided it would be best to confine religious activity to the home. “From a Community of Believers to an Islam of the Heart: “Conspicuous” Symbols, Muslim Practices, and the Privatization of Religion in France” is an article by Caitlin Killian that explains how Islamic women who have immigrated from Maghreb countries to France feel about practicing Islam in France. According to the article, “the French are less encouraging of religious difference and expect religious expression to be confined to the home and places of worship” (Killian, 307). The women interviewed for the article explained that it was difficult to fast during Ramadan because they had to work the same amount of hours at their day jobs. The women also explained how it was difficult to keep up with praying five times per day. Additionally, the younger generation is looking for ways to practice their religion to connect to their roots but their outside environment is forbidding it.

Reading this article reminded me of what I wrote my religion-in-the-news report on a few weeks ago: the EU religious symbol ban. It also brings up ideas of secularization and privatization of religion, which are both things that have been reoccurring ideas in our classroom. How can limiting religious activity to the home be good for a society?

At the beginning of this week, we learned about new trends in the sociology of religion, from changing gender roles to increasing awareness around LGBTQ sexuality. First, we heard about increases in unofficial religion. The subjects used by McGuire grew up within the confines of official religion but supplemented or replaced it with alternative practices. For example, one woman practiced gardening and reoriented her career and home around this spiritual practice. Another remained active within his church but focused on social activism as his main religious expression. Zimbauer also studies “nones” or “spiritual but not religious” people, who tend to have higher incomes and more negative attitudes toward religion.
In addition to increasing expressions of unofficial religion, we discussed LGBTQ and female religiosity. In “Queering the Dragonfest,” Neitz described pagans’ increasing comfort with gender-bending and same-sex relationships. Meanwhile, “Gospel Hour” allowed gay men a safe space to express their belief while healing from the harsh exclusion they had experienced from their churches growing up. Finally, in “Gendering Secularization Theory,” Woodhead described three different lifestyles modern women choose and how they affect their religious affiliation. Traditional domestic women, for example, often choose conservative religion, while career women generally stay away from it. Women who choose both paths may discard religion, but they may also choose to follow a liberal religious tradition as a way to help them manage their myriad responsibilities. In all, these articles helped us understand sociologists’ approaches and findings in new areas of religious expression.