A newspaper article from the Orange County Register last Saturday focused on religion across the globe in honor of World Religion Day. Color-coordinated maps showed which parts of the world practiced which faith in the vast majorities. In terms of percentage, Christians made up 31.5% of the world’s population, Muslims 23.2%, Hindus 15%, Buddhists, 7.1%, and Jews only 0.2%. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) Christianity and Islam, not surprisingly, are the dominate religions for a huge amount of the world. However, just because the majority of people practice these faiths in any particular country doesn’t mean that’s the only religion practiced there. This article can give a person some idea about religious diversity around the world, but certainly not a complete picture. However, the article did also listed the top ten most religious countries and the top ten most in decline in terms of religion. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) The top three most religious were Ghana, Nigeria and Armenia. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) Meanwhile, the countries that are most in decline were Vietnam with a 23% drop in religion, Switzerland at 21%, and France at 21%. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) The US is 7th on this list with a drop of 13% in religion. (Snibbe, News Pg. 4) This clearly reflects how more western countries are declining in religious faith while more non-western countries continue to have strong religious ties. Whether or not western countries are rejecting religion all together or just organized religion is unknown.
Bombay High Court: Murderers Religiously Provoked
On June 2, 2014, in Pune, India, Vijay Gambhire, Ranjeet Yadav, and Ajay Lalge attended a meeting of the Hindu Rashtra Sena (HRS), a right-wing fringe group. The meeting was held in response to protests following the release of morphed images of prominent right-wing figures such as Bal Thackeray. According to witnesses the leader of the HRS, Dhananjay Desai made an impassioned speech provoking listeners to go out and rampage through the streets. Gambhire, Yadav, and Lalge obliged, and later that evening tracked down Mohsin and Riyaz Shaikh, young Muslim IT workers. They beat Mohsin to death with hockey sticks while Riyaz escaped.
On January 16, 2017, Justice Mridula Bhatkar of the high court released the three men on bail, claiming that “in the name of the religion, they were provoked and have committed the murder.” The family of the deceased is expected to take their case to the supreme court and challenging the sentence. Mohsin’s father is quoted as saying “Is provocative speech permissible for murder of an innocent person from another religion? All three accused were arrested from the murder spot.”
This case is a very severe example of the differences between religious faith and observance as discussed in-class on Monday. It is very evident that the three aggressors in this case had very, very different religious views than Mohsin Shaikh. The question of whether or not these religious views are an acceptable excuse for murder is a separate issue, but the fact remains that spirituality can form a piece of one’s identity so prominent that they can be moved to kill someone over it.
McDonald’s Location Opens Near the Vatican
At the start of the new year, a McDonald’s location opened right outside of Vatican City. The McDonald’s franchise is expansive and global and thus it is characteristic of the company to monopolize on the extensive tourism surrounding the Vatican. It is surprising, however, that the Catholic community, the leadership of the Vatican, and the agency that handles its real estate would allow for McDonald’s to utilize that space. Although the McDonald’s has successfully opened their doors, they have not done so without vocal disappointment from its surrounding community. Cardinal Elio Sgreccia called the new location a “disgrace” and also noted that the restaurant clashed with the historic visual appeal of the rest of the Vatican City and disrespects Roman traditions and cuisine. The Vatican will receive approximately 30,000 euros monthly in rent from McDonald’s, proving financial gain to be a significant factor in the Vatican’s approval of the lease. The real estate agency has also approved The Hard Rock Cafe to open it’s doors near the City, which will replace a religious bookstore.
The incoming of McDonald’s and The Hard Rock Cafe is representative of the recent shift in religious traditions. As we have studied in class, although spirituality may be on the rise, involvement in religious organizations has declined significantly. The Vatican City is an emblem of the Catholic tradition and is powerfully symbolic to many who practice Catholicism. The influx of commercial industries near the Vatican exemplifies the notion that the tradition within the organization has become less important, and capitalistic tendencies has began to play a bigger role in its function.
Ireland consdiering banning schools from using religion in admissions
In Ireland, 90% of primary (K-8th) schools are under the control of the Catholic church and 6% are controlled by other religious groups. This means that only 4% of schools in Ireland are not religiously affiliated. The education minister, Richard Bruton said “religious parents’ wishes to educate their children in their faith should be respected but that non-Christian parents should not be unfairly disadvantaged.” Resources are often given to the religious schools before the non-relgious ones, effecting many children’s educations. Bruton has set out plans to tackle the religious discrimination in the Irish education system, cutting out the unfairness of a baptism requirement for school enrollment. Bruton has four different plans to stop schools discriminating against non-religious families, but Irish secularists say that each proposal is “deeply flawed”. Three of the proposals would continue some form of religious discrimination and only a full ban would actually make any difference within the schools. Some school officials see this as a good thing because it would make it easier to convert the atheist children if they are already within the school. They see it as a way to further their following especially with children being so impressionable. Although if the schools are forced to mix, it could create discrimination for the children who are the minority religion. In McGuire books she talks about how in a society like Ireland where majority of people around have the same beliefs, the child’s exposure to religion is informally and continuously. In Ireland, children go to school where they learn about their religion and then they go home to their families that reenforce that learning. If children get taught at school, but then hear different things at home it could cause an identity crisis for the child.
Logic Behind Religion
After reading chapter 1, I was under the impression that it was trying to define what a religion was, and from there, understand situations where religion plays a big role. In this case, it talked about San Antonio and how religion played a role in the lives of people living there. After reading it, I still didn’t quite understand what it is about religion that makes an impact, just that it does.
Reading through Chapter 2, it became more clear just how religion plays a role. As stated by Geertz (1966:40), religion serves as a template to serve meaning. It not only interprets meaning, but it also shapes it. It’s meant to make experiences fit with it, and it’s done to make sense out of them, shaping the meaning and experiences of the individual based on what framework fits and makes sense to them. (pg. 27). That would explain why there are so many religions in the first place: it’s subjective based on the experiences of the individual, and it also explains why people can shift their religious affiliations as they get older and reflect on their own experiences. This can be applied to social settings; particularly if people within a single group share similar experiences and use the same framework to make sense out of them.
Chapter 3 expands from it. It focused more on the individual, and what I got out of it is that a lot of the shaping of one’s religion falls within their self-identity, “each person’s biographical arrangement of meanings and interpretations that form a somewhat coherent sense of ‘who am I?’.” (pg. 52) I found that interesting because I initially put self-identity first, then religion. After reading, I started thinking about religion first, then self-identity.
Religion to make sense
When I read first chapter of Religion: the social context, where it talks about defining term “religion”, I could not think about any definition of religion. Honestly, although I have learned about religion for little bit, I still couldn’t state what religion is/does clearly. Maybe it’s because religion does not affects me in the way it does to believers.
But when I read second chapter it kinda started to be little bit clear. Religion helps to make sense of everyday life and events by “meaning system”, which Berger explains that it “explains why things are way they are and prescribes how it should be”(28). The example of losing job was really easy to understand for me. The event in life, such as losing job, happens, and person wants reason for that even that reason doesn’t give hope to him/her. For event such as losing job, it is easier to make sense out of it; it could be bad luck, market force, not enough work, or boss was mean person…etc. But the reason also could be God will or order for those who use religion’s viewpoint to interpret meaning of this event. People have desire to know the meaning of what they are going through because with reason it is easier to figure out appropriate course of action(32). And to find a meaning of the events, seeing through religion’s worldview can help.
As I said in the class, I don’t have any specific religion I believe although I assume some of ideas affects my way of thinking and meaning system. For me, honestly, it uses to be little bit hard to understand why people believe in religion since it is not familiar thing for me. But as a way of life, to make sense and give meaning to life events, religious people use religion’s worldview, just like I use my view to interpret my event in my point of view. It’s just difference of what group’s worldview that person decided to apply to the life events.
The meanings of our life and religion
My relationship with God is the most important aspect in my life and throughout my time in college I have pushed myself to take classes that challenge me to dig deeper into religion. It’s a topic that intrigues me, because the definition of religion has so many meanings depending upon who you talk to. In class this past week we were able to discover that our individual views on religion differ but also cross many similar paths. The idea of spirituality and religion is something that many of us are trying to tackle. In McGuire’s chapter one of her book she brings up a point towards the end, that Religious organizations are losing their influence. The point was something that I think is quite true, people have become so spiritual and stopped being “religious” because it has become harder to feel at home in certain religious environments. Since we live in a very opinionated society people find it harder to coexist and believe in the same things. McGuire’s book has challenged me to think differently about religion in ways that I normally wouldn’t. In chapter two she brings up the concept of meaning and that as humans we create and hold our meanings for certain areas of our life. For those of us who are religious, she believes we use this as our motivation for the meaning behind everything. In a sense, I understand where she comes from because I have always thought of my life having meaning and that is because of my relationship with God. I do believe that he has laid out my path, but I don’t think this is an excuse for why things happen, I genuinely draw closer to him when I realize that my life is being led by him. Later on she connected the idea of our self-identity coming from these meanings we create for our lives. Thinking about how my meanings and my identity can very closely connect to a Christian from hundreds of years ago is something that is so unique about religion and something she got me thinking about. I am really fascinated by her discussions because I will now consider other people’s thoughts in the details of their life when they have different viewpoints than I do.
Religion and How We’ve Changed
While observing and listening to everyone’s religious lives and how they grew up this past week, I realized that we all had something in common. We all were raised to believe in some sort of religion or no religion and are now beginning to question in what we do or don’t believe in. We all have questions that are sort of unanswered, because religions are not able to give detailed answers or give certain exceptions to people who are in very specific situations. Believing in something that is much bigger than our understanding is hard for a lot of people and that is why people I think struggle with it. In today’s generation, there are a lot of things and ideas that certain religions, like Christianity and Catholicism, do not agree with. Having such strong opinions on whether things are morally correct or not can make people uncomfortable or make them rethink if that religion’s opinion is even correct. But for others, religion gives people more of a purpose to live and a template in the way that they should live and behave. In chapter 2 of the book, it explains that a person’s meaning system is learned from socialization. It states that religion serves as an important form of legitimation, or justification, for both the individual and their social order, which gives themselves understanding of one’s self. It is something that people cling to, because it helps them understand life just a little bit more.
Sociology & Religion
Having grown up with religion as a major part of my early life, I never looked at it from a sociological standpoint until now. Because I had grown distant from religion I wondered what made people so devoted to it.
In McGuire’s Ch. 1 text, she opens with a discussion of San Antonio’s religious landscape. She brings up the question in this chapter about if we are living in an age where religion and organization are become separate. This was interesting to me because religion has a lot to do with the organizational aspect about it – the followers with certain beliefs who perform rituals or prayers to emphasize those beliefs. However, we are coming into an era where more people are striving away from those traditional beliefs and the “organization of religion” and rather becoming more of an individual with a spiritual life. That’s what I felt had happened to me.
Ch. 2 was very fascinating in that it explained “meaning systems” within religion and why religion brings meaning into people’s lives. Meaning refers to the interpretation of situations and events in terms of some broader frame or reference. Most historical religions are comprehensive meaning systems that explains a social group’s worldview. It’s important to keep in mind as well that meaning systems are not simply abstract, but are created and help by people. By understanding how meaning-giving processes work, it makes it easier to understand some of the ways religion links the individual with the larger social group. After reading these chapters, I can understand why religion actually helps keep social order and gives meaning and explanation for many people’s lives.
Religion and Personal Meaning
I grew up raised as a Catholic and with everyone around me also raised as a Catholic. In school, I was taught not to questions the things we learned and to instead accept everything with blind obedience and faith. A lot of my beliefs, early on, were centered around the teachings of the church and the teachings of Jesus. My religiosity was intrinsic rather than extrinsic, however, as I never really found a community within the church that I felt a part of. McGuire talks about personal meaning, and in class we also learned about the different paths our classmates took in regards to their religion/spirituality or lack there of. I learned from reading Victor Frankl, that the search for a purpose and the task to create personal meaning, is one that each person must find on their own, but once it is found, the world takes on a new light. “If one has a ‘why’ to live for, one can endure almost any ‘how’.” These words have proven true for me as I have lived my life. Recent months have been one of the most trying of my life, but my own ‘why’ allowed me to be resilient and endure. Religion can be the ‘why’ of a person’s life. It was not the case for me, but it has the power to be for many others, as I recognized in hearing the stories of others in class. This shows how much power religion has over people’s hearts and actions and I just hope that it is used for good rather than to harm in those who accept religion into their hearts.