American Religion

Adhering to your religious and personal beliefs in a society where there have been generational shifts in attitudes toward nonmarital sex is challenging. These changes in sexual attitudes and behaviors are connected to growing cultural individualism in the United States. When a culture places more importance on the desires of the self and less on social rules, more relaxed attitudes toward sexuality are the almost inevitable result. You are faced with the decision of conforming to a society where the acceptance of premarital sex is at an all time high. Yet, your religion and personal beliefs have shaped your moral compass, which makes it evident that you do not wish to stray away from your decision of abstaining from sex until marriage. In efforts to assist you in effectively communicating your desires to your girlfriend we will evaluate your relationship through key communication concepts such as: culture, Social Exchange Theory, Social Penetration Theory, listening, and Self-Discrepancy Theory. .

Spirituality is one of the most important aspects of life to some communities, cultures, and nations. People who believe in God usually become more spiritual as they age. In American societies, the mosques and churches have older people than younger people. In most cases, we become more spiritual or at least start looking for religious answers when we are faced with a death in the family. In a study by Moremen,(2005), 26 older women who had not experienced a life changing even or recent death in their families were interviewed on their views in terms of “their place” in society” and the “order of things”. None of the participants were facing a terminal illness. The majority stated that they wanted to understand things and were looking towards

Today there are more than 1,500 religious bodies in the United States, ranging from the more than 66 million members of the Roman Catholic Church to sects with fewer than 1,000 adherents. In virtually every region of the country, religion is being expressed in greater variety, whether it be the Latinization of Catholicism and some Christian faiths or the de-Europeanizing of some established Protestant faiths as with Asian Americans or the de-Christianizing of the overall religious landscape with Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and others (Roof, 2007).

Religion has shaped and played a big part of America since colonial times. In colonial times there was religious event and groups that affected the American’s society we know today. A religious event that made an impact was The Great Awakening, the revival of Christianity. Two religious groups were the Puritans and the Quakers. The Puritans came to the country to reform the Church of England and they tried to establish a temporary government in the new country until an official government arrived.

In a forever evolving universe, it is not uncommon for human beings to experience apprehension when it comes to the idea of change. While some are passionately working towards the future, others are struggling to grasp onto the remnants of the past. New generations are being born and with every new generation comes an increasingly advanced perspective of the world. Traditional ideals and ways of life are continuously expanding and becoming something that may be unrecognizable to some and unheard of to others. With this being said, however, there is one thing that will never be completely new: the concept of religion.

.In the new world there are two dominant religions that we see in the readings which were the puritans and the Catholics. Even though both of this religions had may differences they also had some similarities. A similarity that seems commend in both religions is that they both believe that all actions and results were the way they happened because of god. Puritans believe that the rich people were rich and the poor people were poor because god wanted them to be that way (23). The Jesuits believe that they were send to the new world because and that god wanted them to teach and improve the believes of the natives because god wanted them to do so (37). They both believe that there is one god and Jesus Christ was the son of god (24, 31). They strongly believe in the bounds of love and need to help and give to your neighbor (24).

Rodney Stark and Roger Finke’s Acts of Faith explores the idea of religion acting like an economy, and, more specifically, religion responding to competition in the same way that markets do. In the background of this idea of a religious economy is the overarching question of why America has higher rates of religious participation. Using data from a variety of European countries in conjunction with data gathered in the United States, Stark and Finke found that decreased religious pluralism, as a result either of a country’s history or government regulations, indeed led to lower rates of religious participation, up to a certain point (a “ceiling”, to keep with the economic language). That is to say, “Catholics will be more active the less Catholic their community.” A notable exception to this theory, however, is Mormonism.

This concept, though, is one of the largest components that religious people in America who wish to establish us as a Christian nation fail to understand or sympathize with. This is why football coaches praying with the team is not allowed. It makes some students uncomfortable. Some students may feel their right to speak up is constrained because they will get less play time if they go against the grain. For me personally, Oklahoma’s blatant endorsement of Christianity has made me feel incredibly uncomfortable wanting to join the legal profession. For starters, in order to look attractive to Law schools, it would be advisable to get a job with good experience. For many, that is a job working in the government, mostly in the District Attorney’s office or the Attorney General’s office. Everytime I see a Ten Commandments statue on the state Capitol (which has recently been removed) or I see “In God We Trust” plastered all over the capitol grounds, I am reminded that I am an outsider. I don’t belong here. As an outsider, I have seriously had to reconsider the prospects of a government job for the fear of subtly being discriminated against.

This article discusses how wealth and nationality played a key role in withstanding the persecution from Germans for an extended period during the Holocaust era as opposed to a traditional Jew. The two elements were essential for the Nazi in deciding when and where the Jews would be sent to meet their excruciating death. However, those of the highest socioeconomic status were ironically sent to camp Wester Bork transit camp after the Jews of the lowest socioeconomic status. This analysis goes against the usual assumption that having a higher social status would provide a chance to survive at a better rate. Evasion through hiding was also a route Jews could embark on in that would allow a better chance of survival. However, this article presents statistical evidence that shows a survival rate similar for those who chose to the hideout and for those who did not. The deportation of the Jews to Westerbork was often evaded through the obtainment of an exemption. These exemptions meant nothing because they

To sum up, American civil religion was never secular, on the contrary, it borrowed particularly from the religious traditions in such a way that the average American saw no conflict between church and state. In this way, civil religion was able to build up without any anger conflict with the church’s powerful signs of national solidarity, and to mobilize deep levels of personal stimulation for the achievement of national goals. Civil religion describes ‘America’ as standing like a medium, or middle term, between ‘God’ and the American citizens. American civil religion, hence, is clearly involves in the most political issues of the day, and it appears via Presidential rhetoric speeches in many national events. We can further say that,

Though Americans may go to places of worship, culture dictates that one’s faith should not claim to be true for everyone. Much as in the first century Roman world, American culture has made faith relative only to matters

The United States of America has the most diverse religious population in the world. In places like Iraq, Syria, Israel, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other countries too numerous to mention, countless lives are lost over religious differences. In America, a Protestant can live happily next door to a Jew, who might live across the street from a Muslim, or a Catholic, or a Sikh, or even a Humanist! This is in no small way attributed to the fact that the US Constitution’s First Amendment includes what is known as the establishment clause, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” effectively separating affairs of religious institutions from secular,

In Neusner’s book World Religions in America, Gerald James Larson explains what the Hinduism is as a religion. He starts mentioning that the Indian population is the second most populous nation in the world; it reached 1.3 billion people in 2008 and that represents about 16% of the global population. Their country has twenty-eight states and seven Union Territories; it has eighteen official languages and Hindi is the most common one. The ones who live outside their country are also considered Asian Indians and they might be different but they are equally important. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, they represent the fourth largest asian community with about two million people and Asian Indians that live here and in other industrialized Western nations are mostly

I am born in Oita and raised in Fukuoka, Japan: my family’s religion is the Shinto, Buddhism, yet we were not a good followers because we did not pray for daily bases: we just gave a food and pray for the butsudan of my grandmother and father (a shrin) but did not do more than that. When I was a child, I often saw the dream that I was taking a bus to go to a church, which was on the top of hill, but when I opened the door, I woke up always. I used to love to wear a neckless with cross and used to go to a church by myself near by my house (of course, I asked my mother’s permission). I believed the God always, even I was not a Christian.

“American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, and “America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity,” by Robert Wuthnow, give different thoughts to religion and politics in the United States. Putnam and Campbell utilize the concepts of shocks and aftershocks to highlight religious changes in the United States. On the other hand, Wuthnow uses observations to focus on the encounters of religious diversity in the United States. Wuthnow compares American Christianity with other popular religions in America and how Christianity has affected the perception of religion. Putnam and Campbell’s “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us” is a more persuasive assessment of American religion and politics.