Relig Mee-Chapm Summary

This entry is about a woman on a journey to discover her religion. The author felt that she fell behind the religion department, compared to her friends that already had a set religion given to them by their parents. She discusses how she was afraid she would never find a religion that will suit her. She started researching churches and religions to find one that fit her beliefs and values. She believes that you shouldn’t do things out of revenge and that you should act on things you notice needs to be done. After visiting numerous churches, she is left her faithless and different perceptions on religion. In the end, she discovered her religion is Deity, a Christian religion that means to live a decent life that appeasing to the higher power. I found that this entry is related to me as well because I grew up with a strict set of beliefs my dad enforced on me. Growing up, I didn’t have the opportunity to live out my beliefs because of Apostolic beliefs of my dad. Being Apostolic, means that girls aren’t allowed to wear pants, makeup, cut their hair, wear skirts above the knee, wear hair extensions; unless bald, and listen to music that isn’t gospel. Additionally, you can’t work on Sundays, not allowed to have Christmas trees or seasonal decorations, girls have to place a prayer cloth over their head during service, boys can’t have their heads covered in church and boys can’t have long hair.

Spirituality, at its best, resembles a river, both dependable and mysterious. The Reverend, with his respect for tradition, embodies the steady timelessness that rivers and God share, while Paul?s stubborn wild streak represents the entities? indefinite, uncontainable quality. Through his spare yet lyrical prose, Maclean manages to both explicate and illustrate a balance between a prudent, rational Protestant existence and an unrestrained, whimsical one. This elusive equilibrium is Maclean?s path to faith. Religious belief should strive to be unshakeably firm while also flexible and ever-evolving; in this way, human convictions can serve the same unifying capability which Maclean claims for rivers. ?Eventually,? he says, ?all things merge into one, and a river runs through it? (104). Faith, along with rivers, leads to this universal understanding and harmony.

There has been a decline in Christianity and a rise in non-religious, this can be due to the awareness of abuse in Christianity, the removal of Christianity from public schools, and a new generation of its own community.

We must learn about ourselves so that we can begin to understand others and we must be willing let our own pre-conceived notions be challenged and molded. As Spradley noted, “rather than studying people, ethnography means learning from people”. “You can observe a lot by watching” (25). Moschella persuasively argues that ethnography allows the religious leader to “engage the congregation’s current faith practices in theological reflection,” operate as “a sensitive and perceptive leader, one who has eyes to see and ears to hear the faith of the gathered community,” and “articulate his or her perceptions of the living faith of the people” (40-41). It is in this way that new and intentional practices can emerge from within the community, rather than being imposed by a solitary authority figure operating without informed buy-in from the same faith community. Moschella also gives us a rather curious definition of religious practice that is simultaneously broad and limiting. By defining religious practice as “something people do over and again, with some regularity” (47), Moschella encourages the pastoral ethnographer to look at every repeatable action by a congregation as potentially theologically

As many embrace the Postmodernistic and Naturalistic worldviews, Moreland argues for the validity and truth of the Christian worldview. In an effort to distance one’s self from the postmodern naturalistic beliefs and strengthen the inner Christian, Moreland places emphasis on three areas. Those areas of emphasis are: Recovery of Knowledge, Renovation of the Soul, and Restoration of the Kingdom’s Miraculous Power. As we move forward, each individual area will be covered in relation to my own personal spiritual journey.

In her series of reflections on the ‘Religion’s Others and ‘Postsecular’ publics’ and drawing upon Jurgen Habermas revisionary contention that the democratic dialogic processes should enable all citizens to participate in public debate, she questions whether narratives of religious/non religious and secular women are visible in secularism. She believes that the reimaging of the secular to develop a new vocabulary that incorporates women who are ‘religious secularists/secular secularists ’ changes and challenges the binary of secular/religious providing an intersection which acknowledges lived experiences and facilitates the nonreligious a normative

Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered by James C. Wilhoit provides disciplers with a wealth of knowledge and practical applications for creating and improving a church environment where individual and corporate spiritual development thrives. Wilhoit defines spiritual formation as “the intentional communal process of growing in our relationship with God and becoming conformed to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.” It is a deliberate and lifelong process that occurs best within the context of a community where individuals actively embrace the gospel and pursue God through worship, fellowship, and service. The foundation of the book’s methods of spiritual growth is in the reality that the gospel is meant to be a constant force

This has created a tradition in many religions of veneration and admiration of the monastic and religious recluse lifestyles as a set model of behaviors to be imitated in their own life. Accordingly, many of the most historically influential religious prophets have ascribed to a simple and abstemious lifestyle in the fashion of the anchorite. As such nearly every religion in the world has been impacted, at least in small part by asceticism and its practices. (Prince,

The earth, as it stands, has become a whirlpool of things, notions, and ideal which are not of God. It is very simple to be caught in an ambush of the exotic as well as mundane. Many Christians have lost focus on God, the Bible, or their role as a follower of Christ. Pointing out the “patterns of the world,” what it truly means to renew one’s mind, along with ways to renew the mind become paramount to a Christian lifestyle.

Even though religiosity and spirituality are recognized as highly complex and multifaceted concept, majority of studies on religion and family from the past several decades measure religiosity with only one or two items (Mahoney, 2010). Religion is measured as mere frequency of attendances or self-reports importance of religion in life. It is imperative to include deeper measurement of religion such as religious and spiritual fulfillment, connectedness to higher being, difficulties or conflicts with higher entity or faith community, and deeper integration of religious and spiritual beliefs in one’s everyday life.

Ironically, spiritual and religious considerations were foundational in U.S. higher education historically. It was not until the late nineteenth century it began to shift to a fragmental one with a devaluing of liberal arts education (Lindholm, J. ,2014). Not only the education was operated with a business-like model but also the positivistic culture of academe conditions faculty and students to separate personal values from disciplinary content, coupled with associated notions that the spiritual dimension of experience is an illegitimate focus for serious scholarly inquiry. This represents another, often powerful, source of tension for the spirituality in this environment. Indeed, so-called dominator conceptualizations of spiritual and religious beliefs , structures, and relationships have also been used to rationalize behavioral atrocities and to justify chronic injustice and misery. Associated fears lead some to presume that those who would choose to focus on spiritual or religious dimensions of student and faculty life are motivated by a desire to “convert” others to their own beliefs and practices or to eradicate from the academy those who they feel don’t have the “correct” orientations and values (Lindholm, J. ,2014, P4). However, this culture change in academia cannot stop people from pursuing the meaning and purpose of their existence on this planet. Most of us, in some part of our life, have been seeking healing and reconciliation with self and others. This

“Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?” Was it really an inevitable conclusion of uncompromising reality as Tom Hardy assumes? Charles Taylor doesn’t think so and his almost 900 page answer is an ambitious retelling of the process known as secularization. His narrative-style documentation of the massive cultural shift of the past several centuries demonstrates the inadequacy of Mainstream Secularization Theory and the spiritual complexity of our “cross-pressured” society. The culmination of this story lends voice to a hemisphere’s subconscious, diving beneath the “taken-for-granted” assumptions of the Western mind to hear the truth.

When using the FICA spiritual History tool (Pulchalski, 2006), M.L. discussed both spirituality and social support (Appendix H). M.L. considers herself to be spiritual, but not religious. Being close to nature, her family, and her pets gives her life meaning. She prays to God, but feels deviated from a church environment and does not want to belong to a church. She did not want to disclose further information, but summarized her preferences by having a past of traumatic experiences regarding her family’s Catholic following and her education in a Catholic school environment.

A critically important aspect of studying religion and spirituality is establishing the appropriate definitions of the terms. Researchers have often had trouble differentiating the two concepts and find there are significant overlap between them. Koenig (2012) defines religion as an organized system of beliefs, practices, rituals, and symbols

The barriers between cultures, variations in communication patterns, and the differences amongst society all factor down to one thing, religion. Religion is vastly universal. It encompasses a wide variety of sub-sectors, as it houses many diverse types of religions, each with varying beliefs, ideals, rituals, and languages. Religion is a way of life, it brings people together. It evokes a new way of thinking, feeling, and understanding the complexity of life. The specific role religion plays in an individual 's life is different for everyone. Many people cling to the ideal of being “religious” as a means to justify their behavior and moral compass. However, these means can only begin to be justified once religion occupies a permanent space in the individual’s life. Lauren F. Winner, the author of Girl Meets God, has given religion a permanent place in her life, as she creates a working dynamic that balances her spiritual journey between Judaism and Christianity. Wanting something to believe in, Winner was able to give religion a special distinction in her quest. Her journey encompassed the various notions that Cunningham and Kelsey, authors of the Sacred Quest believed to be most prominent in the successful display of religion amidst a well-rounded spiritual life.