preview

Religion And Religion Essay

Better Essays
Open Document

Religion is universal. Although people may have different ideologies and practices, everyone believes in something, whether they deem it their religion or not. In this way, religion is a powerful connection between all of humanity; thus, it is important to understand the people behind religion and how their unique characteristics correlates with and influences religion—whether that be their social class, ethnicity, gender, or politics. However, ethnicity and gender, along with the closely linked topics of sexuality and politics, are the most significant concepts to understand religion in our modern world. To begin, we should understand the concept of ethnicity, as well as why I believe ethnicity and gender are important to discuss …show more content…

This can create fractures within society and religion as these groups attempt to reconcile their culture with socially accepted beliefs, as well as decide which of those beliefs they should reject. This fracture and the long-term effects of the connection between ethnicity and religion can be seen in many religions’ histories, for example, Catholicism.
As Christiano discusses, xenophobia and anti-Catholicism became tangled as Irish Catholics immigrated to the U.S. in the nineteenth century. As the Irish became the majority of the Catholic population, they had to contend with other ethnic Catholics, as well as contend with the dominant Protestantism (Christiano 162-63). While “nativist hostility to Catholic immigrants” continued, Irish immigrants turned in toward themselves, rejecting the Protestant Americanism of public schools and creating parochial schools instead to preserve their religion and culture (Christiano 164). Unfortunately, the continued anti-immigration sentiment took part in producing groups such as the American Patriotic League and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as creating the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which “ended mass immigration for the next four years” (Christiano 164). As we can see,

Get Access
Related
Get Access