Religion : What Is It?

The Peace of Augsburg and Martin Luther were very important in the shift of Europe after the Reformation.

My parents have discovered a different religion since then, one even closer to God, and me not being religious drives a wedge between us. I believe that if I hadn’t gone to catholic school, there would be a possibility of me being religious, as I would have been taught a different mentality than Catholicism regarding religion.

In recent days I had the opportunity to go back to North Carolina for a few short days. There, with a heavy heart from a loss in the family, I had nothing else to look towards. I’ve always heard of individuals finding peace, faith, blessings, and love of Christ from attending church. I’ve never been a person who put their faith into a higher power. As I was growing up my parents never wanted to force me into any religion without me knowing everything about it and choosing which route to take on my own. As the years treaded on, I never bothered myself to learn about the many different religions and what each stands for. So I used this opportunity as mine to attend church for the very first time. I attended the Roman Catholic services held

Growing up I was always told religion was false and that I was above my friends who were Christians because I believed in science. My mom was raised by Catholics, but when she graduated High School, she vowed to never be religious again. My father enjoyed feeling more elite over the “religious plebeians” that worked for him. I remember having an argument with Victoria Henderson in 3rd grade because I believed in The Big Bang and she was a creationist. Everyone took Victoria’s side, and I learned it was better to just not talk about religion. In high school, I began reaching out of my comfort zone, and also questioning what my parents had ingrained on me as a person. My first religious experience was dating a boy named Luis who was Catholic, as my mother was raised. He was only allowed to date Catholic girls, so I

I grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Eureka, where I still live today. If you ever look at me and wonder where that scar on my forehead came from, well it happened when I was roughly 12 months old when I fell out of a moving car. My parents raised me as a Methodist at the Eureka United Methodist Church. During my years attending Geggie Elementary School, every Sunday my parents would force me to get out of bed and go to Church with them. During church, all the children would go to Sunday school while the parents were listening to the sermon. In Sunday school, we had a teacher, sometimes my mom, who would give out fun church related activities. However, I did not enjoy doing that mostly because it involved getting out of bed early and since I did not like the subject matter either, but at that age, children do not fully grasp the importance of attending church and

Both of my parents were born and raised in religious household, one in an Irish Catholic suburb of St. Louis, and the other a small Roman Catholic town in rural Spain. By the time they were young adults both had rejected the religiously institutions they had grown up in. My brothers and I were raised in a house, which viewed religion indifferently resulting in us never receiving formal religious instruction. I grew up a scientist. I quickly developed a passion for science and mathematics, and found particular interest in areas of those fields supported by empirical evidence and had undergone trial by scientific method. I found comfort in the structure provided by my faith in our scientific exploration into the laws that govern the form and

As a child, I was very quiet, observant and obedient. I would attempt to excel in everything I did in order to make my parents proud.Up until I was a teenager, I followed their will without excessively questioning their decisions. I was raised to have faith in God, go to Church and do as I was told. I spent 12 years of my life going to Church with too many unanswered questions. I didn’t know why I had to attend church, I didn’t understand how this so-called God we believed in was so powerful and why he wouldn’t make world peace possible if he was as amazing as he was perceived. None of it made sense to me. During school my favorite books to read consisted of primarily non fiction books about animals and the world in general, mythological, and books concerning the supernatural. I have always been intrigued by unexplained stories, but in the end, although I acknowledged the slight possibility of supernatural existence, I also understood the difference between facts and mere theories. During summer, my reading list consisted of fables and biblical stories. To me, everything I

What defines religion? What defines politics? Where is the line that separates the two? Google defines religion as “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.”, while politics is defined as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.” When Martin Luther led the Reformation, he was not making any personal attacks against Pope Leo X, but simply telling of the errors of Catholic ways through his work, titled “Of The Matters To Be Considered In The Councils”, Luther was only being informative ; not forcing anyone to shun the Catholic Church. While the Catholic Church was losing its following, Pope Leo X wrote a document titled, “Exsurge Domine”, which began what was known as the Counterreformation. He wrote, “Let all this holy Church of God, I say, arise … to banish all heresies from the lands of the faithful and be pleased to maintain the peace and Unity of His holy Church”. Although the disputes and disagreements between Martin Luther and Pope Leo were over religion, the way they were handled added a completely political aspect to the Reformation and Counterreformation. Pope Leo essentially stated that he wanted his religion to rise above other religions and that he wanted to be able to execute anyone who went against the orthodox religion.

I was raised in a Christian home and attended church quasi-regularly up until the age of six. Church participation after the age of six became inconsistent, due to conflict in the

Growing up I always lived in a religious household. We always prayed before we ate, prayed before we went to bed, and always went to church on Sunday and Wednesday night. While I never questioned these actions and never tried to rebel against them, I still didn’t understand the importance of them either. I was merely walking in my parents footsteps, doing what my parents told me, singing along to the children’s songs in Sunday school, gave a tithing of my allowance every Sunday, but my life was void of the real meanings of my actions. This went on for years. Because I had not yet read through the Bible to understand why these actions had any meaning, they were just things I did all the time and I thought that was normal and that was what it meant to be a Christian.

Faith is a belief or a prediction of the future while religion is an organized system of worship followed by a group of people (Pyle 1). While both sound mostly superstitious, they are very necessary for the running of the daily human lives. Humans, for the fear of the unpredictable future, often come up with myths that they hope will keep them safe. It serves them well, as it helps them carry on with their daily activities with reduced fear and anxiety. However, the problems begin when they think that everyone one else must follow their faith. With their superiority in numbers or other forms of power such as firearms, they might be tempted to follow other minor and weaker groupings to be part of them or perish. In this way, religion and faith have been used to steal wealth from weaker kingdoms and make slaves out of previously free humans.

What is Religion? Religion has many meanings; a way of life, belief, and practices. In America people have different views on religion; it was indicated in the constitution. What is the constitution? The constitution is set of laws approved by the state. Religion and constitution are separate. As stated in the constitution of the United State of America, the first amendment, “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In other words the constitution and religion are not connected. The founder fathers meant when talking about “freedom of Religion,” is that the state and church are separate; because people saw the church as mass control, people were also affected by the English’s monarchies and lastly the Americans

What is religion? Each person’s definition of religion is different. Each person’s faith is different. This is a question that has been asked for centuries, and regardless of the answer given there is no right or wrong answer. Religion can be defined as a group of people who have shared beliefs who feel their life has purpose or meaning. This feeling or belief that their life has meaning can come from outside of themselves, as well as within. Taking this one step further, these shared beliefs put into action in the form of worship, can be easily identified because they happen regularly. It can be said the Primal religions were in fact not religions. Some may argue Confucianism is not a religion. Others may say Taoism is not a

What is spirituality? And is it only related to religion? It is hard to answer these questions as there are a lot of definitions of spirituality and what is it related to. For some people, spirituality has no meaning outside the circle of the religion. On the other hand, some people say that spirituality can exist inside the religion and also outside the religion. People should stop relating spirituality to only religion. Instead, people should know the true meaning of spirituality outside the circle of the religion as it will open doors for knowledge and have a butter understanding and better life. In the United States, religion is frequently equated with spirituality or a personal relationship with God

There are more than 4,200 religions in the world, major ones being Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism (CITE). Each one of these religions’ followers calls their own belief religion. Religion is Buddhism to Buddhist, Hinduism to Hindus so on and so forth. But how come religion can have multiple meanings? If religion is Islam to Muslims, then isn’t Christianity a religion? If Hindus call their belief religion and insist that their religion is the right one, then don’t they deny other people’s religions? Religion is a very broad term and its clear definition is yet to come. It is a critical problem that Smith also points out in his book The Meaning and End of Religion. Since it brings a lot of controversy to define religion, Smith comes up with a term called ‘reification’, which can simply defined as a concept that turns stuff –in this case religion- a thing (CITE). In this paper, I will do three things. First, I will analyze Confucius’s Analects to look at his way of reification from Smiths perspective. Second, I will go through The Negative Confession from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to understand how can one ‘create’ a religion around the ancient Egyptian beliefs. Third, I will apply this to Wicca and the celebration of the Goddess. Last but not least, after analyzing all three texts I will tie all of them to Tillich’s idea that is called ‘ultimate concern’.