The Religious Of Religious Texts

In Chapter 2, “Religion Matters”, Prothero briefly discusses how religion has impacted America even if it seems subsided, and why we tend to neglect it. When it comes to some of the major events of American history, Prothero argues that “none of the classic events in American history…can be understood without some knowledge of the religious motivations” of its major players. (Prothero) Perhaps part of the reason we generally ignore this statement is because of confusion and controversies it presents in government rulings and school teachings.

Over the centuries, Christianity has organised its beliefs into a systematic theology that draws from its sacred writing and tradition. While the main beliefs of Christianity are shared by all Christian variants, there are degrees of different in the interpretation of these beliefs and how they are lived out in everyday life. This can be seen in the important of sacred text, principle belief of the concept of salvation in John 3:16, principle belief of divine and humanity in ‘John 1:14’, principle belief of resurrection in ‘Mark 16:1-8’, principle belief of revelation in ‘1 corinthians14:6’, and beliefs through the Trinity in ‘2 Corinthians 13:14’. This essay will explain the important of the sacred text and the principal beliefs of Christianity.

From a Christian perspective, American culture is full of misleading ideas that undoubtedly derive from contentiously evil principles yet find voluminous supporters who continue to promote such exploits. Integrating the belief systems of Biblical principles and secular approaches has been a critical debate for years within American culture and continues to polarize with the changing healthcare laws permitting abortions, supreme courts legalizing gay marriage, the elimination of prayer from public schools in the 1960s and more recently the demand to remove the Ten Commandments from government facilities. All these political social endeavors continue to divide Christians from secularists in a substantial psychological manner (Clinton & Ohlschlager, p. 704).

Religion and the United States have an interesting relation over the history of the United States. Religious conservatives portray the United States as being God’s chosen nation and that religion influences every facet and procedure of the United States. Liberals try to contend that the United States is a bastion of secularization and that the founders were not particularly religious. David Sehat in his book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom, shows that religion has played a significant role in the United States, but that interaction is not always good in terms of individual actions and actually put the individuals of losing life, property and limb. Overall, Sehat’s books detail the moral establishment that was created around the time of the American Revolution and the various methods that were used in order for them to maintain their power. The book also details the way that religious and secular dissenters tried to push back against the moral establishment.

Both Frank Peretti’s book, This Present Darkness, and his view of biblical prophecy had also been affected by certain events in Peretti’s lifetime, such as his disability and rough childhood, which lead him to write this book. Peretti’s search for truth and his need to expose the truth of the New Age Movement comes clear through the use of the theme of truth in the book. The resulting factor of this book may very well be to cause the reader to question their own view and concepts of the New Age Movement and a sense of precaution developed about dealing with it. These people might not realise how serious this stuff is otherwise.

The first day of Religion 101 consisted of learning the basics of what will be covered during this coarse. The class discussed the main concepts of the coarse as well as what assignments we will have in the future. During this period we had attempted to define what religion is, however, it turned out that due to different interpretations of religion, we could not define it so easily.

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,

Throughout the semester, the lived religion approach has enabled our class to analyze what religion is to many different types of people from all sorts of cultures. This method has allowed the class to view each religion in its own unique form. Essentially, the lived religion approach opens the doors to what each different religion/culture can offer, and how each of those groups embody what they get from the religion in their day to day lives. Unfortunately, conventional approaches do not dive into these different religions deep enough to see what the culture practices contribute to a religion. This paper will attempt to answer the question of why does myth and ritual play such important roles when it comes to an

Religion in May 1966. It was reprinted with comments and a rejoined in The Religious Situation.

The chapter 15’s category of analysis is community, while the category of analysis for chapter 6 is cosmology. Chapter 15’s thesis focuses on the impact of technology on the religious communities within the United States. Chapter 6’s thesis focuses on the early years of American secularism and how politics and religion both began to focus on the individual experience, along with an individual belief.

Throughout history, both theology and religion have been topics that have sparked global curiosity. I have always wondered, what is so special about theology and what does it actually have to do with our society? Reading deeper into J.J Mueller SJ’s Theological Foundations, I took in a clear understanding that religion plays a role in all aspects of our lives in many different ways, and there is no simple answer. The first critical point that I identified with was the simple fact that it is okay to ask questions about religion. On page 9, Mueller SJ compares asking questions about religion to asking questions about a friend. He explains that asking questions is healthy and vital to understanding any situation from religion, to friendships, and especially intimate relationships. Growing up in a

Sylvester Johnson examined the two factors incorporated within the Bible, which shaped the nature of American debates over slavery (Johnson 231). The first factor consisted of the Bible cultivating the ideology of slavery. The Bible was able to cultivate this ideology due to its writings that were composed of authors who confirmed, and even advocated a society to embrace slavery as a legitimate practice (Johnson 231). The second factor examined how the Bible had an effect on abolitionists challenging the legitimacy of slavery. Since the Bible was a tremendous symbol of authority, it made it difficult for abolitionists to utilize the Bible as a source to challenge the notion of slavery as a legitimate practice.

Religion, for thousands of years, has dulled man-kind’s senses to see the lovely light of logic. It has, in point of fact, been the pinnacle of many wars, and caused many a bloodshed; it has seized our minds and, as a master puppeteer, pulled the strings of fate. Yet the question remains, and a grand question it is: in America,which subjects and/or events should the influence of religion cease its reign? The opaque answer, still wet with Heraclitus-like metaphysics, had never been so clear as J.L. Freeman stood before a jury and said thus unto it: “-and if this be the case, then all Seraphs be damned to Hell!” Yet, to be clear, this story does in fact have an origin, hidden, of course, by the primitive man with his puzzling, primitive philosophy!

The book contains papers presented at Rice University’s 2008 conference by experts in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The book argues that sacred Scripture of the three faiths was an oral phenomenon and whose development was like the “shared internet” with the oral and written interpenetrates and mutually influences each other in myriad ways. The book offers a ground-breaking solutions into the neglected oral tradition and to the bias on to written texts. Thirteen scholars contributed to this monogram challenging past assumptions and detailed study on the oral essence of sacred texts. The book demonstrates how the oral and written traditions of reading, recitation, and performance intertwine intricately and interdependently of each other.

“The United States is the most religiously diverse country in the world. In no other nation can you find as many varied religious groups, beliefs and practices as there are here. The Founders’ recognized in their own times the great theological differences among not only different religions but also among the many Protestant sects” (Knief, 2011). An important