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Van De Veer's Argumentative Essay

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Religions are ideas that passes down with traditions and rituals, with newer generations adding on to religion ideas with new ideas or borrowing other religious ideas. For Elk, religion is a running river rather than passing stone. For van de Veer, syncretism is how religion continue to exist today. Both Elk’s and van de Veer’s arguments tied into my chosen narrative and my family’s religious history. I want to connect my family’s religious history with Elk, Van der Veer, and the narrative “North Vietnamese Buddhist Nun” by James M. Freeman. The narrative Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras by Diana Elk is about Elk’s journey with religion that ties with my narrative. Elk stated, “For many people religion is …show more content…

The nun came for religious freedom; my family came here for my sister’s heart surgeries. The nun and my family were both sponsored to come to America; the nun was sponsored by a monk and my family was sponsored by my father’s relatives. According to the nun, “In Vietnam, you work, but you can also can ask to take off a couple of days. If you do that in America, you will be fired. Here you have to work, have to eat, have to run; you must, you have no choice” (172). Back at Vietnam, my father was working at the sewing factory while my mother was working for a small shop. Whenever my sister needed to go to the hospital, my parents took time off to take my sister to the hospital and not get fired. In America, however, my mother is the only who could work since my father is too old for a job; he stays home to take care of my sister. My mother works from six a.m. to four thirty p.m.; every day, she wakes up by five a.m., eats breakfast, then goes to work. There is no time to take a break because if she takes a day off, my family will not have money for bills. Whenever my sister has a surgery, my mother must have my sister’s surgery note so my mother could take a day off to take care of my sister. It is tougher in America because without English or a degree or proper papers, it is tough to get a job …show more content…

However, it is hard to practice religion due to judgment from other races and the location of the temple is further from home. Another reason is the person might not have the items needed for the rituals. One thing that I observed about my Vietnamese and Chinese communities is that the temple is a safe place for the community to practice their religious beliefs. However, it is exclusive with other communities due to religions are not a melting pot, where it might accept and possibly absorb some ideas, but language and ignorance become a barrier that some could not overcome. There is a quote in the narrative by Elk that I found relevant to the present culture; Elk wrote, “Indeed, he observed the way in which we fearfully, anxiously, shape our whole lives by religious, political, cultural, and personal labels and names – all of which function as a buffer zone of security between ourselves and the experience of life” (8). From what I gather from the quote is we form our identity around our religion and political and cultural

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