Blog 12

Last week in class we got to look at our final project.  We got to run our ideas around our classmates and see what they thought about our idea.  I find this very useful because I was kind of confuse on what to write and how to do the project to the fullest extent.  It was helpful to see how everyone else was doing their papers and projects.  I hopefully will take some of the good ideas that they used and incorporate them into my paper and projects.   

Blog #11

Last week in lecture we discussed a few topics.  Two of those topics that I am going to talk about is social change and social movements and what the difference between the two are.  Many people don't understand what the difference is between the two but it is important that you do.  Social change is something that refers to some sort of alteration in society or the order it runs.  Social change can include any changes in nature, social behaviours, social relations, or basically anything having to do with a group within a society.  Social movement are a group in society actions towards a social change.  A social change can be good or bad and social movement are the actions that are taking place to make that change happen.  

Social movements can also be broken into four different groups.  These groups are Alternative, Revolutionary, Redemptive, and Reformative social movements.  There are different categories of social movement based off who is being affected by the change. 

 

    

 

 Above I have posted a picture of Ferguson MO.  I'm sure everyone is aware of what is going on down there.  This is related to what we talked about last week with social change and social movement.  These people are wanting the social change of abolished racism and equal rights "which they already have".  They clearly don't feel they have this so they are doing social movements that they feel is right to get them.  They are looting and burning buildings down.  This is an example of negative social movements that are hurting people and their society more than it is helping them.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #10

A topic we took a look at this week was civil religion.  When most people hear the term civil religion they have know clue what it means even though they encounter it almost everyday of their life.  According to Robert Bellah, it means, "the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals, symbols (such as the national flag) and ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields or national cemeteries)".  Civil Religion is a term that we often use and associate with sociology. Without noticing it most people see civil religion on a day to day basis.  We see religion being talked about in all aspects of the media.  We see them talking about different ceremonies, gatherings, or almost anything public that a religion is doing good or bad, all on from television, to the radio, to news papers, and now days even bill boards on the side of the highways.  We are in the holiday season as people call it and this is one time of the year where people don't even notice they are seeing civil religion happening right in front of them.  We see the symbols like Santa, the Christmas tree, over all but then we see religious symbols.  Christians use symbols like baby Jesus, mother Mary, the nativity scene of baby Jesus and all who were around when he was born.  Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah and use symbols like the Star of David, Menorah, and the Dreidel.  These are some symbols, celebrations, and ceremonies that Americans see this time of the year and don't even think twice about them as we have become accustom to them this time of the year. 


For my media source I chose the picture below.  I believe that the picture has some very strong meaning behind it and when when people say a picture is a 1000 words this means all of that.  Here we have a cross that is colored like the American Flag.  I thing this in its own has a strong meaning but then when you add the words that are written on it there is even more of a meaning.  This picture shows that people still have faith in Christ while being true Americans and believing in what this country was started on.  It also shows that are men and women serving this country do respect this country and the religion that it was started on, believing in Christ.  I Love this picture and thing that it should be represented all around the US for everyone to see.  

Blog #9 Religion in Politics and Nationalism

Last week in class we covered a topic that is very interesting to me.  We talked about religion in politics and nationalism and how it affects our country.  We referred to Heclo’s reading throughout class and related it to our discussion.  I found his readings to be very interesting on how he looks at things the way he does.  In class we also watched an interview of Governor Scott Walker after he won his third election.  The first thing Scott did was thank God for everything and giving him the opportunity to do what he does which are great things.  For a public figure like in his role to do that on public TV is super cool considering everyone out there these days that criticizes people for doing that.  I can relate to this as I was reminded all the time by my parents who were the most important person on getting me where I was with my sports career.  Being a three sport athlete in high school and a captain on the UWSP football team I had my fair share of interviews.  I’m not big on interviews win or lose but there was always one thing I remember to say in the interview and it was, “I would like to thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to play this great game and to be out here with my teammates and friends ……”.  For a public figure here in Wisconsin like Scott to do that I thought was pretty cool. 

Next we talked about religion and nationalism.  Religion can shape a nation as we see in the Middle East.  The country’s religion in the Middle East has a much larger effect on the nationalism of that country in contrast to the United States.  Countries over there take the identity of their religion as here in the US we have the freedom of any religion we want.  Over there they get killed because they are different religions.  I remember when our current president got elected who they said was a Muslim that it was not right because he wasn’t a Christian as the all past presidents were.  This was a big deal even because the US event though it doesn’t have a national religion everyone associates Christianity with the US. 

Below I posted a picture of the back of a US money bill.  I used this picture in an earlier post but found it related to this blog also.  On the back of our currency we find the words "IN GOD WE TRUST'.  Those words were important to the men who started this country and those who were after them.  Our nation was viewed as being religious and Christians.  Know our country has turned away from that and not referred to as not being religious.  I believe our country needs to go back to what started this country and how this country was run in the beginning.  This would fix our country and take it back to the way it should be run.  

 

Blog 8

This week in class we talked about religion and how people do religion in today's world.  With today's people and religion we talked about how religion varies or varied religion.  We discussed the different types of varied religion.  One of these types is the belonging but not believing group.  This group of people belong to a church for whatever reason it is, but that reason is not because they believe in the religion.  Some people belong to the church and don't believe to keep the pressure off from family while others do it to to look good to everyone else.  The next group is the group of people that try out a bunch of different religions till they found the one that fits them the best.  I believe we referred to this group as the spiritual shoppers.  They go around to different religions until they find the one that best fits them and that's the one they go with.  The last group we talked about is the believers who don't belong.  This group of people are the ones that believe in a religion but don't belong to any specific church.  Learning about these different varied religions is very interesting to me as I never knew all these were out there.  I always thought there were people who were religious and believed and then there where those that didn't.  I never knew that there were different categories for them until we talked about them the other day in class.  As for me I am very religious and also belong to a church so I really don't fall into either of the categories that we talked about in class. 




I love the picture posted below or the back or our US money.  I think more people need to focus their lives on what this country was started on.  Clearly those who started this country and gave so much up for it thought that it was important enough to put on our Federal currency that it is very important.  I know that there are people that are currently trying to change our money and take it off there but I believe that with it being there from the beginning and those who started the country believed in it I believe that it is important and needs to stay.  It also shows that there was a lot of religion here years ago and that there wasn't any tried religions.  Back then almost everyone believed in a religion and went to church.  There weren't any sub groups like we discussed in class and I discussed above. 

Blog #7

 In class last week we took a look at pluralism.  Pluralism is the policy of diversity of religious beliefs that co-exist in one society.  Another definition of pluralism is two different people of two different religions being able to live in the same neighbor hood.  We talked about pluralism in America and how people are either accepting of other people, tolerate them, or reject them.  One group that has to relate to pluralism in America is the Muslim people.  These people get judge just because of their religion.  Some Americans accept them as people and their religion doesn't matter while others desperately despise them because of their religion and automatically think they are bad people because they are Muslim.  These Americans are not accepting of them co-existing in one society.  

 

 

 

Below is an article that was published in the Chicago Tribune in 2013 talking about pluralism.  The articles main purpose is talking about getting Muslims more religious freedom.  The article also talks about how western countries should try harder to eliminate prejudice for religious minority's especially Muslims.  I found this article to be quite interesting and ironic that it talks about the same thing I did above.  I really encourage one to read it. 

 

 

 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-12-31/news/sns-rt-religion-islamoic--interview-20131231_1_pope-francis-islamic-cooperation-ekmeleddin-ihsanoglu

 

Blog #6

In class last week we started talking about how religion can be a face to a groups identity.   Some of the connections religion can have to a group or person is race, geography, and nationality.  One identity that is most of the time associated with religion is race.  I feel like we also took a lot of time in class talking about race and the identity it has on once religion.  We covered three approaches that relate religion and race.  The first approach we covered was the Abramson Approach.  Here we looked at the video of the Amish people and what they did to their people for not living like their rules say.  There was also a group of Amish that started doing bad things to a group of non-Amish people which caused the whole Amish community to look bad.  The next approach we looked at was the Greeley Two-Way Flow approach.  This approach mainly talked about how religion is related to race.  Here for an example we looked at how when people usually thing about the US and religion they think mainly Christian.  The last approach we covered was the constellation of ethnology-religious relationships.  We covered that there can be certain things and events that can be related to different religions.  We used Easter and Christianity as an example for this.  And another thing is Christmas and Christianity.  

Below I have found an article that talks about religion identity and inter group conflict.  It is a very interesting article and I recommend that you read the article.  It covers some interesting topics that we can relate to what we talked about in class.    

http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/36/5/553.short