Summary Of Religion In America By Julia Fairwood Hemeyer
In the book “Religion in America” by Julia Corbett Hemeyer describes the various roles and feelings people have about religion within the United States. She goes into quite a bit of detail regarding how Americans display their religious beliefs, how they feel about people with different religious backgrounds, in particular after the events of September 11, 2001, and some of the contradictions regarding the leaders of some religious groups. The 1st chapter in the book was about how religion is studied and how people may define it. Basically, in my opinion when it comes to the idea of religion I think everyone generally has the same idea regarding it because if the average person were asked about religion they most likely would mention one
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Throughout history religion and violence have gone together like peanut butter and jelly and it has been used to justify all sorts of heinous acts. Even today with terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Al-Qaeda, and Isis use religion to justify their personal feelings of hatred and disdain towards those who they don’t like. In the United States, even though non-Christian religious group are for the most part tolerated and accepted there is an underbelly of prejudice and hatred that bubbles up every so often. There are three main reasons in my opinion why people use violence due to their religious beliefs. The 1st reason is because they use religion as a cover to justify acting their true feelings about certain social issues. The 2nd reason is that they’re so mentally unstable that they actually believe they’re doing right thing by harming others in the name of God. The 3rd is that the religious group being oppressed so badly that they’re being pushed into a corner and they might feel that they have no other avenue to express themselves except through the use of violence. Hemeyer states, “Recent incidents of religious violence, no matter where they have occurred, have become a part of nearly everyone’s lives as they have been reported and shown in graphic detail on international television” (Hemeyer 45). Another thing that I believe is that religious violence has more to do with politics than with religion because religion is only a set beliefs which in many cases is backed up action. However, you can’t pass laws in churches or mosques you do it through passing legislation. For instance, during presidential election years in the United States there many people who are both religious and political in their lives and they use their religious beliefs as tool to try and get certain bills or laws passed through the political arena. As many of us know
Throughout history religion and violence have gone together like peanut butter and jelly and it has been used to justify all sorts of heinous acts. Even today with terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Al-Qaeda, and Isis use religion to justify their personal feelings of hatred and disdain towards those who they don’t like. In the United States, even though non-Christian religious group are for the most part tolerated and accepted there is an underbelly of prejudice and hatred that bubbles up every so often. There are three main reasons in my opinion why people use violence due to their religious beliefs. The 1st reason is because they use religion as a cover to justify acting their true feelings about certain social issues. The 2nd reason is that they’re so mentally unstable that they actually believe they’re doing right thing by harming others in the name of God. The 3rd is that the religious group being oppressed so badly that they’re being pushed into a corner and they might feel that they have no other avenue to express themselves except through the use of violence. Hemeyer states, “Recent incidents of religious violence, no matter where they have occurred, have become a part of nearly everyone’s lives as they have been reported and shown in graphic detail on international television” (Hemeyer 45). Another thing that I believe is that religious violence has more to do with politics than with religion because religion is only a set beliefs which in many cases is backed up action. However, you can’t pass laws in churches or mosques you do it through passing legislation. For instance, during presidential election years in the United States there many people who are both religious and political in their lives and they use their religious beliefs as tool to try and get certain bills or laws passed through the political arena. As many of us know