How Traditions Adapted

              Manifold religions including groups such as African-Americans, Jewish, Orientals and Native Americans have suffered obstinate barriers from the American cultural status quos and were particularly affected by Christian hierarchal norms that plagued the society in its entirety. But firstly, the groups have been fashioned internally by their cultural communities building strong, unbreakable families that branch further than simply religion and externally by oppressive forces and the normative views on ideological civilization. The external oppression all of these groups felt in history almost imposed and forced their communities to fight for equality and create a more stable core foundation of their beliefs and backgrounds. Through the horrid events that were encapsulated in Nazi Germany during World War II the Jewish religion has become more cultural due to the stereotypical presumptions of the Jewish religion as a race. The “Holocaust has become, then a symbol that provides them with a sense of responsibility as Jews and help ensure Jewish continuity,” creating an ethnicity, or community, stemming from the religious roots.¹

            Throughout history, Christian ideology has had an everlasting effect on opinions and decisions made in the United States. They have infiltrated the government and created a mass of followers that essentially have the power to determine a religion’s validity, although true authority is mostly left to the leaders due to the separation of church and state. In a general sense only the elected leaders of the religion will be able to, not any outside forces unless individuals chose to shadow their own beliefs and divert from the original interpretive message. Outside perception of religions is nothing new; the ignorant majority viewed anything different or strange as wrong. Sometimes the external persona is molded by the media, as is the case with the oriental monk. The oriental monk is seen as a master, a leader in knowledge, wisdom and “has also acquired more and more fantastic powers in his recent manifestations”.² Popular cultures have morphed this identity into a spiritual figure that represents only a portion of a religion practice and has been taken out of context of the original intent.

            Native Americans attempted to reclaim their authority of their religions and “not listen to outsiders with their promises of liberation and deliverance”.³ They demanded privileges taken from them be returned and did so with their own personal backing without help form the various institutions that put them there in the first place. Mascots of the Natives Americans to some may be seen as comical, but to the Natives are seen as disrespectful to the warriors and people of their communities. They have filed suit against these types of mascots and many schools changed theirs as a result. The African American community has also attempted to reclaim their authority on their cultuses and traditions that they lost during their enslavement period through the Civil Rights Movement. Cultural realities of American life have shaped all of these groups in one way or another. Through the World Parliaments of Religion in 1893, oriental speakers adapted their presentations to suit more modernized practices in religions and recruited many export followers as a result while the immigration wave after the 1965 act boomed more ethic traditions. The Jewish Community formed more liberal stances than orthodox in Reformed and Conservative Judaism as well as the Native Americans having transformed to many sects such as the Peyote Way movement. African Americans were forced to conform the most due to slavery and segregation. In American slavery, they were taught Christian values and beliefs and after the Civil War were molded into what society and the public in general deems as the norm. Because of this many became Catholic or Protestant.⁴  Instead of identifying one as a race or religion one should ponder the humanity and spiritual side of the person rather than imposing and shaping religious agendas onto them.

¹ Lynn Davidman "The New Voluntarism and the CAse of the Unsynagogued Jews"

² Jane Naomi Iwamura "The Oriental Monk in American Popular Culture" Bruce David Forbes and Jeffery H Mahan, Ca, 200 UC Press pp 25-43

³   James Treat "Nature and Christian Indigenous voice on Religions Identity in United States and Canada" New York 1996. 

⁴ Albert J. Raboteau "A Fire in the Bones Reflections in African American History" Beacon Press Boston 1995. 

Themes of American Religion

My grandmother embodies a series of themes in American Religious history, most notably cultural religion. Historically, this form of religious expression is meant to carry on the teachings of the religion through practiced creeds, codes and cultuses both public and private while maintaining the community and heritage of a people. Her Irish heritage ingrained a sense of family and tradition deep within her being that stemmed from this innate sense of cultural religion. As she moved from Ireland to San Francisco she continued the sorts of practices that centered around her family and stayed highly involved in the church by sending her kids to the private school connected to the institution as well as helping any way she could. Today, she volunteers at the Irish cultural center and attends an Irish Catholic Church to remember and immerse herself in the ways of her homeland. The culture center acts as a focal point that communicates the essential actions and rituals one may do in order to fully delve into the mainstream and historical culture. She shadows the ritual calendar during the year; as one would in implicit cultural religion, including all of the important holidays as well as her own unique rituals such as lighting a candle every mass for my late grandfather. She celebrates not only her religion, but also the cultuses that sprouted from her religion regarding her background as an Irish immigrant. Though cultural religion is something phenotypically visible my grandmother also houses other themes that are less explicit such as her belief in denominationalism. The Catholic Church is often considered one denomination that constitutes a very organized body of one church that intertwines many. The Protestant Church, on the other hand, is comprised of profuse groups that can vary greatly in ideology, many of which are “vast and profound” differences according to Moberg in an analysis done on San Francisco.¹ This separation develops an overall understanding that they are all under then same vision for religion regardless of labels that have been assigned to them.² The Catholic Church and some Orthodox groups don’t see them as under the same bubble of Christianity but rather fragmented sects of what used to be the one church.³ Although her church may not follow the same ideals, she considers all Christian followers as a part of the same church as in the concept of denominationalism. In that respect, though she considers herself Catholic, she combines other sects of Christianity and acts more reformed like the Protestants. Combination is nothing new in American interpretations of religions. It has been around since the nineteenth century and continues to thrive in today’s society. Taking ideas and principles from the best parts of religion can create a better understanding of religion as a whole as well as a better follower of the religion. Some even take up the actual following of the different religions calling themselves names such as Christian Buddhist Spiritualist or Jewish Catholics to name a few. My grandmother does not go this far, but like I said before, takes a modern approach to certain aspects of Catholicism but stays true to the core practices involved in the Catholic religion. But unlike the Catholic lower clergy that take orders from the hierarchical demands of the Vatican, she does not follow this chain of command that tightly holds the grip of countless members of the church.⁴ These sorts of themes have been integrated in American Society in such a way that it becomes harder to distinguish the black and whites due to the blending greys. Though cultural religion holds tightly on the country, a New Age wave of ideals that challenges Orthodoxy like denominationalism and combination is slowly creeping up on ones vision of religion which is observed in the case with my grandmother.

¹David Moberg O. 2008. "PROTESTANTISM AS A STATISTICAL FICTION AND "THE NEW DENOMINATIONALISM." Review Of Religious Research 50, 30-31. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 5, 2013).

²Rodney Stark, and CHARLES Y. GLOCK. 2008. "THE "NEW DENOMINATIONALISM." Review Of Religious Research 50, 33-42. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 5, 2013).

³Moberg, 31

⁴Andrew Greeley 2001. "THE FUTURE OF RELIGION IN AMERICA." Society 38, no. 3: 32-37. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 5, 2013).

The Sculpting of Conservative Judaism into an Irish Catholic

Alice Kinahan, my grandmother, attended Catholic school at an early age in Dublin before she became an Irish immigrant in her late twenties to the United States. She met my grandfather through her church in San Francisco and there she started not only a life for herself and her husband but for her many descendants as well. She had always wanted a big family, coming from an immediate family of sixteen she knew it was something predetermined. And like the Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1830s, she pushed them to be involved tightly with the congregation. She emphasized clericalism and spirituality with the trinity, stressing core significance on family values and morality. But unusually, her journey tapers from the hierarchical dominance of the Catholic religion and parallels closely with the movement of Conservative Judaism. They understood scripture exposed the laws of God but was written by humans, therefore expressing flaws.¹ These ideas were born in the 1880s basing the principles of the Orthodox Jewish traditions in reaction to the establishment of the radical Reform Jews. Rather than succeeding or changing the culture, the conservative movement settled on a medium between the two forms of Judaism. Throughout the development however, the Conservative Jews seemed almost as diverse as its predecessors. Gertel mentions the religion splitting, a silent tug of war separating the liberals from the more orthodox, painting a grey rather than its stark counterparts.² This grey encompasses my grandmother’s odyssey. As she came to America, her views were quite orthodox but soon turned sour to the tyranny of the church. They didn’t bend as far as the protestant denominations but she changed her perception of what it means to be a Catholic and like the Conservative Jews clung to the traditions she knew from her religion though expressed support for things she never would have thirty years ago. There is a growing platform in the church for optional celibacy for priests as well as woman recruited into the holy order as priests or rabbis in the synagogue.³ LGBT rights are also heavily debated, blurring the lines from a strict outline identified in the bible to a smeared gradient. The Catholic Church may not be compartmentalized into three distinct divisions like Judaism but the one church is becoming more different from state to state, from parish to parish than bread and wine.

My grandmother has constituted the history of Conservative Judaism not through her religion but through her reforms and understanding that religion cannot be put into a box. When you cut the trunk of a tree, the base may sap and tumor but the branches will grow anew, growing not a single leaf the same. What I mean by this is her roots stayed true, they were uncut when she came to America and the traditions that she held onto as a child she spread and taught to her family but when something unexpected happens, like the cutting down of a tree, you have the time to sit back, think, and learn. And that is exactly what she did, evaluating what she thought was right from wrong, as did the conservatives, and when she was ready, she branched and flowered into her religious views today. Even now, the church continues to change and learn and grow, something we as humans are accustomed to and something that Conservative Judaism and my grandmother do everyday. What is intriguing is how this reform and history of this religion can shadow so closely the development and molding of my grandmother’s traditions and beliefs. She put an emphasis on the cultuses that the church preached but began thinking of the bible less literally and more metaphorically, as code that deciphers the good, bad and the ugly. Conservative Judaism did the same in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, questioning the bible critically yet sticking to the roots of the beliefs and practices it employed.  

           

           

 ¹ Peter McDonough, The Catholic Labyrinth : power, apathy, and a passion for reform in the American church /  New York : Oxford University Press, [2013]

² Elliot Gertel, "Is Conservative Judaism - Conservative." Judaism 28, no. 2: 202-215. 1979. ATLA Religion Database, EBSCOhost (accessed August 23, 2013).

³ Pamela Nadell "Developing an American Judaism : Conservative rabbis as ethnic leaders." Judaism 39, no. 3: 345-365. 1990. ATLA Religion Database, EBSCOhost (accessed August 23, 2013).

Tolerance and Behavioral Modifications in America's Blended Religious Views

In the chapter two of the novel Religious Pluralism in America, Hutchison covers an array of different topics that come together to form a unified message of tolerance and behavior. As an insider, one may expect an outsider to conform or assimilate into the appropriate behavior based on religious or cultural views, while the insider can be as different as they wanted. Though this stance is clearly unfair, tolerance and therefore change usually wasn’t accepted until the outsiders had big enough numbers and took a stance as citizens.

 1) The Millerites are an example of an insider group that was accepted despite its radical nature. Can you give an example of an ‘outsider’ religious group that was rejected due to its radical stance and why?

2)    A radical insider, William Miller, predicted the second coming of Christ three separate times before the Millerites finally began declining in numbers. Though clearly deluded he was still accepted because he was an insider. If the second coming of Christ were to actually occur, would people believe a man claiming he is the son of God and how do you think it would be addressed?

This article questions the issues of sexual inequality in the Catholic Church and relates the tolerance and behavior quandaries presented in Hutchison’s Religious Pluralism in America.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/7237/excommunicated_for__grave_scandal__of_ordaining_women/

The Priceless Gift of Family

Since I can remember, I have been unwillingly entwined with the inescapable web that is the Catholic religion. It began when I started elementary, forced into catholic school and continued even after I joined a public high school in the form of Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, more commonly referred as CCD. Though over the years the church has left a sour taste in my mouth someone has kept me from calling myself an Atheist and stick with the less conventional “non-practicing” Catholic. That horrifyingly brilliant woman is my grandmother. Nani, my family calls her, has inspired me in astronomical ways not just with her actions but also surprisingly with her dedication to her faith. While the rest of the family doesn’t attend church every Sunday she rises before daybreak and strolls down the algid San Francisco streets to light a candle for my late grandfather. A simple ritual, but to her it’s everything. Even when she is miles away from her church she finds some method of paying respect to him and her God. This small practice keeps the fires of hope alive, burning deep within her being that she will reunite with her husband, my grandfather, in the everlasting kingdom.

Nani considers herself a practicing Catholic not because she directly follows the bible but because she absorbs the principles and responsibilities of the text and applies them to her everyday life. When her church held petitions in front of mass to achieve signatures opposing LGBT rights she slapped the priest on the wrist, an inexcusable assault on the holy man, but necessary because she was disgusted by the way her fellow believers were acting. The code she lives by is not something that is documented but spiritualized and unwritten between her and God. And like her code the creed is not the same aged scripture that is recited every mass but the shadowed example of the code created by her and her maker. Her meaning, her life, her purpose is more than just a golden trimmed book but the actions applied from lessons learned from the Holy Bible and everyday occurrences.

Unlike Sunday mass, my family and I spend every Christmas and Easter together attending the extended ceremonies that take place on the special occasions. My grandmother leads the prayer before every meal and insists the food is untouched until she is done. She also bakes her famous Yorkshire puddings that also make everyone feel at home. During the Christmas mass in particular Nani again lights a candle for my grandfather but also lights a second. A few years back I asked her why she took the time to light two and she looked up at me and smiled, “I light another for the gift of family and that we are all safe, healthy and together again. That is all that is important to me.” This made me really think about not only what religion meant to her but what it meant for me. Through my ignorance I believed that religion was simply going through the motions and doing my duty as a Catholic but to her it was and is much more than that. It is a lifestyle choice but whether or not she chose it is irrelevant. Religion is apart of her now it is who she is. It defines her just as much as her English ancestry, if not more. She considers her family a gift from God, a community that will always be there for her. She holds to these simple traditions, these fragile moments in time together because that is what she gets out of her religion and her beliefs the most, the gift of family.