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.