Reflections Part II

My faith is a very private affair for me, and the ritual of going to church is only one manifestation of it. The diversity of religious experiences I encountered at college showed me different ways in which religions and societies can interact. For example, while my denomination has been associated with various immigrant groups, I don’t think of it as an ethnic affiliation. I learned that being “Jewish” was an ethnic as well as religious term and that while several media outlets refer to “Muslims,” followers of Islam are highly ethnically diverse. During my semester abroad in Senegal, where many religions are accepted but atheism is not, I saw how social forces such as feminism worked in the context of a religiously-oriented society. I highly recommend Mariama Ba’s wonderful novel “So Long A Letter,” which tells the stories of how two friends chose very different paths when confronted with the same issue in polygamous marriages. Some characters see Islam as a patriarchal burden to be abolished; others believe that the practice is flawed and wish to change their religion from the inside out.

My current group of friends includes committed atheists, observant Muslims, spiritual sojourners looking for connections outside of organized religion, lapsed Catholics, and many others. None has reproached me for going to Church, just as I have not tried to drag them to Church or engage them in long meditations on theological issues. If it works for you, fine – I just ask to be allowed to practice my faith in peace. My American Sociology course in college gave me data and theories that allow me to contextualize my observations. I had never heard the term “culture wars” until I got to college, but these first few interactions during my freshman year introduced me to some serious divides in American society. We discussed that in general, as the evangelical movement grew stronger in the Sunbelt states and became associated with the Republican Party, so too did the rejection of religion develop. The best argument in an excellent book, On Toleration, that I read for the course is that toleration is not about forming some sort of Kumbaya-chanting, completely melded society. I don’t have to absolutely agree with everything else others do, but I do have to accept differences. The argument isn’t foolproof – there are many things done in the name of religion that I believe are human rights violations and that I will not tolerate.

As I said before, religion and society is a complicated issue that takes a lot of time and thinking to unravel. Moreover, while I am quite content with my religious life today, things may change in the future. Who knows if my future spouse will have a religious life, and if so, what? How would raise our children? I am also interested in the intersection of different forms of belief. Do folktales resist organized religion, transform to conform to it, or adapt to changes in the popular culture? Hopefully I will be a bit closer to answering some of these questions at the end of my time in France.