Culture

New Ideas

The three new ideas that I learned from the chapter include the effect that religion can have on people`s mindset and alter their entire living style. The Islamic culture of training teens for imminent death. The elders plan the death in a scheduled suicide mission against the Israeli army in Gaza Strip (Appleby, n.d). The teen is prepared for life after death. The Islamic culture believes that the teens will die as the hero and join the previously gone martyrs who died for their beliefs. The individual will go directly to paradise and be exempted from the judgment process but enjoy it without fear. The Islamic culture believes in the resurrection of the body; thus, they do not allow processes such as postmortem on their dead bodies. The dead hero is buried with the exact clothes to signify their sacrifice to the angels in paradise.

I got a new idea that religion operates according to the pressures of daily life. Religion is influenced by political considerations and national and ethnic royalties (Appleby, n.d). It also operates according to economic and social pressures. Religion does not operate according to its logic or internal dynamics but is always compromised. It tries to abandon its original culture and blend into society in ways that make it dependent on another variable.

I learned the new idea about the role of church in the community beyond spreading the gospel and inviting people to spirituality. The Catholic Church was a body concerned about the different needs of societies. The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) would educate people on their rights to enable them to protect themselves in the community (Appleby, n.d). The CRS was involved in many social events like the Rwanda massacres, providing relief to the affected communities. Their actions made new enemies for them, and they were always threatened by the enemies who saw them as rivals.

References

Appleby (n.d) The Growing End of an Argument. Chapter 1