Midterm - Religious Studies 302i - Fall 2007

1- Couldn't post any items due to my job.

2- Never missed any class and never late.

3- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=737449959867270721&hl=en

4- I read the book Not A Genuine Black Man from front to back and enjoyed the real honest opinions of a contemporary black man who no longer has that raging anger or feeling of revolution as some of his predecessors. It is a book about someone who has rediscovered himself through pursuing his own ways, his own thing, and not really participating in the collective racial movement among blacks across the country. This author is trying to understand himself as an independent, original person who doesn’t want to be judged by skin color but has to be and there is nothing he can do about that immutable characteristic. Yet, he finds fulfillment in his original visions and finding success in his own way and not being concerned with the angry, revolutionary voices of the blacks in some places and in some groups around the nation. He is wanting to live a life where he can enjoy it and find things that he finds fulfilling as an individual independent from his racial identity.
The required readings from the Reader were learning experiences for me that are truly unforgettable as an international student with limited knowledge and understanding about Indian Americans or African Americans in regards to their struggles and conflicts with the white Europeans. The required readings from this Reader are insightful and very important for me to understand that these people from these different cultures were unable to challenge the dominant, vicious, and brutal white European overseers and rulers who took over their lives, destroyed their former lifestyles, and demanded and forced assimilation on them of the Christian religion and the white ways of life. These two groups suffered immensely from the European contact and interaction as evident in the readings from both the African American and Native American sections. The Native Americans were wiped out, pushed out of the way, and exterminated in military fashion when necessary to crush their native cultural and religious traditions. The white Europeans were here to supplant this old culture with the new culture and the Native Americans were expected to obey, accept, and go along with the orders. In resistance, the Indians did put up a fight and they refused most of all to give up their native religious traditions and rituals that they cherished as interconnected to the geographic features and environmental sources of the North American continent. It was learned in this class that unlike the African Americans’ experiences with changing towards Christianity after being separated from their African homeland and native religious traditions, the Native Americans kept their religious traditions and beliefs out of everything else. For instance, you go over to Hopi or Navajo country in Arizona and New Mexico, then you can really understand that Native American religious traditions, rituals, and practices are very much alive In contrast, in the American South, there will be few places found with the native African religious rituals, traditions, and beliefs being practiced by the descendants of the African slaves. This genealogical disassociation with the African homeland over a long period of time causes this complete break from the native religious traditions and adaptation of the new religious traditions and beliefs, as well as figures and narratives, as evident in the African American readings. Unlike the Native Americans who had their religious rituals tied to their environmental settings, the African Americans were in a new place enslaved in brutal circumstances and forced to make up a new religion among themselves which they did through adapting Christianity to African style dancing, music, and preaching in loud, stirring fashion. The African American religious traditions were clearly found to have involved the adapting of the Christian religion to the African style approach to religious practice and ritual. Today, in the Southern states, black churches can be found to have a celebrative atmosphere with music, dancing, and hand clapping as they praise the Lord God and the savior Jesus Christ. The Christian beliefs are believed in a distinctive, new African American context unlike African religions and unlike white Christian religious services.

5- The consilience approach means looking at a religion from the following dimensions: Theological, Sociological, Psychological, and Biological. Taking my religious worship practice as a Muslim of praying five times per day, this approach would first examine the theological significance. Why do I pray five times per day? To remain close to Allah at all times. I am trying to become one with Allah. I am trying to be in harmony with Allah’s Will. What about the sociological significance? My praying five times per day is always done with fellow Muslim friends and relatives here studying with me in the United States. I am usually doing it with my cousin or room mate when we are together at these appointed prayer times. We bond as Muslims, friends, and members of this same community of God’s good souls. We are bonded with Allah, and moving in this life as one within his Will, and trying to be moral, honorable young men. Psychologically, this prayer ritual I do everyday five times is also an important calming influence on my stressed out mind. I am able to relax and separate my consciousness from my activities as a student and think about Allah’s beauty, knowledge, and oneness with humanity. I think about Allah’s greatness. This five times a day praying is also causing a biological response in me and calming me down, lowering my blood pressure, relaxing me, and making me feel content and harmonious physically as soon as I am finished. That is the best time for me when I am right after the prayer feeling all blissful and good.

6- The theory of memetics can help explain the popularity of some religions in the USA. Richard Dawkins defines the meme as “the cultural information transferable from one mind to another.” The difference of a meme from the gene is that a meme involves the spread of ideas through customs, beliefs, practices and behaviors done by families and communities. These practices have religious rituals, ceremonies, and events enmeshed in them. These memes are very important sources of why some religions in the USA are much more popular than others. The Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses are two rapidly growing and very popular American religions right now because of their aggressive styles of gaining new converts through face to face meetings and knocking on doors. The Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses are bringing their memes to the people’s door steps and coming back again and again to transfer the cultural information to the people and through this persuasive technique of preaching some people convert to the religious group. The transfer of their religious beliefs are taking place more rapidly than the more traditional Lutheran or Roman Catholic religions because their representatives are functioning like door to door sales people who spread their memes and come back to reinforce the memes through repeat visits until conversion and membership is chosen by the interested people

7- Evolutionary theory and the field of evolutionary psychology helps explain the impact of human migration on the development of today’s diverse cultures scattered across the continents and islands of the world. The migration of people was driven by natural selection. The bigger, stronger organisms of the human race in the original inhabitants in Africa pushed out the others to go find another place to live and go find other resources. The migration waves continued again and again whenever the natural selection force would make one particular group of humans superior and stronger than the rest. People would become sick and tired of being ruled and look for free land, free space, and free time to think on their own and make their own group away from the stronger, bullying types from the original group. The psychology behind this is that people couldn’t take the authoritarian rule or treatment and got out of that place.

8- The notion of race biologically is obsolete. Humans are humans and we are all built biologically the same and even connected to the same original parents and family tree when studying the microbiological origins of our selves. We are all human beings no different biologically and racial theories have all been proven wrong and false. They have no scientific backing and support today. Yet, culturally, this notion of race remains so powerful and viable in the USA in some places more so than others. The racial distinctions between people can now be traced from the migration patterns of ancient, ancient ancestors who established themselves in new places and settled into new lives where conditions and environmental forces helped shape and change their genetic compositions somewhat to bring about the different racial distinctions today. These things were caused by evolutionary and biological forces interacting with the different racial groups’ environments and these genetic pools distinguished and separated from one another over long periods of time. This course made me understand that we are all one human race ultimately because we are biologically proven to be so. We are culturally, socially, politically, and religiously still immensely embroiled, however, in racial tensions, conflict, and violence all over the world. The racial superiority theories of the white Europeans have not died out rapidly but are held onto in many places by many white people. Despite scientific evidence, culturally, socially, economically, and religiously the white people want to pretend that they are a superior race to the darker skinned races. These racial characteristics are still vitally important to white people in the white European countries as well as in white dominated North America. These racial characteristics are upheld as distinctions of superiority and that they are what makes the white people culturally, socially, politically, economically, and militarily superior to the other races for the last hundreds and hundreds of years.

9- religious idea gets transformed when it comes to American soil and that ritual or tradition changes during its course of time practiced here on American soil. The ritual that African people often participated in when back in Africa before being captured as slaves and brought to America were musical-based, dance-oriented religious ceremonies. In Africa tribal religious ceremonies all around the continent, the use of drums, musical instruments, singing, dancing, clapping, and the like are very obvious anywhere. Major religious events and ceremonies in these African traditional religions have music, dancing, and drama involved in them. When suddenly taken away from the African continent, these native African people here in the North American continent as slaves were forced to innovate their own religious traditions and rituals in their slave quarters. At first, they were probably very much replicating their native African ceremonial dances and events that were meaningful but applied to their slave community contest. These early African American slaves were still very much knowledgably about their ancient people’s religious rituals and practices and eager to use them with their fellow slaves who were from their same tribe and clan. However, over time, once slavery increased the numbers of different kinds of Africans and the mixture of different religious traditions was no longer possible, the adaptation of the Christian religion became clearly established by most of the second and third generation African Americans. This adaptation of Christianity and Jesus as the personal savior of the African American slaves was integrated into their dancing, singing, and hand clapping gatherings in the slave quarters of their big plantations. The religious events and ceremonies were being adapted to the Christian calendar also because the whites were taking this time off for these Christian holidays and rituals. The African American slaves were naturally going to start adapting this religious calendar and began to also adapt the religious rituals, beliefs, and ceremonies to their style and context. The singing, dancing, music, and hand clapping of the African traditional religions was kept but now they were celebrating Jesus and the Christian narratives. They were transferring their collective consciousness to this Christian belief system and believing in the stories, the principal figures, and doing the rituals but they were done in the community context that was fit for their group of slaves. They were going to make Christianity fit in with their religious practices, customs, and behavior patterns replicated from their African ancestors. Gospel music was innovated from this assimilation and integration of Christianity into African American social and cultural customs and behaviors at religious events and rituals. Now, gospel music is sang in white churches and Asian churches and all kinds of different ethnic groups’ Christian churches because of the beauty and grace of these African American songs. These are songs that reach for the heart and they are beloved now by all Christians of all races because they were created from the integration of Christianity with African religious behavior patterns replicated from ancient African ancestors in regards to be singing, dancing, and clapping at religious ceremonies.

10- Peter Berger’s concept of the heretical imperative holds that people have three options when looking at a new religion. The deductive approach refers to the way people retreat back to their fundamental beliefs and uphold these beliefs as truth. The reductive approach is when people reject new religious ideas or any new movement because it conflicts with the set and established ways. The inductive approach is when people are tolerant and open to new religious ideas and practices. Religious pluralism in the USA is evident because of the inductive approach being tradition and emphasized since the beginning of this country’s history. Religious freedom was guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution when the new national government promised to never make a national religion. There would always be a separation between church and state. In contrast, in my country, there is very little religious pluralism because of our geographic separation from most of the world through the long history of humanity. We have a reductive and deductive approach to new religious belief systems. My people either retreat back to their fundamental Islamic beliefs and uphold these beliefs regardless of the arguments of the new religious teachers and reject them outright. Very little progress has been made in the Muslim countries as far as converting them to Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism since the globalization trend. The reason is seen in Berger’s heretical imperative concept.

13 - The one religious movement in recent history that developed in the USA and influenced its African American segment is the Nation of Islam. This was a black separatist religious movement. Its leader, Prophet Elijah Muhammad, called out for black Americans to reject their white controlled lives and reject their history with the white race in America to find their true black heritage and origins as African people. He taught the Nation of Islam members that a time would come for the African people to restore their heritage, legacy, and greatness on the planet and that would come when they formed their own black nation. This is the only time when the American blacks, according to Prophet Elijah Muhammad, could find peace and prosperity when totally separated from the evil-minded white people. The Nation of Islam was a relatively small movement in Detroit and Chicago until the arrival of Malcolm X in the late 1950s. Malcolm X was the public face of the Nation of Islam through the 1950s and early 1960s until having a falling out with the Prophet Elijah Muhammad over his growing popularity and recognition as the true leader of the movement. During this time, when Malcolm X was traveling around and recruiting poor, urban black people to join the Nation of Islam, the black people had something to believe in again and hope for a better, prouder future as self-reliant, self-sufficient people unified in a black nation together as brothers and sisters. This black brotherhood goal of the Nation of Islam was something that Malcolm X really pushed and persuaded black people to pursue and many black people in the worst ghettos of American cities cleaned up their lives and became honorable, moral Muslims in this movement.

14 - In this class, the death of God to Nietzsche is about coming to an awareness that never was no God in the first place. He believes that humans as a species had finally matured to the point of recognizing this fact. In his philosophy, Nietzsche claims that there never was no God nor gods, goddesses, or any other deities in any spirit world of any kind. All that is lies. Science and biological facts disprove all these false notions of God, Heaven, Hell, and Devil from Nietzsche’s perspective. Modern humans therefore have the responsibility of making the new religions. The greatest drawback, of course, is that the humans will reject the old time religious moral standards and criteria along with the gods, goddesses, and mythologies of the past. As a result, the fear is that humans will develop a more sinister, evil standard for what is known as morality that will make the new religions evil instead of good. The other challenge is that human beings have to be responsible for the inventing of this new morality and that the moral standards have to surpass the old ones in Nietzsche’s view so that the human race can advance past the old ways and old limitations. If humans rise up to take responsibility and make a new morality and new religions to aspire to it, then people can advance into a new age without these myths, gods, goddesses, and God from the past. The moral supermen in Nietzsche’s vision will be able to do away with the failings, weaknesses, and flaws of the old systems. These new moral pillars of belief will advance the human race and start a whole new direction for the race to become much greater and more advanced creatures.

15 - Wolfram argues that simplicity is at the core of every complexity. Wolfram argues that this simplicity of anything can be traced backwards through the historical evolution process of any given creation. This is very closely aligned with Gould’s concept of spandrels or unintended consequences and complexities. Gould also asserts that everything in nature, regardless of its complexity, has the same simplistic root origin and core within its biological make up. The most complex organisms are made from the DNA-RNA molecules and they are very simple structurally and they engage in these processes that permit the building blocks of molecules and atoms to take place at these tremendously complex levels. And the living creatures of the Earth are very complex in their biological compositions from the birds to the sea creatures to human beings. The systems that make up biological living creatures are extremely complex and they came about according to Gould by unintended consequences or spandrels. As these systems and complexities came into being, these systems spawned other systems that were then making organisms that became completely new species and distinguished from the old species of the same kind. For human beings, the complexity of the physical make up has been under experimentation and change for tens of thousands of years, some say three hundred thousand years and running, and this means that the complexity has become replicated and reproduced through so many generations. And this makes us realize that we did come around through unintended consequences when hominids began having human beings as children because of some genetic mutation in either a male or female that caused the different physical make up.

16 - Religious diversity always starts with its founder. The Christian religion has thousands of diverse offshoots and they are all claiming to be the right Christian way and that Jesus Christ would favor their sect if he was here on Earth now. The Judaism religion has so many diverse sects and groups that have diversified from the same founder: Moses. The Islamic faith diversifies into different groups everyday from its original founder, Prophet Muhammad. These three figures are the role models for all believers as the honest, humble, pious, and God chosen leader and this leadership is revered in every aspect and way. All three religions have so many diverse groups because they view and consider this founder in certain distinctive ways and approach this founder’s teachings in unique, original, and creative ways which spawn a new sect or group that is different from the original group of followers. Sometimes groups try to retreat back to the original followers’ mentality and try to be the new twelve apostles of Jesus or the new Companions of the Prophet. Groups diversify from the founder because of the simple misunderstandings, misperceptions, and different conclusions made after the founder dies and forever is gone fro the scene. These religions diversify by the pressures, tensions and conflicts that explode after this leader is dead. The religions always break apart and new groups start from the original followers because of disagreements, conflicts, and even blood feuds over the proper leader after the founder dies.

17 - The tipping point in Brian Copeland’s life which prompted him to want to commit suicide was his despair over not fitting in, never fitting in, and being ostracized by the color of his skin in his community. The despair over this fate as a permanent ostracized member of the community is something that Copeland makes clear to me in his story. He is able to demonstrate this despair is so deep that suicide is a possible better answer than life because of the amount of hatred, conflict, tension, and resentment built up. In this racist community, Copeland can never feel comfortable. He can feel like he fits in and is well loved by others just because of his skin and race. The stereotyping by whites is obvious for him and he despises it. This racial stereotyping is obvious and evident in everything that happens to Copeland when he is interacting with whites. He is very much resentful of this feeling that he is inferior and has lesser status than whites automatically because of his skin color. This type of racism is something that drives him to the tipping point and makes him ponder suicide as a way out of the continuous feeling of despair.

18 - Negative facial expressions, negative body language, and racist stares are all subtle forms of racism that Brian Copeland perceives on an everyday basis. These subtle forms of racism get him down every time. He doesn’t like the discomfort level. He doesn’t like that sense of white people distrusting him and disliking him over a skin color issue. This drives him really into despair because he is permanently marked for this negative stare down every time he sees someone white in this community of San Leandro. The assumptions made by the whites in Brian Copeland’s interactions with them are always negative about the black race. Whites when looking at Brian Copeland through a lens of racism only perceive the negative traits, possibilities, and outcomes.

19 - Copeland’s experience with racism in his community dovetails with the experiences of Malcolm X. Copeland feels he is marginalized in this community. He is an outcast and can’t ever become an accepted member like a white person. He is not trusted. He is given subtle racist glances, stares, and maltreatment in the interactions with the whites there. Copeland can’t feel comfortable one day of his life. As a consequence, he begins to grow angry like Malcolm X that he has to live in a racist society and be an outcast. He doesn’t want this role as outcast and be ostracized. Copeland wants to be just an ordinary community guy who does everything like anyone else and doesn’t have to take any special attention from anyone. Yet, because he is black, Copeland has take on this automatic role as outcast because of racial characteristics. He has to put up with racist glances and treatment from racist whites everyday in this community. Malcolm X always said in his speeches that white people were unable to treat black people with honor and respect. White people were racist, evil bigots who wanted to keep black people miserable and down and out in their economic ghettoes of poverty in the big cities. Malcolm X gave speech after speech that the blacks had to become members of the Nation of Islam so that they could become sober, clean, and productive black people in a black community separated from whites in all ways as possible. Copeland could certainly see the practical logic in Malcolm X’s separatist doctrine of the white and black races. Copeland would have definitely moved to this all black nation envisioned by the Nation of Islam for American blacks. Copeland had to deal with racism and white racists but not at the level Malcolm X did nor did Copeland endure the kind of racist violence Malcolm X did as a little child in Lansing, Michigan. In his autobiography, we find out that his own father was murdered by a white racist hate group and his family was broke up over it. Malcolm X was also sentenced to a long prison sentence because of a white racist judge and jury who were disgusted over his having a white girlfriend involving in his criminal activity and sleeping with her as well. Because of his sleeping with a white woman, Malcolm X was given a much stiffer prison term than any white man would have received. Copeland’s racial problems and racist situations were on a much less intense level than Malcolm’s.

20 - Some North American Indian religions absorbed and integrated Christianity into their own ideals and beliefs based on the readings in the Reader. The North American Indian religions saw in Jesus Christ a revered, holy shaman who had clearly been able to achieve what the Indians would recognize as perfect harmony with the Great Spirit of the whole universe. Jesus Christ was that holy shaman who had come to teach some truer insights into human nature and human destiny. In the Gospel, the North American Indians see a teaching of trying to harmonize with the universal supernatural force of moral goodness; the Great Spirit. This Christian principle of unconditional love is seen by the North American Indian tribes as simply another interpretation of their belief in harmony with the all pervading Great Spirit force. This is the spiritual force of the Great Spirit that bonds together all the human beings together with all living forms and non living forms in the universe at large. The stars and galaxies are all interconnected and held together with this same supernatural force as human beings and all living things on earth are and therefore the Native Americans saw Jesus Christ as that human holy shaman able to join and teach from this higher plane of existence and higher state of inner consciousness.

21 - Laverne Jacobs found the best path to try to reconcile his Native American religious beliefs with his newfound Christian beliefs was to recognize that they were paths to the same great place; the Great Spirit’s origin source. Jacobs saw in this Native American rituals as customs and practices that were all about trying to be a good, honest person and getting more intimate and closer to the spiritual force of all forces; the Great Spirit. And this is the highest level of moral integrity in the Native American beliefs, this was the peak level because of the harmony obtained with the Great Spirit at this level. In his belief in Jesus Christ as savior of humankind, Jacobs is discovering that this was simply confirming his Native American religious belief of the all bonding force of unconditional love. Jacobs knows that Jesus is the Christ personifying these traits and qualities conveying this sense of total, perfect harmony with the Great Spirit, the Sky Father, the Creator of all things, this same universal spiritual force that American Indians recognize and revere. It is the same source of everything and Jacobs can begin to reconcile his two faiths with his knowledge that they are stemming from the same original place. It is knowledge that has evolved through the tie in that Jacobs sees between the deepest Native American beliefs about the Great Spirit and the belief of God conveyed by Jesus Christ in his Gospel.

22 - Peyote is a ritual of the Native American Church of Jesus Christ that has become a national debate on religious freedom and the use of a hallucinogenic drug. The Church developed when the peyote rituals were developed by some of the southwestern Indian tribes in the late nineteenth century to help them obtain vision quests in the local mountains. The vision quest is the important coming of age ritual for many Native American religions. It is a ritual that intensifies when using peyote which is taken from a certain kind of southwestern cactus. This Church recognizes Jesus Christ as the holiest of shamans who had taught the basic principles of the Great Spirit in his gospel and that the Great Spirit can be found and the perfect harmony be obtained when following the way of this holiest of shamans. Jesus Christ is the role model to find the intimate knowledge and harmony of the universal spiritual force known by the Native Americans as the Great Spirit but called God the Father b y the Christians. The Native American Church of Jesus Christ advocates the use of peyote in vision quests to discover and unify into this same harmony as found by Jesus Christ and resonate in the same vibrations of his goodness and unconditional love found in his teachings.

23 - Frederick Douglass’s critique of slavery via his autobiography is eye opening for me as an international student with limited historical knowledge about American slavery and the times and lives of American slaves back in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in this country across the American South. This is a critique that exposes the brutality, the degrading nature, and the dehumanization processes that are used by the white masters to take total physical control over their slaves. The beatings, the whippings, and the raping actions of the white masters and white overseers are chronicled by Douglass to expose slavery for what it was at the bottom level. The whites were brutalizing and dehumanizing the blacks within the context of a racist institution of slavery that had the whites in superior, dominant physical position and the blacks in an inferior, submissive position. The critique made me aware that these white slave owners were sure to beat, whip, and rape slaves to make sure these slaves understood their inferior, submissive, and powerless positions. In a real sense, this is a critique of the white religion of Christianity that the slave owners and their families were following. These religious groups in the South were justifying, accepting, and embracing the slavery institution as right and blessed by God Himself and approved by Jesus Christ as well. The white Southerners were able to use their Christianity as a cover for the brutal and degrading nature of the slavery institution. The justifications taken from the bible were wrong in Douglass’s view and these biblical justifications only made it more of a socially constructed prison around all the black slaves. They were doomed biblically to be permanent slaves to the whites.

24 - There are some distinctive differences between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. as evident in their approaches to liberating blacks from oppression. King wanted blacks to stand arm in arm peacefully in civil disobedience of all racist institutions and conventions in white racist society. King wanted to confront the white racists on a higher moral ground based on the Christian principles from the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ. King wanted the blacks to unify and peacefully protest, confront, and take on the white racists so that they could avoid blood shed, violence, and setbacks. King wanted to the public, the press, and the U.S. president to witness the masses of blacks holding the higher moral ground and refusing to get violent so they could gain their rights and freedoms in the legal, just manner. Malcolm X said that peace and love were principles that the whites would laugh at and that they mocked Dr. King’s attempt to rally the blacks around the principles of Jesus and said that the white racist authorities would degrade, humiliate, and murder black people without second guessing themselves. The only way to confront white racism in Malcolm X’s view was black racism. The separatism doctrines of the Nation of Islam were promoted and preached by him throughout the urban ghettos of America in the early 1960s. He was the public face of the black separatist movement in general. He was viewing the black solution as being separated from the whites in a complete fashion with all interaction kept to the bare minimum in all areas of life.

25 - The genealogical disassociation is a key factor in understanding of the emergence of new religions in America. Once the migrants to America separated from their old continents, their families, and their old ways of life, they were going to never practice these old ways and customs the same manner again. In fact, most of the religious groups coming to the early settlements in America were escaping persecution from the Church of England. Religious pluralism was an early reality in the American colonies as different religious groups were settling in their own spaces and enjoying freedom of religious persecutions. They could believe the way they wanted and they could develop their own doctrines, dogmas, and belief systems as time went on. In the case of the African slaves, they were forced to integrate their old time African religious beliefs into these new Christian beliefs that their white masters were promoting and practicing. The African slaves were obviously working as slaves according to the Christian calendar so they were bound to begin integrating these Christian beliefs and holidays into their lives and they were adapting their African approaches and religious customs to the Christian beliefs and narratives. These religions emerging in America were diverse and different from the way the religions were organized on their home continents. This separation physically was a critical aspect of this change of evolution and development for every religious belief system brought here to America.

EXTRA CREDIT

26 - The arc of the African American experience provided in the readings was an interesting and informative challenge for me. My knowledge has increased tremendously about the African American religious evolution and how these African Americans were able to synthesize their African customs, traditions, and habits in religious practices with the Christian belief system context. The slave quarters on Christian holidays were filled with musical, dancing, and hand clapping celebrations that the white Christians were simply not doing at all during this period of time. Christianity was basically put to music and dance African style in the slave quarters and this is how the Christianity religion became made and crafted into an African American innovation. The African American slaves were able to make Christianity a vehicle to protest their conditions and circumstances as slaves. For example, Moses was a revered figure among the African American slaves because of the fact that Moses led the slaves out of Egypt. He was an important personality for the African American slaves to turn to and get inspiration from as the slavery conditions worsened and brought only misery to slaves everywhere.
The overall theme in the African American readings is that the people endured through the trials of the enslavement horror and synthesized this Christian religion into something wholly new and novel compared to white Christian religions. The African American Christian religion was more celebratory, musically lively, and featuring more emotional, dramatic preaching involving the whole audience. The African American musical genre that evolved from the slavery period, of course, is gospel music. In most white churches today, gospel music from the African Americans is sung and performed all the time. Gospel music originally developed in the African American slave camps and then in the African American churches. The African American people endured through slavery and the horrible era of white racism known as Jim Crow and they were still able to overcome through their faith and devotion to the basic Christian principles and their ties with one another.

27 - The two readings selected for analysis from the American Indian section and African American section is important selections for me to understand the historical as well as religious experiences of these two different, distinctive peoples in the United States past. These two races were distinguished and clarified by the United States government to target for discriminatory and racist treatment and policies. The Indian race was targeted several times for extermination by the U.S. government. The Indian race was considered savages by the white Europeans whose time in the Americas had come to an end forever. These American Indians were religiously distinctive from the white Europeans because of their beliefs in the supernatural, all unifying force, the Great Spirit, that made everything and everyone on the planet as the Great Creator. The land was not something that human beings could privately own. The land was God’s land and that was free land for the creatures of the earth and sky, including human beings, to enjoy and learn how to be in harmony with the cycles and nature of its seasonal changes. The religious elements in the American Indian experience are that the natural environment is one with the human family, clan, and tribe. People must respect nature and the natural forces through paying homage to their spiritual essence, this supernatural force, which the American Indians believed was the origin and source of everything. Religiously, the American Indians were attached to their ancestral beliefs, traditions, and customs. They were bounded to their rituals and ways of life that were very much tied into the seasonal cycles and the wildlife around them that were used as food sources.
In contrast, the African Americans’ religious experience was distinguished from the American Indian by disconnection and disassociation from the African homeland. This disconnection and disassociation was very consequential on the African Americans’ religious development in the slavery period. The African customs and rituals were kept in some respects, especially the singing and dancing, but the Christian religious figures, stories, and beliefs replaced their African religious beliefs as time went on. Through the birth of several new generations, African Americans were a Christian people but very distinctive Christians on Sundays when celebrating their religious beliefs. The southern whites were gathered in their Christian churches and did their formal rituals for celebrating their religious beliefs, while the African Americans held their religious gatherings often outside in their slave camps near the fire pit where they would dance, sing, and clap as their African ancestors did performing religious ceremonies back in Africa. This carry over of the dancing, singing, and clapping elements at their religious celebrations was an important and fundamental difference between the African American Christians and the white Christians of the slavery period.