Chapter 9 --  School Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values
Religious Traditions

Religion had been a major factor in American culture from the time of the earliest people.

Native Americans are part of the American religious heritage.

Defining Religion

Religion is not the same as an ideology (a body of ideas or beliefs accompanied by plans for putting the ideas into operation).

Langdon Gilkey asserted that three elements are essential in any religion:

1. Belief in ultimate reality
2. Religion involves a particular way of life or rules of behavior that are important for the believer
3. Religion involves a community of people with a definite structure and clear lines of authority

Huston Smith suggests that six elements make up religion:

1. Special people in authority in faith communities
2. Specific rituals
3. Speculation or belief systems
4. Tradition
5. A belief in God and confidence in God's sovereignty and grace
6. A sense of the infinite

Religion includes individual and group affirmations about the reality of God, a shared tradition, commitments to specific values, and appropriate ritualistic and moral actions.

Christianity:  One or Many?

Christianity first cam to the territory now making up the United States with the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.

Christianity is the religious faith of a majority of Americans.

Nearly two thousand years of history have brought an astonishing diversity to this religion.

Christianity is one in its affirmation of one God and an emphasis on the importance of Jesus.  It is also one in its common scriptures.

Christianity is many in its three divisions:  Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism.  Each of these divisions is split into a variety of institutional structures.

Judaism:  The Broad Perspective

Protestant, Catholic, or Jew is equally acceptable and equally American.  Judaism is a religion that is both unified and divided.

Buddhism and Islam

Buddhism and Hinduism began to receive attention in the United States in connection with the 1898 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago.

The number of courses about various religions of the world has steadily grown in most institutions of higher education.

New Religions and the New Age Religion

Each century gives birth to religions that do not fit any previous category and are thought of as "new" religions.

One "new" religion of the twentieth century that has been the focus of attacks by critics of education is the New Age religion.

What Religion Is and Does

Each religion provides a tradition and a community within which people find their psychological and social identity and their sense of stability.

One study concluded that students who belonged to a Christian group at the University of Western Ontario were healthier and happier and handled stress better than a comparison group with no such affiliation.

Nonaffiliated students were more oriented to personal success and materialism.

Religiously affiliated students were more satisfied with their lives than were nonaffiliated students.

Devout personal religion serves as a buffer against the sense of helplessness related to feelings of isolation, loneliness, and rejection.

One view is that the United States is a Christian nation, a nation intended by its founders to be Christian without genuine separation of church and state.

An opposing view would deny this country its powerful religious roots.  This view holds that religion should have little or no role in public life.

Both views are damaging to the traditional and protected role of religion and religious faith in a democratic society.

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Gaddy, B., Hall, T. & Marzano, R. (1996). School Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.