Understanding Religious Intolerance
In the fall of 2014 I enrolled in and completed an honors seminar titled Understanding Religious Intolerance. Taught by Dr. Dana Griffith, the purpose of this course was to instill in its participants a better understanding of why and how religious intolerance occurs. It also made great efforts to address what we as individual do to further religious intolerance, either intentionally, or hopefully through ignorance, and what we can do to subsequently reduce the intolerance that religion faces in the world around us. In the course of investigating these things, we utilized mainly the works in two books, Religion Intolerance in America: A Documentary History by John Corrigan, and Religious Tolerance in World Religions by Jacob Neusner.
Rather than simply jumping into instances of injustice or intolerance, a lot of what we learned in the class was focused on learning more about different religions, both large and small. The goal of this was to make us more familiar with why discrimination among religions happens, be it through differences in doctrine, historical issues, or other things. It also served to show us similarities across a number of religions. I think it was with this exploration that the class really went beyond what I was expecting. I had gone in expecting a simple exploration of instances of intolerance, but instead I received a far more complete education regarding why and how it actually happens. Prior to this course, I had thought of world religions as generally unique things, and very independent of each other. However, I now know that this isn't always true. Many religions have been influenced by each other, and even among religions that are separated by large geographical boundaries, it is possible to find examples of similar ideals.
Moving away from this seminar, I think the biggest thing that I've learned and am taking away is that even where you might not expect to find them, it can be both beneficial, and a great experience to look for similarities. Even though religions may not have the same source of their ideas, many of them are proponents of the same types of actions and moral guidelines. Furthermore, by working to look for similarities, it becomes easier to accept the differences and set them aside, allowing us to work more towards making our communities more accepting places for people of all creeds.
To culminate this course, we worked to build upon a website that the iteration of the course before us had started. It is used to catalog the essays of the students who have taken this course, and provide them in a public domain where they can benefit others who might read them. It can be found here:
http://religioustoleranceuc.weebly.com/
Should you be interested in my personal essays, they can be found under Mistaken Assumptions in Christianity, Scientology in New Religious Movements, and Intolerant Rhetoric and Action in Islam.
Rather than simply jumping into instances of injustice or intolerance, a lot of what we learned in the class was focused on learning more about different religions, both large and small. The goal of this was to make us more familiar with why discrimination among religions happens, be it through differences in doctrine, historical issues, or other things. It also served to show us similarities across a number of religions. I think it was with this exploration that the class really went beyond what I was expecting. I had gone in expecting a simple exploration of instances of intolerance, but instead I received a far more complete education regarding why and how it actually happens. Prior to this course, I had thought of world religions as generally unique things, and very independent of each other. However, I now know that this isn't always true. Many religions have been influenced by each other, and even among religions that are separated by large geographical boundaries, it is possible to find examples of similar ideals.
Moving away from this seminar, I think the biggest thing that I've learned and am taking away is that even where you might not expect to find them, it can be both beneficial, and a great experience to look for similarities. Even though religions may not have the same source of their ideas, many of them are proponents of the same types of actions and moral guidelines. Furthermore, by working to look for similarities, it becomes easier to accept the differences and set them aside, allowing us to work more towards making our communities more accepting places for people of all creeds.
To culminate this course, we worked to build upon a website that the iteration of the course before us had started. It is used to catalog the essays of the students who have taken this course, and provide them in a public domain where they can benefit others who might read them. It can be found here:
http://religioustoleranceuc.weebly.com/
Should you be interested in my personal essays, they can be found under Mistaken Assumptions in Christianity, Scientology in New Religious Movements, and Intolerant Rhetoric and Action in Islam.
