CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, POMONA Pomona, California Gender, Ethnicity and Religion EWS 431 Team Round Table Lance Brooks Paloma Calvet Carlos.

CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, POMONAPomona, California

Gender, Ethnicity and Religion

EWS 431

Team Round Table

Lance BrooksPaloma Calvet

Carlos CardenasJena Curry

Jonathon Knoblach Jeffrey Vachirajongkol

 Patricia Lin, Ph.D.

Professor, EWS/GEMS   

September 29, 2009

Religion and Pluralism

What is religion?

Carlos CardenasJena Curry

Religion: “communities of people who share practice and beliefs…and who gather in special buildings for worship or meditation and who live in special ways in the world.” 

John Bowker

LATINReligion: something done with over-anxious or scrupulous attention to detail.

Religare: to bind things closely together.

What are the purposes of religion?

• Provide people with the reasons by which lives may acquire meaning and purpose.

• Allow people to explore the different worlds by• providing intellectual frameworks that give some• answer about the meaning of life and life and death.

• Give meaning to what could be an unpredictable • frightening existence.

• Used as a way to regulate human behavior.

• Protect communities from turmoil.

• Give a sense of order and meaning.

• Enable and regulate communities of people.Jena Curry

Religion as Social Construction

Jonathan Knoblach JeffreyVachirajongkol

• A social construction (or social construct) is any phenomenon ‘invented’ or ‘constructed’ by participants in a particular culture or society, existing because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules.

• Education, cultural origin and religion can be considered the key values and norms which influence human socialization. 

• Socialization is the action by which a person becomes the member of a society, through a mechanism of interaction. 

• Allows members a place to meet such as churches, sects, cults and denominations.

• Holidays, such as Christmas (Christians), Diwali (Hindus, Jains, Sikhs) and Hanukah (Jews) to name a few, allow members to socialize and develop with each other.

Religion as Social Construction

• Examples of how religion shapes the follower’s perceptions and how it affects their lifestyle.

• Family• Food

• Dress code

• Social construction (or social construct): any phenomenon ‘invented’ or ‘constructed’ by participants in a particular culture or society, existing because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules.

JeffreyVachirajongkolJonathon Knoblach

Pluralism

Lance Brooks Paloma Calvet

• Cultural pluralism A condition in which minority groups participate fully in the dominant society, yet maintain their cultural differences.

• Religious pluralismCan be defined as a term for the condition of harmonious co-existence between adherents of different religions or religious denominations.

…the promotion of some level of unity, co-operation, and improved understanding between different

religions or different denominations within a single religion.(ecumenism)

On Pluralism • Pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic

engagement with diversity. 

• Pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active

seeking of understanding across lines of

difference.

• Pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of

commitments.

• Pluralism is based on dialogue.                      Lance Brooks

What are the ways in which we may think of pluralism?

DIVERSI

TY

TOLERANCE

RELATIVISM

Lance Brooks Paloma Calvet

Pluralism is the energetic engagement with diversity.

Pluralism is the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference.

Pluralism is the encounter of commitments.

How is pluralism different from relativism?

“…the encounter of a pluralist society is the encounter of real commitments and real differences” (pluralism.org. Columbia University Press.2006.September27/2009. http://pluralism.org/pluralism/essays/from_diversity_to_pluralism.php)

Relativism: That all points of view are equally valid.

The view that truth is relative and not absolute. Truth varies from people to people, time to time and there are no absolutes.

Pluralism requires dialogue, invites people to engage in vigorous yet peaceful discussions.

Lance Brooks Paloma Calvet

How is pluralism different from monism?

monistic theism

http://www.him

alayan

acad

emy.com/resou

rces/boo

ks/dws/im

ages/dws-R4

-new

.jpg

• Monism—the view that in any given area there can be no more than one correct opinion.

• RELIGIONThere is one God, with many manifestations in different religions.

Lance Brooks Paloma Calvet

• Pluralism is based on the common ground rules of the First Amendment to the Constitution: “no establishment” of religion and the “free exercise” of religion.

No religion is better than another religion. In a religiously constructed world, countries, and

communities are a better place to live because every religion teaches it’s follower to be better people and

live fuller lives.