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Effect of religion on society
Effect of religion on society
Effects of religion on individuals
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did when I was growing up there. Today it is necessary to have a Police Officer in the village of Larsen Bay, Alaska because of domestic violence and alcohol/drug abuse.
There was the Russian Orthodox religion, but Priests only made a short visit approximately every six months to a year, that is if the weather and the Priest's schedule permitted. Whenever a Russian Orthodox Priest would visit, he would give all of his sermons in either Russian, or Slavonic. Very few if any of the villagers understood Russian or the Slavonic language. A few years before I left the village the Baptists moved in to cleanse our heathen souls. The Baptist presence in the village lasted for about 10 years after I left. There is a Russian Orthodox religious presence in the village today. The Russian Orthodox religion moved into the village, built a Church and this time give their sermons in English or at least through an interpreter.
I had a childhood that was without the pressures and influence of organized religion. When I left the village and went out into the world, my curiosity was aroused to the different supernatural god-beliefs of the world. I found that some people believed so strongly that they had the "only" one true religion that they would fight and die for that belief. Supernatural god-beliefs are just that - beliefs, a figment of imagination and a superstition. People that are indoctrinated from birth into supernatural god-beliefs know that they are right and that the others have it all wrong.
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Public School Pre-game Prayer
Halt prayer before games judge orders
This was on the front page of the Atlanta Constitution on September 25, 1986. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order banning prayers before football games at the Douglas County High School in Douglasville, GA. Doug Jager just returned to Douglasville, GA from his first trip to Larsen Bay, Alaska where he spent the summer. Emotions were intense and out of control for Christians who suddenly found that they lost one of their means of imposing their prayers onto the public. After the Atlanta Constitution's front-page story to halt prayers at public school football games, Georgia went crazy. The Jager household was besieged with some of the nastiest phone calls and open public abuse coming from Christians in the name of God. The abuse coming from Christians was very intense, and meant to terrorize and to intimidate.
In 1971 in Mobile County Alabama the School Board created a state statute that set aside time at the beginning of each day for silent ’meditation’ (statute 6-1-20), and in 1981 they added another statute 16-1-20.1 which set aside a minute for ‘silent prayer’ as well. In addition to these, in 1982 the Mobile County School Board enacted statute 16-1-20.2, which specified a prayer that teachers could lead ‘willing’ students in “From henceforth, any teacher or professor in any public educational institution within the State of Alabama, recognizing that the Lord God is one, at the beginning of any homeroom or any class, may pray, may lead willing students in prayer, or may lead the willing students in the following prayer to God… “ (Jaffree By and Through Jaffree v. James). Ishmael Jaffree was the father of three students, Jamael Aakki Jaffree, Makeba Green, and Chioke Saleem Jaffree, who attended a school in Mobile County Alabama. Jaffree complained that his children had been pressured into participating in religious activities by their teachers and their peers, and that he had requested that these activities stopped. When the school did nothing about Jaffree’s complaints he filed an official complaint with the Mobile County School Board through the United States District Courts. The original complaint never mentioned the three state statutes that involved school prayer. However, on June 4, 1982 Jaffree changed his complaint. He now wanted to challenge the constitutionality of statutes 16-1-20, 16-1-20.1 and 16-1-20.2, and motioned for a preliminary injunction. The argument against these state laws was that they were an infringement of the Establishment Clause within the First Amendment of the Constitution, which states that Congr...
As well as having different language, these people had different religions which include: 70% Christian Orthodox; 9% Roman Catholic; 11% Muslim; 4% Jewish. Virtually, the whole population of Russia was situated in the fertile land in the southwest. This meant that population density was very high and cities and towns were overcrowded. However, Russia’s low industrial output was not the only problem for the peasants and factory workers.
The daughter of an atheist, Michael A. Newdow, attended public school in the Elk Grove Unified School District in California, where teachers started school days by leading students in a voluntary narration of the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge included the phrase “under God”, which was added to it in 1994 through a Congressional act. The atheist sued the school district in federal district court in the state on the basis that making students listen to the phrase even if they were not willing to participate was an infringement on the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He had argued that his right to influence the religious views of his daugh...
Prayer in public schools became an issue in 1960: Madalyn Murray O'Hair sued the Baltimore MD school system on behalf of her son William J Murray, because he was being forced to participate in prayer in schools. Ultimately, her actions and the actions of the American Atheist Organization resulted in the Supreme Court ruling of 1962. (Tragically, she disappeared in August of 1995. In January 2001, a full five and a half years after they were last seen, the bodies of the Murray-O’Hairs were finally found on a sprawling ranch near the little town of Camp Wood, Tex.)
Rieff, Burt. "Conflicting Rights and Religious Liberty: The School-Prayer Controversy in Alabama, 1962-1985." Alabama Review 3(2001):163. eLibrary. Web. 31 Aug. 2011.
It is incredibly uncommon in this day and age for an individual to hold their own personal religion and line of beliefs. In most cases it wouldn 't even be categorized as a religion. Religion requires multiple persons. It is the breeding of individuals who see community as a defining factor in advancing their religious beliefs and immersing such beliefs into their lives. The aspect of community works differently amongst various religions, but one thing that seems to hold true across the board is that religion functions as a “social glue”. It can serve to hold individuals together, as well as an entire group of people. The counter-argument to this would certainly be that religion instead serves to rip communities apart. The latter to this is prominent in religious communities whose sole function is to impound intense religiosity into individuals in an atmosphere where the extensive nature and uniform of their beliefs are the highest priority. Jesus Camp, is a documentary that makes light of how religious communities function
Taylor, Stuart. "School Prayer a Issue a Judicial Minefield." The Connecticut Law Tribune. September 27, 1999: Sec. News.
Minersville provides a very interesting backdrop to subsequent cases with graver overtones of censorship. The Minersville case was brought by the father of Lillian and William Gobitis, on their behalf, against the public schools of Minersville, Pennsylvania. The Gobitis children, Jehovah's Witnesses, were brought up to believe that scripture forbade saluting a flag. They refused to observe the Pledge of Allegiance and were expelled from the public school system, forcing their father to enroll them in private schools (23-25).
Prohibiting School Prayer Threatens Religious Liberty. Civil Liberties. Ed. James D. Torr. -. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2003.
Those in favor of prayer in school pose several arguments. They say it will increase tolerance in schools, as children learn of different religions and how they practice. Many feel it will bring to surface the personal questions kids have about god and religion and allow them to search for their own belief system. The most common however is the argument that bringing prayer back to schools will help reverse the moral degragation of this country. As the Reverend Jeffery L. Osgood, pastor of the First southern Baptist Church in Dover wrote, "Back in 1962, when prayer was removed by the Supreme Court, something happened to America's soul and America's schools. Our nation became increasingly secular and less tolerant of moral standards and values. Since America became to proud to pray to the God of Heaven who created us, we have been reaping the rewards. Crime is way up. The family has broken up. The test scores of students have taken a submarine dive. Its time for a change!"
In 1789, delegates from the 13 states of a new nation created a Constitution that established policies which had never before been seen. One of those policies guaranteed a complete seperation of Church and State.
According to Merriam-Webster, religion is based on “an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods” (“Religion”). In every part of the world there is a struggle between individual religions that are trying to institutionalize their “system of beliefs” on each other, and within those individual religions there is also a struggle of sects that claims that their teaching should be the basis for that religion, not the teachings that is presented by other believers of the same religion. These religious sect later go on to create religious organizations. The first thing these religious organizations try to propagate to their followers is that anyone that are not a follower of their doctrines is corrupt and needs a divine deliverance from themselves. This deliverance cannot be given to the individual in another religious organization, it has to come from them. One of the biggest organization that has openly declared themselves as the divine judgers of men from God is th...
Gaylor, Annie Laurie. The Case Against School Prayer. “Keep the Church and State Forever Separate.” Madison, Wisconsin: Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., 1995. ( www.ffrf.org/pray.html )
Schneider, Mary Beth. "INDIANAPOLIS senator's bill seeks Lord's Prayer in schools." USA TODAY. (2013): n. page. Web. 2013.
School prayer, in the context of religious liberty, is state-sanctioned or mandatory prayer by students in public schools. Depending on the country and the type of school, state-sponsored prayer may be required, permitted, or prohibited. Countries which prohibit or limit school prayer often differ in their reasons for doing so: In the United States, school prayer cannot be required of students in accordance with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.