Blog #5

Chapter 15 (pp. 719-739)

Many cultural transformations with regards to religion happened during the modern era.  This combined with the fact that modern science, at one point became thought of as a new religion.  These cultural transformations connected people near and far.  Asian, African and Native Americans figured out how Christianity was going to be accepted or rejected by each new cultural environment.  They approached and decided on individual places, how they would deal with and use parts or all of their teachings and rules/laws of their religion to try and convert people.  Many of the countries were more accepting of new ideas in religion when they were allowed to follow one, two or several of their rituals from their current religion along with practicing some new things.  As time went on, this fusing of church laws between two religions, appeared to happen with several different religions and several different countries.  People would try to instill some of their present religion and mix it together with items from a new religion.  I believe this made people feel better, as they were not totally turning their backs on the “old” religion, but just adding “new” things from another religion.  Within Christianity itself there were different opinions on things between Western/Central Europe and the Eastern Orthodox.  Interesting to see they were trying to convert people to Christianity and there were matters that different parts of Europe could not even agree on.  It makes sense that with Martin Luther he wrote demands for religious reform that led to the Protestant reformation. They wanted to take away authority of the highest rankings of the church and making everyone more equal; almost everyone, since women really were treated about the same by Protestants and Catholics. This reminded me that our new Pope in the Roman Catholic Church is finally making large attempts to “modernize” some of the thoughts and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church and how it reacts to certain things.  I believe he is making the Catholic Church a more accepting, tolerant religion, and this is how it should be, for the Catholic Church to follow its’ own rules when it comes to not being judgmental and accepting.