Religion and Society

The concepts discussed throughout the day, on first glance, seemed confusing and challenging to understand as this is a brand new topic we were looking at today and I didn’t know what to expect from it. I had previously studied RMPS at the school and it focused on viewing the specific details of one religion, rather than looking at the topic ‘Religion’ as a whole, and then relating ideas to famous works of anthropologists.

Today I learned a lot about religion and how it can be perceived whether a person is looking at it from the inside – so it is a person’s own belief they are looking at from their own view point and from their religion’s teachings (also known as the believer’s approach) – or from the outside – a non-biased view of the religion (also known as the scholarly approach).

I began to comprehend some of the topics covered throughout the course of the day. However, I am still trying understand how to relate the theorist’s ideas to the concepts we are learning. I am sure that once I begin to work through the information, revise the notes from today and look at exam style questions that I will be able to see the connections between the information and theories and apply it to my work.

Today’s lecture and workshop has allowed me to see identify the challenges of religious diversity on society. As I got to look at this topic it allowed me to see how important it is to hold non-biased view to each of them, because, as a primary teacher, I will have to appreciate and respect every child’s religion and needs in my classroom so that they are not left out or feel discriminated against.

Therefore, to continue through this module, I will need to revise all of my notes as much as I can to allow me to look at exam type questions and work on relating what I am saying to answer a question to an anthropologists work to allow me to receive as many marks as possible in my exam.