Your group should submit answers to four to five (4-6) of the following essays (depending upon the size of your home group). You must choose at least one essay from each section.

Section I: Dimensions of Religion. Write essays which adequately answers at least one of the following questions:

1. Your suitemate recently watched a PBS special on religion. That special interviewed experts who argued that religion provides order for human beings. This order is cosmological, moral, and social. One expert noted, "Religion provides the coherence between the world view and ethos of a culture or group." Your suitemate is puzzled and so s/he comes to you for help in understanding what the experts meant. What would you say? (In your answer, be sure to make the connections between the mythical, doctrinal, ritualistic, ethical, and social dimensions of religion. Moreover, put it in context by picking one of the religious traditions discussed in the first three chapters of Introduction to the Study of Religion to illustrate those dimensions.)

2. You have just written your final definition of religion to meet one of the objectives of this course. Compare your answer with one or more definitions in the text and argue why your definition is more (or less) adequate than this (these) other definitions. (In your answer, be sure to include some discussion of what makes for an adequate definition of religion, and include some depth of understanding of the dimensions of religion discussed in the text and in class).

Section II: Ritual, Ethics, and Language. Write essays which adequately answers at least one of the following questions:

3. Your parents have just come home from Sunday service and they are a bit confused. They said that during the homily (sermon), the priest (minister, rabbi) said religion provides the moral order with its source, its sanction, and its goal or salvation. They ask you, "What does religion have to do with morality?" How would you answer them? (In your answer, talk about each aspect, source, sanction, and goal, and illustrate them with examples from the text and class discussion.)

4. You look through your notes in preparation for this final and you come across the Names for God activity we did in class. As an experiment, you make copies of it and have your family members fill it out over Thanksgiving. Obviously, they are a bit confused by all of this and they want to know why you did this activity in class. What was the point of the exercise? What would you say to them? (In your answer, draw upon the text and class discussion to talk about the nature of religious language, especially language about the Sacred, as metaphor and how it makes what is unfamiliar, familiar. Give examples drawn from the activity or the text. Also, include some discussion about the culturally conditioned nature of religious language.)

5. You have just watched a video about female circumcision and you are unsure what to think. On the one hand, your ethical belief that we should not harm others leads you to think that this practice should be stopped. The video made it clear to you that many girls who undergo this procedure experience loss of sexual pleasure, disease, and even death. On the other hand, you understand that this practice is a ritual that embodies the world view and ethos of the people who engage in it. Drawing upon your understanding of the relationship between ritual and ethics, what would you say to the people who still practice this ritual? (In your answer, discuss the relationship between ritual and ethics, drawing upon the text and classroom discussions. Be sure to include some understanding of how ritual and ethics both support and challenge one another.)

Section III: Religious Change and Alienation. Write essays which adequately answers at least one of the following questions:

6. A friend returns from a visit to the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. and he says he no longer believes in a gracious, loving God and stops going to religious services. Another friend comes to you and wants to know how your friend can turn away from his religion like that. What would you say? (In your response, talk about the ways religion can be alienating, drawing upon the text and readings and discussions on the biblical book, Job, and Wiesel’s book, Night.)

7. Some have characterized modern Western society as increasingly secular and atheistic. Discuss what this means and some of the causes. In particular, show how the views of the Enlightenment, Liberalism, and Feuerbach/Marx have contributed to our society becoming more secular and atheistic. What do you think? What is the fundamentalist response?

8. Karl Marx suggests that religion functions to sanction the status quo and to undercut the possibility for social change. Using the textbook, classroom discussion, and Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," discuss what Marx means and how he is right and wrong. (In your answer, discuss the way in which religion functions both to legitimate the status quo and to call it into question.)