Ethnography—85% from British Isles by the end of the colonial period, however, by the turn of the millennium, America is a country of minorities.

Religious pluralism—here again, America has gone from a handful of religions to true diversity.

Regionalism—ironically, after the Civil War, there was an increase in regionalism.

Native Peoples—westerners often viewed native peoples as uncivilized. Therefore, Christianity and colonial powers were to civilize the indignant peoples who had an extremely pluralistic worldview when it came to religion.

The Spanish Religious Influence—the Spanish worldview was generally a step or two beyond the British when it came to viewing native peoples as less civilized. The Spanish believed that they were vastly superior to Native Americans. This might explain why they tried to convert to Christianity those that they conquered—whether Moors or Native North or South Americans. The Inquisition fueled some of the excesses.

The French Influence—shared the Spanish fervor to convert Native Americans, but their own martyrdom was a bonus.

England functioned as a bridge from the Old to the New World. The Spanish and French influences were almost entirely Catholic (except for Huguenots). The British influence was primarily Protestant (except for Maryland). The influence was so dominant even non-Protestant groups became like Protestants in their worldviews. This was often called "Americanism." This extreme influence finally abated by WWI.

The Puritan Heritage—New England reversed the religious configuration in Britain. The Congregationalists and Presbyterians were the largest denominations in the colonies with Baptists and Anglicans tied for third place. Quakers were fifth.

Religious Diversity in America lead to toleration for all sorts of reasons: economic and political. "A free exercise of religion…is essential to enriching and improving a trading nation…" (Lords of Trade)

The Breakdown of the Parish system—the European assumption for the better part of a millennium was that a person living in a particular area was a member of the dominant church in that area. When it was brought over to the New World, it didn’t fit very well.

The Sense of Expectancy—a grand, holy experiment in the New World. The outsiders in this experiment were Blacks and Indians.

The Southern Colonies—Anglicans were in a majority only in the South. Initially, there wasn’t to be religious toleration in Virginia, but new, non-Anglican settlers made one church impossible. Roman Catholicism in Maryland was dominant but soon gave ground to a broader-based toleration policy. North and South Carolina and Georgia were only nominally Anglican.

The New England Colonies—primarily Congregationalists in background. Having left England because of political and religious pressure, when they got to the New World, they wanted to assure their freedom by curbing the freedom of others. For various reasons, this policy of intolerance wasn’t totally successful.

The Middle Colonies—New York started out Dutch Reformed, then Anglican in name. New Jersey and Delaware were traded off between either New York or Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was Penn’s great religious experiment based upon Quakerism.

Anglicans—spin-off from Roman Catholicism by Henry the VIII. It was and still is a cross between Catholicism and other Protestant denominations.

Denominations of Continental Origin (only 9% of Colonies were German, 3% Dutch, and 1.7% French and nearly all of these were Protestants).

This week, we are going to explore a truly remarkable period of American religious and political history. The Great Awakening took place in the first half of the 18^th century. Note especially the leaders: Theodore Frelinghuysen, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and the Tennents. The religious revivals that swept across colonial America caused major divisions with many denominations, created colleges: Princeton, Dartmouth, Rutgers, and Brown, started missionary work with both Native Americans and African slaves. As you read this chapter, take special note of present-day parallels that you might see. Many of the opposing forces are still present today, and the issues are still fought over. Jonathan Edwards’ "extraordinary dullness" comment put the issue in perspective. Edwards’ was a postmillennialist who believed that the millennium of Christ would start in America through evangelistic zeal and revivalism.

By 1740, the Great Awakening was making fairly significant enemies—both laity and clergy. This was the result of abuses within the Awakening, some of the extreme preachers of the revivals, and especially clergy who raised theological issues with the movement. N.B. (which is shorthand for note well): Chauncy and his arguments.

The Southern Colonies differed somewhat from the New England and Middle Colonies. Virginia was still Anglican and it took a while for the Great Awakening to hold. When it started, the Awakening divided along economic class differences. The rest of the South had a different response to the Great Awakening.

In summary, whatever the pros or cons of the Great Awakening were (and there were many), the political and religious scenery had changed for good:

To set the psychological tone for this unit, our authors’ comment that the "Calvinists…feared God so much that they could not fear any man, be he king or emperor" helps one to understand the religious milieu of the times. However, the Anglican aggressiveness concerned the Puritan/Calvinists a great deal and added to the drive toward independence from England. Ironically, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel created a religious and political backlash. Adams’ famous quote on page 109 of the text shows the tie between religion and politics: "If Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England with all its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and tithes; and prohibit all churches as conventicles and schism shops."

One of the strange quirks of humankind is that we often do to others what they have done to us. That isn’t the way that it should be. Case in point: the Anglicans suffered in England, but when in America, they cause that same suffering for others.

No discussion of pre-Revolutionary America would be complete without understanding Deism. The text is absolutely correct in asserting that Deism had two sources: Christians wishing to find a common ground (N.B. the five points or essentials) and rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment. It is essential that you understand this section.

These are generalizations, but they are generally true:

The text highlights the obvious fact that the Revolution was fought for religious, economic, and political freedom—for whites only. The slave trade destroyed tribal, cultural, and ethnic ties with Africa. All of the other groups that came to America were able to find a part of the Old World here—all except Africans. This has had a disastrous effect upon the slaves and their culture.

This post-war period was a time of a great malaise and lack of coherency as a nation. We had won the war, but the peace was as fraught with enemies as was the time of war. During this time of transition, there were two different religions worshipped in America.

The religion of the republic and the religion of the churches (take special note of the lack of pluralism in America, p. 128) lived side by side in a symbiotic relationship. The religion of the republic was the glue that held differing denominations together under the flag (literary) even though in England they could have gone to war over their denominational differences.

Our text alluded to America being the new Israel. What was meant was that America viewed itself as the successor of England in the same way that Christianity was seen replacing Israel. Neither were responsive to God, therefore, both Israel and England were replaced by Christianity and America. Therefore, there was a great deal of language and allegory drawn between Old Testament images. With this OT mindset, there was the not too veiled threat that God could withdraw its calling of America if she doesn’t do better than Israel or England. One of America’s missions was to the oppressed and homeless. Another was more grandiose. Not only would America welcome the needy to our shores, but also we would expand our "shores" to include more than the oppressed, etc. This is the birth of place of the Manifest Destiny concept in America.

The religion of the churches focused itself upon the individuals’ salvation as opposed to the nation. We have discussed the various conflicting aspects of religion in America prior to the Revolution and many of those battles continued into this post-war period with little modification.

Quakers, Moravians, Mennonites, etc. (the peace churches) didn’t fare well during and after the war.

Anglicans also suffered a great deal during this time. Obviously, this was the result of the their ties to the Church of England and England itself. In addition, the ordination and supervision issues, etc. caused serious problems for Anglicans.

Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists fared fairly well because of their historical conflict with England. Presbyterians association with the winning side of the "Presbyterian Revolution" helped their growth along with their theological linkage with the Congregationalists. The Baptist grew the fastest and became the largest of dissenting denominations.

Methodists grew in part to Asbury’s non-traditional style of ministry.

Roman Catholics started out as a very small minority but after the Revolution started to grow due to immigration from Europe. However, the church faced severe conflict within the church due to laity exerting authority.

This week’s discussion involves the efforts of Protestants to jump-start their churches and to fend off the Deists. In the midst of these religious tasks, all Christian churches had to deal with the expansion of America to the West. Note that the evangelistic thrust for the sinners of the ever-moving Frontier was as much a concern for those on the Frontier as it was a concern for themselves not being effected by the barbarism of those Westerners. Enter the solution: the Second Awakening, which lasted for a couple generations. This new revivalism used "techniques" to gather in converts—especially "effervescent emotionalism". In part, this was necessary due to the transient nature of the Frontier and the population. If you didn’t nab them now, you might not get another chance since they and the Frontier were rapidly moving west.

One vital aspect of the Second Awakening was the camp meeting developed by James McGready. The camp meeting was a denominational smorgasbord with potential converts able to pick and indulge in all sorts of preaching and exhortations.

However, many Presbyterians started to become concerned about the techniques and started to argue among themselves about the Second Awakening. Methodists on the other hand weren’t concerned about the Presbyterian’s worries with techniques. One of the later camp meetings was in Ocean City, NJ.

Charles Finney added "new measures", as our text calls them, to his evangelical preaching. Take note of his "anxious bench" or what we would call in hockey, the sin bin. In addition to these highly questionable measures for converting sinners, he reorganized the entire community and created "protracted meetings".

The role of women charged a great deal due in part to the Second Awakening. With the public conversions of women, they notched for themselves a foothold that would lead to the empowerment of women, the right to vote, greater equality, etc.

Missionary societies also soon developed a committee approach to spreading the Gospel. In addition, denominations created voluntary societies to supply Bibles, Sunday schools, colleges, and seminaries. These societies also answered humanitarian needs. It is interesting to note the beginnings of ecumenism started to appear. It wasn’t long before overseas mission programs developed from the soil of the Second Awakening.

A fascinating movement started late in the 1700s and early into the 1800s called Unitarianism followed soon by Universalism. In addition to this movement, the Transcendentalists are equally intriguing not only for their beliefs but also for their followers. Please understand each of these three movements.

Please note the authors’ discussion about the use and importance of preaching in the Protestant and Catholic churches. In many ways, what was said about preaching a century and a half ago is still quite applicable.

The next part of our assignment is absolutely fascinating.

Utopian vision—these movements sprang up and caught the imagination of some, but tragically they died as quickly as they developed. There are some vestiges of these societies around today. The Amanas are an example of the utopian movement. In their case, they are still alive—though with a great deal of modification. In addition to the Amanas, the Shakers and Oneida and the Wild Oats communities are intriguing especially considering that they lived prior to the Civil War.

New visions—these groups like the Mormons, the Millerites, and the Rappers captured the imagination of many. The Mormons survived much persecution and are still alive and doing well in America.

Humanitarian vision—these social liberals carried numerous issues to the American population. Their concerns ranged from antislavery to anti drinking and everything in between. This humanitarianism still is with us today in the Civil Rights, anti-war, and feminist movements of our generation.

The Civil War marked a major shift for America and therefore for religion in America. Our text points out that before the war, we were generally a homogeneous nation. After the war, we became an ever-increasing heterogeneous one. That shift to pluralism has continued even to the present-day. This change forced numerous changes on society and also the churches.

The demographic shift of population also can be seen in the shift to the cities started in the years after the War. Again, this social change changed the churches.

If this wasn’t enough, there was change brought on by science—especially Darwin’s evolutionary theory. However, the scientific approach effected the churches in areas besides from evolution. The church copied the scientific approach when it came to its area of study. The text uses the term, "higher criticism." All mainline Protestant and Catholic churches today accepts this concept of higher criticism as the very bases of the way to study the Scriptures and biblical history. As a consequence, research into the Bible was changed forever. No longer could someone merely state a theological or biblical opinion and hope that it was accepted as truth. One had to be able to defend it from good biblical and archeological research.

Paradigm shift—

It has been said that the British won WWII but lost her empire. The North won the Civil War but lost the peace and the innocence of its religious assumptions. You will need to fully understand that statement. One particular aspect of this was the issue of God’s purpose for America. It had been absolutely understood by the churches and the government that God employed America as a light to the nations just like Israel had been three thousand years earlier. With the Civil War, which was anything but civil, came a questioning of that assumption. How could America be the beacon of anything positive? We accepted slavery and then fought a horrible war where death and destruction reigned supreme. Obviously, we needed to reanalyze the assumption that God was on our side (North or South) in the War and what God was doing or not doing with America.

Finally, give special attention to the development post-Civil War Southern white churches and black churches in general.

With the Civil War behind America, a new epoch began for the continent. This was a period of growing immigration. The immigration between the Civil War and WWI nearly doubled the population of America from what it was in 1865. The turmoil and disruption in the American society can’t be exaggerated. In that half century after the Civil War, America’s demographics changed more rapidly then ever before or since. We talk about changing neighborhoods; they talked about a changing country! Those that were here before weren’t keen on the masses coming to America. One arena for tensions between the old and new came in reference to religion. Generally speaking, America was overwhelmingly WASPish and male dominated. Imagine how they felt with the influx of foreigners reached America. For the first time, they understood how the Native Americans had felt years before when the WASPs arrived.

Adding to the problem of adjustment, most of the immigrants were poor in money, training, health, and English language skills. All of these issues taxed the agencies in America that had to deal with them. The financial problems added to the growing resentments between the old and new Americans.

Finally, into this mix of population, religious and ethnic fears festered between the old Americans and the new Americans. It should be noted that the new Americans were an ever-changing group. New often became established and joined with the old fearing the newer American immigrants. This continues today by all of us who are the old Americans and the newer immigrants coming to our shores. Many Americans today who resent 21^st century immigration are descendants of immigrants who themselves weren’t wanted in the old America. This paranoia about the new comers was as much ethnic as it was religious both then and now.

Take a special note of the activities of the Protestant and Catholic churches already in place to adapt to the flood of immigrants.

Not only were the old Americans (the WASPs) not too keen on accepting the immigrants, some of the new ethnic groups weren’t too keen on becoming a part of America. Why? Their fear was the loss of their ethnic identity in the melting pot of the country. Many immigrant groups were standoffish after they got here. This often didn’t endear them to the old Americans who viewed them with increasing distrust and suspicion. Then there were theological dissentions within both Protestant and Catholic churches about many theological and practical issues facing them.

This week’s unit deals with the New Intellectual Climate in America in the wake of the Civil War. Last week, we read about massive immigration and how the churches dealt with the influx of millions of new Americans during this same time frame. This week’s discussion involves the various ways the Protestant churches responded to the scientific explosion. The Roman Catholic segment of Christendom sat out this tremulous period due to papal restrictions about getting involved in these discussions.

The controversy’s genesis emerged from the writings of Charles Darwin. He shocked the world with his biological Darwinism and that in turn spun off social Darwinism. Herbert Spencer applied biological Darwinism to sociology. As it was difficult to overestimate the upheavals from the immigration, the same is true with both the biological and social forms of Darwinism. It came to a head a half century later with the Scope’s Monkey Trial. There are still some holdouts even today that still fight over the question of evolution. The State Board of Education of Kansas recently got into the fray.

In addition, scientific biblical study began in Germany and quickly spread to England. It wasn’t long before it arrived in America. This approach to biblical research is the very basis of what is used in mainline Christian seminaries or nearly all college or universities today. Exceptions to this would be schools like Bob Jones, which has made some notoriety recently.

Our text discusses three responses of the Protestant churches to this new research into the Bible. Ironically, we are still dealing with many of the same problems and responses in the century and quarter since it all started.

One of the major leaders of Protestant liberalism was the great abolitionist, Henry Ward Beecher. He was concerned about using the new scientific research methods to avoid allowing the church to be run by "apostles of the dead past."

This response pushed the heart over the mind. For these people, Bible was a historical witness from which Christianity sprung. It recorded the personal experiences and responses of early believers and believed that present day Christians could experience the same thing.

These Christians believed that all doctrines were human responses to cultural factors facing the writers. William Rainey Harper and Shailer Mathews were major leaders of these modernists.

This time period was characterized by growing hostile heresy hunts in college and seminaries. Bible Schools quickly developed to fend off the inroads of the modernist movement.

Religion of Humanity, theosophical movements, Mesmer, Eddy, etc. are all radical movements in response to the scientific explosion.

Class,

This week’s class tragically points out how the church has mistreated women. Before you read this chapter, I think that it is important to explain how we got into this religious sexism. (Actually, there is no excuse for it, but this is an historical perspective.) Christianity grew up in the soil of Judaism. Our roots shared the same soil as did the OT faith. One religious explanation for the second-class citizenship of women is in the Jewish obsession with cleanliness. Cleanliness was next to Godliness for the people of Israel. Their view was anything that was dirty or defied was to be kept at a distance. Women have menstrual periods, therefore they were unclean. Another example was with childbirth: Christ and Mary went to the Temple for "their purification" (Luke 2:22). Since blood was considered dirty, once a male child was purified, he could remain clean if he stayed away from blood. However, women were going to be perpetually unclean. Therefore, women had only two functions in Judaism: giving men immortality through children and teaching male children. In OT times there was no sense of resurrection as we know it. Life beyond death was granted to males in having their seed carried to the next generation via their male child. This explains the Abraham and Isaac situation.

Aside from this function, women had no position or claim to anything in society. They were also excluded from religious office, etc. Since the Christian church developed out of Judaism, the very earliest Christians were originally Jews before becoming Christians. Unfortunately, when they became Christians, they didn’t get totally liberated. It has taken over two millennia, and we still are not there in some circles.

Note some of the sexist and demeaning statements that were made by religious leaders. The male church allowed or encouraged women to do their thing off in the corner of the church and "protected from the troubles and temptations of the public world". However, the male dominated churches couldn’t keep your great-grandmothers down. They reached out into several areas: temperance, education, and antislavery movements.

In addition, there were some interesting theological attempts to explain the sexuality of God. If God were male, it would implicitly imply that males were superior. Therefore, much work was done with defining God in either dual or androgynous vocabulary. This was more of an issue about our understanding of God than simply vocabulary. The problem has to do with the way we think about men and women. For example, males are strong and females are loving. If God is masculine, we have the need to feminize him with loving characteristics. This was done by vocabulary and within Catholicism with Mary.

While men took a hit on the vocabulary issue, they asserted themselves with an explosion of lodges and associations that dealt with religious, social, and patriotic issues. There was much to be done within the burgeoning cities to accommodate the concerns of both sexes.

Also, take special note of the two gospels of the time: social and wealth. Be able to trace Spencer through Carnegie. It was a "wonderful" mix (?) of Darwinism and Calvinism. The social gospel was a direct response to the social concerns of the cities. The Christian church rallied around the pro or con response to these social concerns. Some of the noblest Christian responses to the call of Christ were made during this time along with some of the most damnable responses to human need. It reminded me of the 60s and the civil rights movement in America. Protesters were marching on both sides of the issue.

The Progressive Movement was another interesting development. There was again the linkage between the church and state over a wide range of conflicting concerns: general muckraking, drinking, women’s vote, child labor, etc. Not all the people under the Progressive Movement agreed on all these conflicting issues.

One final issue was the duality of American imperialism and world missions. Sen. Beveridge’s statement had a great deal of support. His understanding of God anointing America was certainly unabashed and wide-ranging. The problem with this is that it assumes that God was on the side of American imperialism. There were a lot of people, especially Spanish speaking peoples, that didn’t appreciate God condemning them to America dictating their futures. It wasn’t just political leaders making these dubious pronouncements about God’s intentions; church leaders got into the act also. The Rev. Williams’ assumption that "our heavenly Father has made us a national epistle to other lands" is an example of this religious chauvinism.

Do you hear the tone of self-righteousness in these utterances? Josiah Strong’s assurance that God blessed the Anglo-Saxons with specialness is both incorrect and racist. (NB The text explains how Strong viewed immigrant weren’t Anglo-Saxon as Anglo-Saxon after they became Americans. How would you feel if you came to America from Central Europe or Africa that you were now considered Anglo-Saxon? Strong suffered from an extreme form of racism.) Whenever, you hear people saying that their race or religion is superior to all others and that they are God’s chosen people, look out. Not only do we have many historical disastrous examples of this both politically and religiously, but we also have Christ railing against it in the NT. He was more upset with the Pharisees on this issue than he was with all the other sinners.

This religious imperialism resulted in an American crusade to save the world from heathens and sin. Neither the crusades during the early first millennium nor the crusading of Americanism prior to WWI were correct. The Pope apologized for the first crusades. We need to at least see that this self-righteousness is not divinely inspired nor does it have God’s imprimatur upon it.

Dear Class,

This week’s class deals with Judaism, Eastern Orthodoxy, disaffected Protestants, and the black churches. Be able to discuss the development of Reform Judaism. In addition, please become familiar with the differences between religious and political Jewish thought and awareness. There are religious Jews and there are political Jews, which may or may not overlap.

The text also talks about the differences between Orthodox and Roman churches. These need to be clearly understand by you. Several of you have already been discussing some of the differences during the past week or two. Pay special attention to liturgical mood, communion, icons, and leadership differences.

Also, understand the disaffected Protestants and the black churches. Much of this information will seem very strange to our minds. However, pay special attention to the causes for the Holiness movement, Pentecostal, the millennialist churches, and black churches.

Dear Class,

Over the next two weeks, we will be discussing modern Protestantism and Catholicism. Much of this material will be very familiar to us. This week’s class will deal with "Protestantism’s Uneasy Journey to the Comfortable Fifties." After the WWI, there was an exuberance about the evangelization of the world in that generation. However, several events interfered with this grandiose goal. A countervailing movement, social nihilism, vied for the minds of Americans. Into this mix came an internal war within Protestantism. Fundamentalism took on the moderate and liberal wings of the Protestant church. Fundamentalism had a theological agenda and also a political one. Patriotism became synonymous with Christianity. Billy Sunday and William Jennings Bryan were two of the great spokesmen of this movement. The attorney, Clarence Darrow and the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick were their adversaries. Augustus Strong found himself between these two extremes. Some of these conservatives were able to accept the theory of evolution and biblical criticism. Unfortunately, this middle ground didn’t stop the debate about evolution and the Bible. By the mid-20s, the Scopes’ Monkey Trail was held. In addition to this foolish debate, some Protestant churches engaged in the merchandizing religion which still continues today. In hindsight, much of this selling of religion looks silly to us today.

Take special note of the "Theological Reassessment" section (p. 357-360). Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, Soren Kierkegaard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Reinhold Niebuhr were the great giants of the first half of the 20^th century. The problem with these theologians was that their ideas often didn’t filter down into the local pulpits either because of depressions, wars, or most local pastors didn’t really understand what they were saying. Therefore, the silly side of Protestantism prevailed.

The Protestant church didn’t get serious about religion and faith until the Civil Rights movement started. It should be noted that it took the black churches to lead the way.

The text points out that in 1908, the Vatican dropped the missionary status of the Roman Catholic Church in America. Thus became the emergence of Catholicism as a fully mature faith in this country. WWI can be largely credited for maturing. The war had a profound effect upon the church in several ways. WWI cut off immigrants to the States, developed the "we are in this war together as Americans—not as Catholics or Protestants," and reduced the Old World national identities that many Catholics felt prior to the war.

It is interesting to note that the Roman Catholic Church went from missionary status before WWI to "the largest national grouping" (p. 374) by the end of WWII. In addition, it created the largest parochial educational system in the world.

The milieu in which the Roman Catholic Church found itself as it moved into a mature phase was confused and conflicted at best. The church had to face indifference to discrimination from Protestant groups, problems with recent immigrants (poverty, education, language, etc.), self-established religious enclaves, and isolation from mainstream America because of stands relating to ethics (abortion, etc.). This kept many Catholics out of the mainstream political world of state and national politics. However, within big city politics, many Catholics flourished.

Social awareness within Catholicism paralleled the Protestant Social Gospel in many ways. Dorothy Day, Father Edward McGlynn, John A. Ryan, and many others attempted to move the church into social concern and action. It should be noted that the St. Louis diocese dropped school segregation in 1947. While this wasn’t nationwide at that time, it still was done prior to Little Rock. Even though many dioceses were leaders in social action, the Vatican had issued over the years a number of encyclicals by Pope Leo XIII that made real social justice difficult.

Another area of friction within the church during this maturing era was the intellectual milieu. To better understand the problems, you need to recall the pressures that the Vatican was facing. The Vatican functioned in the Old World milieu. In America, we (both Protestant and Catholics) had real suspicions of the Old World and the ways it did things. The Vatican felt that America was getting out of hand and therefore tried to rein in upon the independent positions being taken by writers, clergy, etc. Therefore, you won’t find many noted theologians coming out of the period of time. In fact, one of the best known theologians of the church, Hans Kung (you will read about him in the next chapter) was dropped from his teaching position. In addition to this anti-modernist and anti-ecumenical endeavors, the church had to deal many day-to-day problems that we have already noted in this course lecture. While North America provided problems for the Vatican, South and Central America certainly added to the theological headaches of several popes. Issues of animism and local religious practices were the primary problems faced by the Vatican.

Dear Class,

This is the last discussion for this semester. Instead of our regular routine of reading my class notes, the text, and then discussing the unit online, I want to modify our last week in class a bit. You are still responsible for the unit, "Old and New Centers," and some questions on the final will come from that chapter. However, your class assignment for this week is to reread your statement of faith that you wrote at the beginning of the semester. Then take some time and think about all that you have learned over the course of our time together. How are your thoughts about religion different than they were at the beginning of the class? What new insights have you derived from this shared experience? Where are you on your religious journey now? I want you to evaluate your thoughts about religion in general and yours in particular. These are just a sampling of questions to get you started on this week’s discussion. It should be interesting for you and me to see where the class is today after our weeks of laboriously retracing the religious pilgrimage of many religious figures—all of whom thought they understood God’s calling.