Marissa Lakovic

Gabrielli

Faith, Religion, & Society

8 October 2013

Well, in my class, Faith, Religion, and Society, we do study

faith, but that isnt all that we study. We explore the different aspects

of faith, we learn how each individual person has their own faith, and

we dig deeper into the meaning of the word faith and what it means to

us. We also study religion, and the different types of religions, and we

study how society interacts with both of these ideas. We see how

different people and religions have the same and different faiths.

Faith isnt just another word for belief. Your beliefs most of the

time can depend on your faith or religion, but they arent the same

thing. According to Tilley, The root of this misunderstanding is

equating faith with having a belief or a particular set of beliefs. The

insight of this view is that belief is a component of faith. The confusion

of this view is thinking that faith is identical to belief (Tilley 4). Tilley

tries to terminate the idea that faith and belief are the same thing by

using the excerpt stated previously. He understands that they are very

similar, but your beliefs can be about anything and based on anything,

but your faith is what you believe in. Elie Wiesel also illustrates the

idea that faith does not equal belief in his book, Night. His Jewish faith
is what he was raised upon, and that is all he knows. So regardless of

whether he believed or not, he still continued to pray and practice. We

later find out once he is miserable in the concentration camps, he loses

his faith, but continues praying. When he first thinks that they are

going to be burned alive, he loses faith and feels revolt rise up inside of

him. He doesnt want to thank the Lord for anything. But, since he

knows nothing else, as they are getting closer to the pit and the

flames, and in spite of myself, the words formed themselves and

issued in a whisper from my lips (Night 31). He ended up reciting

the kabbish with the rest of the Jews anyways. Even though his beliefs

were gone, his faith still remained subconsciously.

Now, everyone does have their own personal beliefs, but most of

the time those personal beliefs have been taken and derived from

someone elses beliefs. By making someone elses beliefs yours, you

can adapt their belief and transform it into something that you totally

agree with.

An aspect of everyones faith is individual and inside of us; this is

where modernity has taken us and is still continuing to take us. Portier

supports this by saying, By rendering them voluntary, modernity has

thereby rendered problematic the essential public and communal

dimensions of traditional religions. Religion has become: privatized or

interiorized, separated from shared daily life, and focused on personal

belief (Portier 49). Modernity has forced our beliefs inward, but our
whole faith isnt completely inside of us, because of the way we have

to practice most religions. Faith and religion are closely related; they

are somewhat based off of each other. Say you are Christian for

example. You can have your own beliefs but they will probably be

closely related to the beliefs of what other Christians think. And when

you practice these beliefs, you practice them by going to church, which

is communal. You are no longer individual once you go to church.

Praying to God alone would be expressing your individual beliefs, but

once you are at church praying with the whole congregation that part

of your beliefs turns communal once again. Portier believes that the

solitary ideas of modernity, even though they exist, dont really work

because of the communal aspect of rituals and practices.

So, in turn, our class isnt just learning about faith. Its focus is

more on exploring what exactly faith is, and exploring different

religions. By learning about different types of religions and different

ideas about faith, it helps us have a greater understanding of the

different religions that exist, and makes us more educated all around.