religion+and+race

=**Religion and Race**=

Religion is a huge part of race. At the same time, in some communities, race is a huge part of religion. People generally identify people from the Middle East (hard not to say a racial group there) with being Islamic, and a terrorist. Dropping the terrorist part, and moving on to a less controversial topic, it is not true that all people from the Middle East are Islamic. See the pie chart on religions in Iraq below, to the left of the picture of an Islamic Masque in Baghdad.



When people worship, they tend to worship with people that they feel most at home with, and have the same views as them. This is why I believe that religion is a part of race. While some people consider it stereotypical of black people to worship together in loud, gospel song-led services, it is actually proven that this is true, as is proven by the church census results from a survey taken by churches by what racial groupings were in different types of churches in Indianapolis, Indiana: “Fundamentalist, Evangelical, and Pentecostal denominations (Southern Baptist, Church of God, Assemblies of God, and others) appear to be more integrated (87 percent homogenous) than Mainline churches, but the figures may be skewed by a small number of significantly integrated congregations. The least racially-divided Protestant congregations, at 82 percent, belonged to Traditional Non-Mainline denominations (African Methodist Episcopal, Unitarian-Universalist, Latter-day Saints, Christian Science, Friends, and others). Catholic churches present a somewhat different picture. The Polis Center survey found that 58 percent of Catholic congregations were primarily of one race. This may be explained in part by the system of parishes in which a church serves a geographical area, and by the universal reach of Catholicism. While there were relatively fewer Catholic congregations in the survey, they were considerable more integrated than Protestant congregations.” ( [] ) If you notice, the churches with the most amount of concentration on one given church had the least amount of integration were the “Traditional Non-Mainline denominations” churches. This is especially where people joined together having the same ideas, and they were the same race, on the most part. They were all the same race, with a few exceptions, and I am sure that they were that way on purpose. They were most comfortable to worship the people of the same race, therefore proving my point that religion is part of race.

At the same time, Hitler also proves my point. Why he also put people other than Jews in the concentration camps, he specifically discriminated Jews, marking them as a race. With this in mind, you can go back to that, and say that you can change your religion. It is something called Conversion, and the Answers.com definition of Conversion is as follows:
 * 1) ## The act of converting.
 * 2) The state of being converted.
 * 3) A change in which one adopts a new religion, faith, or belief.

This matters becase whil you can change your religion, you can't change your race. Religion has nothing to do with the color of your skin, or race. It is you that makes the descision as to what race you are. If you really wanted to, as a white man, you could go to a black church and worship. As a Jew, you can convert to Catholicism, and you will still be the same color of skin as you were before. The only reason we are this segregated in religion is because we allow ourselves to be. Religion is only a means of showing how different racial groups are different, but it isn't part of actual race color.

Looking Ahead: My plan for this Wiki is to draw my focus away from the Middle East and more into Asia, Europe, and Africa. I would really like to take a look at Great Britain, and Germany, as well as Russia's religion affecting rave. A question I would like to answer is what the difference in religion might have to do with race…like the different parts of Orthodox churches, such as Greek or Russian Orthodox.

AnnBibGraves