Alethea Carr

Justin Pearl

Faith, Religion, and Society

November 12, 2018

Journal #3

When I began this class at the beginning of the semester, I had only a vague

understanding of any religion that was not Catholicism. Growing up, my cousins were Jewish

and I never cared to ask them about their religion in fear that I would offend or upset them with

my questions. I think the most important thing I learned about Judaism was the culture and

people who practice it. A lot of the principles and practices of Judaism are similar to Christianity

and things I am already familiar with. Something I learned about Judaism that I did not know

before was the idea of a covenant. I was interested in how these simple promises usually made

by God to certain prophetic people creates a relationship between the people and creates the

principles of the religion. The promises made by God will be fulfilled under the conditions that

people follow their obligations. These prophetic revolutions make up the principles that Jewish

people worship. Similarly, Christianity shares some of these covenants, like the Noahic

Covenant. Noah is an important prophet in both Jewish and Christian religion. Christianity kept

some of the Hebrew scriptures and reformulated some of the rituals of Judaism, so in a lot of

ways they are very similar although they differ in the view of Jesus as a Messiah. Jewish people

believe Jesus to be a prophet and not as a Messiah while Christians believe Jesus to be the savior.

Our final religion to dive into was Islam. I had a lot of biased preconceptions about Islam

before we started to learn about the main themes of the religion. Generally, people associate all

the people who practice Islam with acts of terror and it creates a very negative opinion on the
religion itself. Unfortunately, I felt guilty believing some of these things because of the way

society made them out to be. I would see people stare at women who were wearing Hijabs in the

grocery store and on the streets and because of acts of ignorance like this, I was generally in the

dark about everything concerning the Islam religion. The most interesting thing that I learned

about Islam is that the Qur’an is highly similar to Jesus in Christianity. They are both delivering

the word of God in some fashion and were delivered to the people by the angel Gabriel. Jesus

and the Qur’an both formed a community for the people of the religion to worship. This is a

similarity I found between Christianity and Islam. However, they are very different in the sense

that most of the Islam religion follows the teachings of Mohammad who can be seen as a Christ-

like figure although they do not see him as divine.

As I have learned about these different religions, I have grown to have more respect for

them overall. I was very excited to learn that gentiles can participate in Jewish traditions and

holidays such as Passover because I am interested in joining my Jewish family in their

celebrations just like they join us for Christmas dinner every year. Because of the direct

correlation I have with members of the Jewish community, I am very excited to have learned

new things about it as a whole. I also learned a lot about Islam that I am excited to share with

people who may have had the same ignorant ways of thinking as I previously did about the Islam

faith. Being that Islam is the second largest religion in the world, there is a lot more to it that

most people do not know, and I am glad that I have familiarized myself with it, so I can

participate in educated discussions in every day life. I think it is very important to have taken this

class because it instilled in me knowledge and respect for religions besides my own that I did not

have before.