Religion and Everyday Life

Also, the celebration of many Catholic rituals coincided in an uncanny way with the timing and meaning of many indigenous celebrations, and Catholic deities had analogous indigenous counterparts, such as in Mesoamerica 

I found this statement interesting as it introduces the notion that all religions have the same beliefs and practices. The practices may differ in method but they still serve the same purpose. In this context, the author was explaining how African and indigenous people had flexible religions and hence accepted some of the practices from the European Catholic practices since the religions had similarities. While the European religion was solid and not adaptable to any change, the African religion was not yet as established and, therefore, had the capability to take in more deities such as the Saints, the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and God. This analysis got me thinking about how the structure of religion is solid and almost the same across almost all religions. For instance, all religions, except Buddhism, believe in God. Buddhism, in some way, also have a supreme being that they refer to as Buddha even though he was not particularly a god. The structures of religion are so similar that one could embrace a different religion but then feel very minimal changes in the teachings and rituals. Rites such as baptism and confession are popular among all religions. We see heaven in Christianity, Nirvana in Buddhism, and the garden in Islam. All of these represent the final abode of those who faithfully practice the values of their religion. We also see hell in Christianity, Karma in Buddhism, and Jahannam in Islam. These ones represent the eternal destination of those that fail to practice their religion well. These facts triggered the thought that maybe religion is an idea that was introduced by humanity with the aim of bringing order in society. The idea then mutated as it spread throughout the world hence bringing out the different religions.

Protestants have also succeeded in their conversion quest because of the cultural content of their messages and deeds. One key strategy has been to provide religious services and educational programs in, and translating the Bible into, Quichua, the local Quechua dialect 

This statement is mind-blowing because it puts into perspective how fluid religion is. From it, we note that people can manipulate religion to be what they want it to be. This sentence was derived from the context that Protestantism is on the rise and may soon overtake the popularity of Catholicism. What is astonishing is the fact that there are people who have different views concerning other religions, such as the way Protestants view Catholicism and go out of their way to implement strategies that would help convert people from being Catholics to being Protestants. At first, one may think religion is an idea that people accept based on their free will. However, in this case, we see how it comes to be forced on us. One clear fact is that we are born into our religions. For instance, if one is born into a family that practices Catholicism, then there are higher chances that he may embrace being a Catholic. However, with time, the person may come across different religions in school and relate to them. Protestants realize this and, therefore, have implemented ways to achieve it. The first way is by ensuring that they provide religious services and get to translate the Bible into the dialects of the locals. In the context of the sentence above that was extracted from the reading, Protestants translated the English Bible into the Quechua dialect. This way, the locals would embrace Protestantism.

Two major and related cultural consequences of the almost three hun­dred years of the colonial and slave experience are worthy of note. The first is that over time, important cultural and linguistic differences between slaves from different parts of Africa disappeared, and the second is that colonialism and slavery did not totally erase their cultural heritage. 

I found this statement mind-blowing because it contradicts the teachings of religion and also normal human reasoning. Typically, one would expect religion to firmly stand against anything that seeks to weaken or change it. On the other side, one would think that culture easily fades and that one can completely get assimilated into another culture. However, this statement goes against those seemingly normal beliefs. The author points out that the religions of the slaves that were captured and taken to Latin America and the Caribbean eroded and that the Africans began embracing the religion of Brazilians (Sanabria, 2019) . What is even more astonishing is that the locals there also acquired some aspects of religions from the Africans. One would expect the religion of the dominant community to put up a fight against anything that tries to disorient it. However, this is not the case. The interesting point comes in when the author that the culture of Africans did not change much. Generally, we can come to an arguable fact that culture has stronger roots compared to religion and hence cannot be influenced as easily as religion can. What this means is that religion is a lowly rooted idea that can be easily washed away and replaced whereas culture is really deeply rooted such that years and years in foreign soil may not erode it from a person. This is the vice versa of how one would expect things to be.

Reference

Sanabria, H. (2019).  The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean  (2nd ed., pp. 181-215). London: Routledge.