Religious Diversity in Your Community”

Write a 600-750-word essay describing the religious diversity in your community (city, county, or state) and in your own personal, social space. (Please have the religious diversity go according to California`s religious diversity…I’m sure it can be found online) (a) Your essay should, somewhere, contain answers to the following questions. 1. What criteria (beliefs, practices, membership in a church, etc.) are your sources using to determine the population in each category? (How many are Jewish, Protestant, etc.?) 2. How does your local community compare to the national statistics? Compare like to like. 3. How does religious diversity in your personal social space (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) compare to that of your community? Do none, some, most or all of those in your personal social space identify as religious? As not religious but spiritual? As neither religious nor spiritual? (b) Use at least one of the two statistical resources below. In addition to the data on these sites, you can use your own ingenuity to investigate the religious diversity around you. Some students have driven around to see for themselves what religions are visible in their community; there are other kinds of local sources for statistics as well. If you decide to use non-scientific data, account for how the sources you use come up with their information. Do they ask for church membership rosters? Do they count people or institutions? ... What can you learn from these sources and what might be missing? I expect you to make some kind of connection between your findings and what you have been assigned to read thus far. Herberg, of course, has a thesis about the relationship between religious identity and being American; Neusner gave you some statistical data in his introductory chapter (how useful is this data?) ... Conclusion: • Based on what you learned from doing your research, and from your friends, family and co-workers, do you think that religious affiliation (membership in a denomination or religious institution) is a reliable marker of religious identity? Explain. Use Times New Roman 12-point font, double space the paper, use 1" margins all around, include your name and give the essay a title. Indent paragraphs; do not add line spaces between paragraphs. Provide in-text citations for your sources (Herberg, p. xx) and list any sources other than those provided for you in this course on a separate "References" page. If you are using hyperlinks for Internet based sources, you should test them and make sure they lead me to the proper web page. Resources: • ARDA - http://www.thearda.com/rcms2010/ • PewResearchCenter - http://>www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ Activities: • Research religious diversity in your community. Use at least one of the two statistical resources provided above, in addition to any sources of your own. Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology Author: Herberg ISBN: 9780226327341 World Religions in America Author: Neusner ISBN: 9780664233204