Martin Luther King and Relation between Religion and Racism - Essay Example

Introduction. Christians are educated that racism is immoral as every person is one and the same. They ought to love all and sundry in the same way, and to be concerned for others no matter whom they are just like in the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Martin Luther King toiled towards racial accord in the United States of America. He was of the opinion that agitation for the incorporation of blacks and white was part of his sacred responsibility, as all black people deserved the same privileges as enjoyed by the whites, hence the birth of the well known quote from one of his prominent speeches: “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The relation between religion and racism has been an ongoing research for a long time amongst the world’s top religious scholars. In general, my research depicts that there is a positive relation between these two contradicting topics. The outcomes of my study put forward that both the regularity of church turnout and belief salience is no longer considerably connected to racism. I describe religious behaviors based on each person’s participation or exclusion of transcendence or literal interpretation. (a). Orthodoxy and external critique are related to racism, whereas relativism is negatively related to it. (b). Ingenuousness at first thought turned out not to be related to racism. However after some deep deliberations, in which important background variables such as age and education were factored in, it suggested otherwise. World religions tend to declare worldwide brotherly love yet history is beleaguered with moments in which religion has provided a good reason for all kinds of mayhem directed towards people of dissimilar race or culture. A good example of this is the holocaust. From this evidences, a significant number of historians and theology scholars argue that religion should obstinately be measured as a channel for racism. When one tries to make a synopsis of these frequent attempts, a very uneven analysis is obtained. There could be two main explanations for this. One is that there is no compromise on how to quantify religion in order to achieve consequential outcomes. Another one is that there exists two main guidelines in which one can look for a clarification of the observed relation: one can decide to employ religious factors or turn to non-religious factors .The course in which you choose to look for a clarification will affect the conclusions that are drawn up. I will start by giving a brief outline of applicable literature. This allows me to stridently differentiate the outcomes of two different studies that I undertook. The objectives of my research will be to try to collect proof for the argument that scholars might be going astray on something. The explanation for this is insinuated to be that, out of displeasure with the on hand measuring tools for ‘religion’, they opted for an erroneous determinant. Later I will bring in a fresh measure for ‘religion’ and explain why I think it is necessary. Finally I will put bare the outcome of my research and argue whether or not I can defend my claim. In contrast to most American researchers, other religious scholars hold the belief that one can only give a consequential explanation to the link between religion and racism when they start majoring on non-religious factors as an alternative to the religion itself. This disparity in spotlight also depicts itself in the outcomes that have been witnessed whereas frequent outcome of most American researches show that religion generally may encourage racism, the outcome of my research is that when this relation is deprived of its non-religious characteristics, the only real impertinence religion could exert is to contradict racism. Out of discontent with the on hand religiosity measures, the world researchers have reverted back to regularity of church audiences as an index of measuring people beliefs. Even though I concur with the argument of Eisinga et al. (1988) that the tools considered in America as a measure of the potential diverse ways of believing are out-of-date for practice in the current cultural setting, I am certain that regularity of church turnout is a bad religiosity measure (given that one’s objective is to appreciate the relation between religion and other constants). It is not likely to rebuff the cognitive aspects of religiosity with any accuracy. Based on the literature, I anticipated the regularity of church audiences to be stoutly linked to a measure of belief salience though, as described, I am not persuaded this is spot on. Based on both the American research practice and the research practice of the other world scholars, I anticipated the regularity of church audiences as well as assessment of belief salience to be wavy linked to racism. However I also anticipated the outcomes of both measures on racism to fade away when the religious styles as deliberated by the “Post-Critical Belief” range were taken into consideration. I hypothesized the subsequent association among these religious styles and racism. I anticipated an accepted belief to be absolutely linked to racism for the reason that the somewhat deep-seated closed-mindedness of this position. Given that preceding research had revealed that external critique has the same fundamental thought processes as accepted belief I anticipated external critique also to be absolutely related to racism. I anticipated relativism to be unenthusiastically linked to racism for the reason that the theory itself implies lenience towards further opinions and traditions. Even though second ingenuousness bowed out to be unconnected to racism in these analyses, hypothetically speaking, I did expect it to be absolutely linked to racism, since in this point of view the demand of brotherhood should be given consideration. The supposition that belief salience and regularity of church audience would be sturdily absolutely linked was established even though the connection was not so strong as to insinuate that in fact the same thing is being considered. This proves that one has to be loathed to use regularity of church audience as a determinant of belief salience since it only gives a rough suggestion. On the other hand this does not before hand indicate that other scholars doing scholarly work on this subject do not quantify what they consider as their individual first-rate assessment. As I have stated in my interpretation of the illustration, my argument is to some level not representing the whole global populace. The outcomes I got could be an object of that. On the other hand, even if the association I established does imply that these two quantifiers do not quantify the same thing, this can be a fresh development in part to an increase of rate in the privatization of religious convictions. And even if these quantifiers are not quantifying precisely the same thing, well at least they quantify something moderately intimately linked. However, I lend it as a free advice to desist from using church audience as a suggestion of faith salience devoid of extensive research. “John 7:24 - Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” List of references and work cited. (1). EISINGA, R., CA RTON, A. & LAMMERS, J. (1993). God and second class-citizens: Belief about the native-migrant socio-economic gap in Holland and Flanders (Belgium), Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, 5, 157–183. (2). HUTSEBAUT, D. (1997a). Identity statuses, ego-integration, God representation and religious cognitive styles, Journal of Empirical Theology, 10(1), 39–54. (3). STRICKLAND, B.R. & CONE WEDDELL, S. (1972). Religious orientation, racial prejudice, and dogmatism: A study of Baptists and Unitarians, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11, 395–399. (4). The Holly Bible, King James Version. “Notwithstanding the fact that the Bible has been written in an entirely diverse historical environment from the current one, for me, it retains an indispensable message and holds greater legitimacy which wants individual refection.” Read More