Ethnic Prejudices in Religion Essay

This Assignment Has Two (2) Part Please Keep Them Separately

Part One

A minimum of 100 words each question and References Response (#1 – 6) Keep Response with Answer

Make sure the Responses includes the Following:

(a) an understanding of the weekly content as supported by a scholarly resource,

(b) the provision of a probing question.

(c) stay on topic

(d) cite all sources with their hyperlinked.

1. I agree with the quote by Gordan Allport. Real religion and specifically Christianity are unbiased in love and absolutely unmakes prejudice. But religion is not without its issues. Even in the Bible Pharisees who were leaders of the church were prejudice towards Jesus in his disciples because they did not “hold to the tradition of the elders” (Mark 7:3 ESV).

There are also many ethnic prejudices in religion. In 1847, Richard Fuller tried to use the bible to justify slavery because the Old Testament tolerated slavery but falsely interpreted the Bible (Menikoff, 2017). Religion can be a double edge sword when it comes to prejudice.

2. Prejudice can be defined as “an adverse opinion formed without knowledge of the facts, an irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion”. I would agree with Gordon Allport’s statement. Religion is a way for many people to come together, to be accepted by each other and often times by a God, to worship, to be forgiven, to practice love, etc.

In this way I do believe that it “unmakes” prejudice. However, it does make prejudice in many ways as well. There have been several times that there are prejudices against entire religions.

For example, Catholics have been victims of prejudice just because of their religion, people often view Muslim Americans with suspicion, people have been beaten because they look different, if they wear turbans, for example. In my opinion, many times these prejudices against religions are due to the extremists, even though they may be few and far between. 9/11 for example, raised the fear of Muslims in America.

While people may be prejudice towards entire religions, religion within itself can create separation and prejudice because of their views and beliefs towards specific groups of people such as homosexuals. There are religions that are not accepting of homosexuality, because it is believed to be a sin.

Also, people may identify with and favour people who are like themselves, or people who are part of their group/race/religion. Therefore, those who don’t share the same religion may be seen in a prejudice way, unintentionally even.

3. “Realistic group conflict theory has been expanded to address the fact that groups often compete not just for material resources, but over ideology and cultural supremacy as well.

Groups fight over whose God should be worshipped, what values should be taught and what should (and shouldn’t) be allowed to be shown on television and posted on the internet.” This theory has been led to the idea of ethnocentrism, where one’s own belief they feel is superior than others. (Gilovich, Keltner, Chen, Nisbett, 2018)

In any religion or culture there are a set of rules, beliefs and values that one must follow in order to be a servant of that religion, with making that statement I do agree with the idea that religion makes and unmakes prejudice.

As a follower of Christ, I have been faced with many challenges where I felt like I was faced with prejudice solely on the fact that I wanted to follow Christ.

I have been invited to many other churches to go and “worship” with them however with my catechism classes I was instructed that I was to respect another’s belief however was not to worship with them until I knew more about their church, because of this I felt like I was being prejudice towards any other church’s therefore labelling any other church as a stereotype.

4. The cognitive approach suggests that prejudice is a function of a cognitive process where stereotype information about a social group, stored in memory, is automatically activated and affects people’s judgement and behaviours towards members of that target group (Cameron, & Trope 2004).

Once stereotypes and prejudices are formed, it’s easy to focus on those preconceived notions. Negative attributes and behaviours are often validated through social interaction and behaviours.

Unfortunately, the positive behaviours by the same groups are often overlooked or dismissed. Often times people may have an internalisation of certain groups that are just ingrained in their heads from childhood but in their minds, it’s not seen as prejudice or malice.

Then there’s the implicit prejudice that does come from media that helps amplify the already existing cognitive prejudice (Cameron, & Trope 2004). Either way, prejudice is much like a personal perspective; you see and believe what you want based on your point of view.

For example. You can choose to see things through the eyes of society, which is filled with division and inequality. Or you can choose to see everyone as God sees them. Wonderfully and perfectly made children, seeking love, acceptance, and forgiveness from our father.

5. Prejudice is an assumption or previously established inclination about specific things or territory which did not depend on reason or genuine experience. And stereotype is a standard or conventional picture about certain individual or thing which can be both positive and negative.

Cognitive processes can possibly deliver and frame preference. This happens when an individual observer or finds out about a specific conduct or attribute from a gathering of individuals and sum up the conduct to every one of the individuals from the gathering without examining further into the circumstance.

What’s more, one wilfully or automatically gets adjusted to along these lines if thinking, that raises judgement dependent on past information or encounters. They are self-propagating both generalisation and partiality since they work, or they are forced by the limits of individual human personality.

Understood and unequivocal preference are not related, and verifiable bias is an unavoidable results of generalisation information and enactment. To see such component understood and unequivocal strategies created inside the subjective methodology is significant.

6. We naturally stereotype and judge as a result of our cognitive processes. It comes from a natural reaction to put things/people into categories. (Gilovich et al., 2019) The reason we categorise is to deal with the volume of stimuli in the world around us. Gilovich et al, states that this is not done out of malicious intent but as a natural mechanism to deal with the world. I feel like as of now most of the prejudices are formed from the fear of the unknown.

They can also be formed by the media or any other story passed down by someone’s experience with something or someone.

Once stereotypes are formed, they are perpetrated by ourselves. Gilovich et al, touched on this with the stereotype threat. They further explored the idea with the study that was performed with men and women taking a test and being told that there was a gender difference in the test.

When woman wasn’t told that there was a difference they did better on the test. When the women were told that there was a difference, they did worse on the test. (Gilovich et al, 2019) We tend to believe what others tell us to be true and not necessarily what is true and accurate.

Part Two

Please follow instruction

A minimum of 100 words each question

• Evaluate the statements “birds of a feather flock together” and “opposites attract” based on research examining the influence of similarity versus complementarity on relationship formation.
• Describe three pieces of evidence that support the proposition that the need to belong is a fundamental need in humans.
• Give a real-world example of ethnocentrism and describe how it affects behaviour toward in group and out-group members.

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