Essay on Journal 2

Submitted By cr4zyuv
Words: 1080
Pages: 5

Even though Christianity is the most popular religion in the world, it still has to face with many forms of exclusion as the dominator will always be challenge by the weaker ones. Among different religious beliefs, Christianity has the most conflicts with Islam since they grew from the same root but branched out and become two different kinds that hardly have any major principles in common. On the other hand, atheist population all over the world is increasing quickly by recent year also brings new questions to those with Christianity identity. The main reason is that Christian and Atheist population share a lot of demographic distribution which gives them a lot of room for clashing. Technology advancement also disapproves a lot of religious stories that make it harder to convince somebody about the existence of divine forces. The internet plays as a competing stage that often lead to endless arguments about weather God exists and it makes it more difficult for religious groups in general, to set their beliefs in somebody without them looking for more persuasive evidences.
In the past when the world used to be much smaller for one and Christianity was not a dominant belief, it was much more difficult for one to adopt Christianity without facing consequences from his/her society. It was much easier to perform exclusions even though it could violate human rights because there was not much of a specific human right measurement. For examples, elimination was practiced on Christians during the rule Roman Empire given the rise to the stories of martyrs. Domination is presented as Christians were perceived as others in the name of “gentiles” then "pagans" prior to that. Assimilation, on the other hand, was used as a strategy to expand the popularity of Christianity through Constantine conquest. He used assimilation to recruit and then reinforced his power after he successfully became the emperor. Perhaps, some Christians who did not want to follow the movement still had to do so because they do not want to be seen by the emperor as a potential disloyal group. Abandonment, perhaps, is the most passive form of exclusion since all it asks for is to have no interests in the beliefs of others. Christians might experience abandonment when they go to a more diverse place where there is not a dominant group of religion. For instance, in China during early Qing dynasty’s reign, missionary Christians did not catch much attention because what they offered were not very valuable to what a most rich, powerful nation, at that time, already had. However, by the end of the dynasty to the post-communist revolution period, a lot of people with Christianity identity were perceived as a threat to new freedom and equalism. The new government threatened these people and some of the priests were put in concentration camps. This form of exclusion did not only take place in south East Asia during the 19s but also in Europe when Nazi was still in power.
In the modern world, exclusion still exists and happens to Christians. Some of it still happens in an extreme way partially to stop the expansion of Christianity but also they could carry economic and political reasons behind it. Many of us might questions the reason of ISIS hate on America. Some of us argue that they do not want their culture to be westernized so much that it could be open room for critiques. Some of us might perceive it as these countries' people do not want America to interfere with their political and economic systems as what American is apparently famous for doing. Whatever the reasons are, many innocent Christians become victims of this hatred in which continue the cycle of hate between the 2 dominant religions Christianity and Islam.
There is also exclusion within Christianity itself. It can happen when you carry two or more special identity aside Christianity. For example: gay marries are still prohibited in majority of U.S because it is a sin indicated by the bible even