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What is religion?
The most powerful force to that defines religion is society. It is very important to understand that religion is an ever-malleable thing. There is no such thing as Christianity, It does not exist. There are Christianities and the way that one defines the Gospel. The way that one understands Jesus as either the son of God or the Messiah or as a great teacher to emulate. The way that one places sort of the Christology or even the criddle formula of Catholicism has everything to do with where one leaves. If you are a Catholic living and suburban Denver with your two and a half kids and your car, and your house, your Jesus is probably a white blonde haired, blue-eyed piece neck who turns the other cheek. If you are a Catholic living in the hills of Guatemala, your Jesus, besides being Mexican, is a fighter of liberator. One who stands out to the oppressor and indeed, who takes up arms against oppression.
It is the same Jesus. It is the same Catholicism, but the understanding is radically different depending on where you live. The same of course is true of Islam. If you are a Muslim living in Detroit, then your idea of Islam is either of a religion of peace and submission and imperialism. If your are a Muslim living on a garbage sheet on Gaza then your version of Islam is a religion of social justice.
So everywhere that you go, you will see different expressions. Different manifestations of what can be called the same religion, the same faith, and I think that we need to understand that because in a way too often we look at the differences between religious communities as being defined as differences in religion and frankly, it is more often differences of community than of it is of religion.
Religion is in ever evolving process. If a religion stops evolving, it dies and there are thousands and thousands of examples of dead religions in the world that we can talk about that simply went away because they were not able to adapt to the constant changes of humans civilization, and human societies. The reason we talked about the great religions Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. These five massive world religions that have been around for thousands of years and that have billions of world wide followers. What makes them great is because they are constantly adapting. They are constantly evolving, that is why they continue to exist. The moment you stop adapting, the moment you stop evolving to whatever social, political, economic, or cultural landscape that the religion finds itself in, that is the moment in which it goes away.
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