Austin Fontaine 
Megan Novelli This semester I am taking a class entitled: “The Psychology of Religion”. While I went into this class expecting it to be another ACU class taught about how Christ can shape our psychology, I was very wrong. We are instead studying all different religions and how psychology can affect whether or not a person even has religious beliefs. I have connected History of Theories to this class a lot especially in our dicussions lately about free will.
In Psyc. of Religion we have discussed a lot of factors about religion. For example, because I was raised in the southern protestant church I have much different beliefs than a girl born into an Islamic country. Now of course I could not choose what family I was born into, so did I technically “choose” my belief system? And that girl that was raised in an intense Muslim community did not “choose” to be raised there. The idea that we do not fully have free will when deciding our religious morals really blew my mind. Thinking of all the different factors and acknowleding how much of my beliefs are based off of how I
In the class we are reading this book entitled “The Fabric of Faithfulness.” I encourage everyone to go pick it up, it is honestly one of the most interesting books I have ever read, and I feel is very applicable to every college student’s life.
(Now that you know what it looks like, you have no excuse not to grab it next time you are in the bookstore.)
So basically this book talks about how do we connect what we believe to how we live. And I think this is a huge issue for countless college students. They are wrestling with the ideas that they have been taught since childhood and have to learn how to implement them into the rest of their lives. Do we really have free will, and if so how do we act out what we each believe.
So as we continue to talk about the idea of free will, I propose we do not just talk about the normal topics, but instead we venture out and ask the hard questions, even about religion. I think ACU is a great place for students to push their boundaries and ideas of how they got their religion and dig deep.
Josh Morrison
4:43 pm, 09.29.10
This is so interesting and so applicable! It really opens up eyes to exactly how why we believe what we do and provides the same kind of perspective for others. Another thing it does, which is to me the most interesting, is to provide a fuller understanding of what exactly one person asks another to give up when trying to persuade them to become a member of any religion. There are so many cultural, geographic and familial ties associated with that, so much so that changing religions is never just changing religions.
Megan Novelli
1:46 pm, 10.04.10
I think ACU is rather closed off and over protective in not wanting to push boundaries but they are progressively becoming more “edgy” (for lack of a better word). Last week in chapel they even played a clip from South Park, i mean come one, who would have ever thought that they would be watching South Park in chapel.