Introduction rough draft for Research Paper

There is a plague on the earth today. It is not locusts, or fire from heaven; the rivers are not turning to blood, but it is a plague nonetheless. It affects young adults of every religious denomination and sect, young men and young women who are just beginning to grow into their newfound independence that comes with officially becoming an adult, perhaps leaving for college, perhaps working, or perhaps just in that difficult in-between stage before they feel their life really starts. No one knows exactly what the repercussions of this plague will be if it is allowed to continue, but how do we stop this plague of Godlessness that is sweeping away the youth of the nation? Young adults are falling away from religion at an unprecedented rate; (insert statistic + citation here) of (ages from study) say that they do not go to a religious services regularly (or whatever the study I can find says) Young adults of every religion are increasingly choosing to stay away from the traditional worship setting, this is a fact, but it raises two essential questions. The first: Why? The second: What is to be done? In order to answer these, other questions must find their answers as well, such as what are the young adults being exposed to that would draw them away from religion, or what about religion would push them away? Perhaps one answer to these questions will be revealed by looking at the ubiquity of modern technology, namely the internet and the rise of social media. The internet allows a vast amount of the world’s knowledge to be accessed from almost anywhere at any time, not only through computers, but also through the tablets and smart phones that many young adults carry around with them at all times. It provides a chance for them and others to share their opinions anonymously, and be exposed to other people’s opinions, which are also often shared anonymously. The opinions shared on the internet about religion are not always positive, in fact, in light of religious issues such as the struggle of Gay rights, and the war on the terrorist Islamic extremists, religion is too often painted with a negative brush.  Numbers of young adults attending church services are dwindling in part because they are becoming disillusioned with religion because online media portrays religion as backwards, militant, and bigoted. 

Annotated Bibliography

*so, this is totally the only thing I forgot to print out today, so hopefully I'll be able to go print it fast after class, but if not... here it is!!!

Works Cited

Anonymous. ReligiON, ReligiOFF. weknowmemes.com. We Know Memes. 2012. Internet Meme (picture).

This source is a popular internet meme, found on several source websites, of which the cited site is only one example. Memes are pictures with captions that are used to make a statement on current issues, similar to a political cartoon. They are often published anonymously on internet forums and express the opinion of those that create them, and those that share them. This particular meme portrays the opinion that religion is medieval is backwards.  I think that this will strenghtn my argument because it shows a common portrayal of religion in a forum that many young adults are familiar with.

Douthat, Ross. "Divided by God." The New York Times 7 April 2012. Opinion Editorial.

This is an opinion editorial, so it expresses the opinion of one person regarding religion in America; it was published by the New York Times, which is a widely read magazine all over the united states. It describes how the United States has become so religiously diverse, and increasingly secular, to where we are largely practicing a hybrid of religion and secularism, become what Douthat calls "a nation of heretics" because we can never agree with one another on anything involved with religion. The article also talks about times when churches were strong and had a wide base of support, namely the civil rights era. I am hoping that I can use this article to show that the US is becoming more secular, which contributes to the negative portrayal of religion on the internet, and I hope that by pointing to times when churches had stronger membership, I will be able to give good suggestions to the interdenominational faith council.

Gonzalez, Michelle A. "Religion and the US Presidency: Politics, the Media, and Religious Identity." Political Theology (2012). Online.

This article deals with how religion was portrayed in the 2012 presidential election which showed how religiously diverse the United States had become. It analyzes the increasingly interconnected nature of religion and politics and how religion is necessary to politics; I hope that this will help me to see and analyze how Americans feel about religion.

Hosseini, S. H. "Religion and Media, Religious Media, or Media Religion: Theoretical Studies." Journal of Media & Religion (2008). Article.

This is a scholarly source. it's a research paper about the relationship between Religion and the Media, analyzing a spectrum of ideas that ranges from the Media being completely controlled by religion and religious authorities, to the idea that the media is completely independent of, and some might go so far as to say unbiased by, Religion. This has a lot of other good sources that it can point me to, but it doesn't really have any original ideas. I'm hoping that it will help me to articulate what I think the current relationship is between religion and media, giving me a good foundation and springboard for the rest of my argument.

Rhode, Harold. Most Intolerant Religion. 29 March 2013. Article. 6 November 2014.

This is a blog post on an expressly anti-Muslim website, explaining how and why the Islamic religion and the people who practice it are backwards and poor. It makes the point that they as a society are unable to forget perceived past wrongs. I want to make the point that religion is perceived as backwards, but I don't know if this is the best source, simply because it has such an explicit bias.

Research Homework 1

Amy McLean

Research Homework 1

What is a question you want to answer with your research? What is the history behind this topic? Who are the authorities/stakeholders involved in this topic? What sources seem most useful to you so far, and why?

The question that I want to answer with my research is why young adults are falling away from religion. There are many different ways that I could take this, many different reasons why people who are in their early twenties are no longer going to church. The leaders tend to be old and out of touch. religious people in the media are sometimes portrayed as superstitious or bigoted, most often bigoted, especially with the gay rights issues: young people see the church as prejudiced and controlling. Young adults are becoming disillusioned with the concept of God and organized religion. if there's a god, they see him as loving and accepting of all people and differences, god is no longer seen as someone who expects a certain standard of moral living, besides simply accepting and loving everyone as he does. There is also that science is attacking the validity of religion by saying that everything needs to be proved. I was going to work on the science versus religion, but now thinking about it, I am going to deal with how religion and spirituality are portrayed in the media, both in news sources and in social media. How does the media portray religion? What is this doing to young people’s views of religion? How can we reverse or combat this?

The history behind this topic is the evolution of the media, with the increase of newspapers, radio, television, and especially the development of the internet. There is also the current issues of gay rights, and religious extremism and terrorism in the middle east, which has brought religion out of the private life and into public scrutiny. There is also the literal history of churches being prejudiced and close minded in the past about things that are now generally accepted such as science (heliocentrism), and divorce; it is not a far leap to believe that the churches are “wrong” again to hold back what is seen as progress today. With a history of religious violence, churches can be cast as having made mistakes and being selfish and corrupt.

The authorities on this topic. well, I can easily find authoritative and representative sources in the news about how the religion is portrayed in the media. I can probably find some studies about this, which will be helpful and authoritative. Other authorities on this topic will be the major media distributors, like New York Times, for news, or Buzzfeed for social media. the media sources that are popular that large numbers of young adults visit, could be considered an authority on what young adults believe or at least what they are being exposed to.

The sources that seem most useful to me right now are the primary sources because they accurately depict how religion is being portrayed in the media. Another kind of source material that I am finding useful are articles and journals that track the media and it’s effects. I think that online comment sections may very well be extremely useful in gaging how the young adult demographic responds to the way that religion is portrayed in the media. Hopefully, what young adults comment on these articles will reflect whether this age group agrees with what the media says or disagrees with it.

Sources:

Gonzalez, Michelle A., “Religion and the US Presidency: Politics, the Media, and Religious      Identity” Equinox Publishing, 2012

Hosseini, S. H. “Religion and Media, Religious Media, or Media Religion: Theoretical Studies” Journal of Media and Religion,Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2012

Paulson, Michael; Santos, Fernanda, “Religious right in Arizona Cheers Bill Allowing Businesses to Refuse to Serve Gays” New York Times, 2014

Paulson, Michael, “Megachurch Pastor signals shift in tone on Gay Marriage” New York Times 2014

Di Stefano, Mike, “Hillsong Megachurch Denies Supporting Marriage Equality” Buzzfeed.com, 2014

Libraryfest!

So Library days.
Topic
Issue/Problem  Solution
Audience.
we are the bridge between youth and old guys sitting on the council.

Narrowing Topics:
reasons (instant gratification vs. the faith building process)
ask questions
take piece by piece, ask yourself how you can be more specific; what do I really mean when I say this?
Ex. "youth" = "16-22"
answers to questions
specify general words like "faith" especially if different churches define faith differently.

the secularization (reliance upon science, pushing prefrences between good choices, technology, separation of church and state, logical education, still influenced by enlightenment) of society (american society, schools, government, news) is deminishing the validity of religion. (youth learning to distrust things that cannot be proved, need for tangible evidence and data. philosophy that religion is used to keep people down, give people power and money)

Growing agnostic class
distrust of organized religion
spiritual but not religious.

Interlibrary loan, Get it at BYU

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mcswain/why-nobody-wants-to-go-to_b_4086016.html
• http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2013/october/state-of-american-church.html
• http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/164787-thom-rainer-13-issues-churches-2013.html

BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: A NO MAN'S LAND, OR "INTERDIGITATIONS"?

• Delivered in Kearney, Neb., Sept. 20, 2012
• "He Blinded Me With Science": Science Chauvinism in the Study of Religion.

Manipulation...bwahahahaha!!!

Style Academy #4
Manipulating Parts
I expect that this will show me how to use syntax and sentence order to make my sentences more powerful and impactful. I'm hoping to learn how to add more variety to my writing and make it more interesting to read.i know that word order and sentence order is powerful, but i'm interested to see how they play with it; you really can't play with syntax and word order too much while writing prose or else sound like Yoda you will, which is obviously not the most professional way to come across, especially in an academic paper.
So, the video teaches that every sentence is made up of two major elements: main ideas and modifiers. The position of the modifiers, as openers, closers, or interrupters, can determine their importance to your reader; for example putting a modifier in the closer position will cause it to stay in the reader's mind because it's the last thing they heard in the sentence, but the interrupter, put in the middle of the main idea, is seen as subordinate or simply adding fun extras to the main idea of the sentence.  a modifier placed in the interrupter position does have merit, however, in that it makes our writing sound more conversational and is effective in referencing things that were brought up earlier in the piece. you can make a modifier a main idea, or a main idea a modifier, depending on what effect you want to have. you can also have multiple modifiers and main ideas in the sentence and create patterns with them.
It's all about how the modifiers effect the main idea of the sentence and how important that modifier is to the point that you want your audience to believe, and what you want the audience to take away.

Exercise

Main: Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
Modifier: he was putting his own preferences above everything else.

• Opener:
• Putting his own preferences above everything else, Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
• Interrupter:
• Snowden, putting his own preferences above everything else, self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
• Closer:
• Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else,

Reflection

So the Rhetorical Analysis was an interesting paper to write. I was expecting something horribly dry, which it is more boring than the opinion editorial was, which is understandable because they are completely different genres with completely different purposes. The purpose of the opinion editorial was mainly to persuade, and in order to do that effectively I had to entertain my audience, and I also had a lot more freedom of form than I felt like I had in the Rhetorical Analysis. The purpose of the opinion editorial has an element of persuasion, but mostly it is analysis: what did the author do in his attempt to persuade his audience, was it effective, and why? I was not necessarily trying to entertain my audience, but rather give them an accurate analysis of this piece of rhetoric. Besides a difference if goals, these two genres have very different audiences. The difference between the two styles really highlights how important the audience is to writing. The audience wants different things depending on what they are reading. If you try to simply inform a reader during an opinion editorial, they will stop reading it, but if you try too hard to entertain a reader reading a rhetorical analysis, the reader will stop reading because you are aren’t giving them the information they asked for. It was somewhat of a challenge to write these two papers back to back, but I also learned a lot from it.

                Some challenges that I had with the rhetorical analysis and some things I learned from it was that I needed to use the article a lot more than I thought I did. In beginning writing, “summary” is almost like a dirty word. You turn in a book report and get a “C” because it was just “summary.” So, going into this, I assumed that I wasn’t really allowed to summarize at all, which wasn’t true. It’s a hard balance to achieve between summary and analysis. Another way that I could have more effectively used to article to support my analysis of it was using quotations more extensively. Again I was nervous to use quotations, because, like summary, they can just be used as space filler; however, I learned that having quotations really strengthens and contextualizes your argument, making your analysis more effective. Another tool that makes your analysis more effective and allows you to analyze effectively is asking yourself “why” about everything the author does. “Why does he use a question here?” “Why is he drawing this comparison?” Thinking about why the author was doing what he was doing, and why it affects the audience in the way that it does is really at the heart of analysis.

                This was a challenging paper to write, but I also learned a lot about how to analyze and how to support an analysis using the article, and the importance of genres and writing to the correct audience. 

Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

Amy McLean

Kaleigh Spooner

WRTG 150

October 24, 2014

Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

I grew up in America during the war on terror. I was only 6 years old in 2001 when the twin towers were hit and our country suddenly became immersed in a war on terror, and America was changed forever.  I grew up listening to concerns about Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden on the news and around the dinner table. I remember when Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown and he was killed, and everyone said that Osama bin Laden was even worse, and that if we could get rid of bin Laden, we would win the war on terror. That was not necessarily true, but that was the public consciousness. When I learned that bin Laden was dead, I saw the news footage of thousands of people on the streets of New York, standing on each other’s shoulders, waving American flags and celebrating bin Laden’s death. I remember thinking that it was a little wrong, because I remember how outraged people were when rumors went around after 9/11 that people in Arab nations were celebrating the attack and death of Americans. The roles were now reversed.  I thought that maybe we weren’t sending the right message to the world by being so excited that someone had died. Because of this, I was hesitant to celebrate the Death of Osama bin Laden, even though I knew that he was an evil man.

Like me, Patrick Clark also has a moral hesitation to celebrating at bin Laden’s death, and he, in his blog post American Justice and Divine Mercy: Thoughts on Osama Bin Laden’s Death, successfully persuades his readers, predominantly Catholics like himself, to feel the same. He does this by using rhetorical questions, comparisons, and strong appeals to authority.

Clark’s essay consists largely of rhetorical questions, starting with the very first sentence, “First, should we consider it anything more than a blind coincidence that this momentous attack was carried out on Divine Mercy Sunday?” drawing his readers attention to the coincidence, and asking them to evaluate its significance . He proceeds to ask his readers many questions throughout the essay, each bringing up new ideas and parallels that Clark’s readers probably haven’t thought about.  So this begs the question: why phrase these new ideas as questions? Why not simply state them as facts or thoughts or beliefs of the author, since he seems to think of them that way? By phrasing these ideas as questions, Clark accomplishes two distinct purposes. First, Clark knows that his ideas may be new to his reader, so by presenting an idea as a question, he implies that the reader has the option to accept or reject it, while at the same time implying that he, the author, whom the reader trusts, has already accepted this idea, which is incentive for the reader to accept it. For example, “is it appropriate for Christians to feel a little uneasy with the outpouring of ‘solidarity’ among the American citizenry in the wake of bin Laden’s death?” Clark uses this question to make his readers believe that Christians should be uncomfortable with the solidarity, because, although a reader could answer “yes, that is entirely appropriate,” the implied answer is “no,” and a reader will feel uncomfortable if they do not agree with that, especially if they have agreed with the implied answers to any of the other questions Clark poses.  Second, questions, especially rhetorical ones, beg to be answered. By asking the reader a question, Clark is asking them to actually think about what he is telling them, rather than accepting or rejecting them at face value. These questions encourage readers to think and come up with their own opinions about America’s reaction to bin Laden’s death.  Posing the question “what are we to make of this jubilation?” requires an answer, and immediately the reader’s brain starts working to provide that. This is one of Clark’s main purposes: to get his readers to think about, and hopefully accept, his conclusions and ideas. Clark also uses these questions as an appeal to logos, because as his readers ask themselves these questions, they realize that that they have opinions that they have not thought deeply about, which are not logical, and thinking about the issue is the logical conclusion. This all plays into the genre of religious rhetoric that Clark is writing in. Religious rhetoric is characterized by moral arguments, which Clark’s clearly is, and often includes rhetorical questions with the intent of encouraging the audience to think more deeply about the message.     

Another rhetorical device Clark uses to convince his readers that the celebration at bin Laden’s death is immoral and unchristian is comparison. Clark draws comparisons between bin Laden’s death and Christ’s death.  “Can we reasonably and in good conscience associate the bullet-hole in bin Laden’s head with the hole in Jesus’ pierced side, from which divine justice and mercy poured out upon the whole human race?”  These parallels that Clark draws are exaggerated, suggesting that by celebrating bin Laden’s death, Americans are either downplaying Christ’s death, or exalting bin Laden to a role of savior, neither of which is the intent of the celebrators, but by making these comparisons, however exaggerated, Clark effectively villainize the celebrators as opponents of Christ. Therefore, Clark implies, any true follower of Christ, who opposes comparing the Lord to a mass murderer, should agree with Clark’s idea that the celebrations at bin Laden’s execution are wrong. This plays to the genre of the piece in that pieces of religious rhetoric normally glorify and honor the deity of the religion, here Christ. Clark surprises his readers by almost seeming to break with the form and characteristics that they were expecting in his essay. This accomplishes the desire of gaining the reader’s attention and sympathy. Attention because it is outside of the form that was expected and sympathy because Clark implies that he is not making the comparisons of Christ to amoral figures, but rather those celebrating are the ones that are profaning Him. Clark’s audience are then more likely to unite with him ideologically because they do not want to be an enemy to Christ, which is how Clark, through these exaggerated comparisons, seems to characterize those celebrating at bin Laden’s death.  The religious audience will also feel rage when they see their deity unceremoniously compared to a mass murderer. Clark plays off of this anger by directing it at those who are celebrating at bin Laden’s death. This shows how these comparisons are overwhelming appeals to pathos, playing off of the moral feeling and gut reactions of the readers when they see something sacred seeming to be held in such irreverence by those who celebrate bin Laden’s death.

Patrick Clark strengthens and backs up his highly moral, and guilt-based, argument with strong appeals to authority, among them the Bible, St. Faustina (who instituted the Catholic holiday of Divine Mercy Sunday, the day that this attack was coincidentally carried out), and Pope John Paul II (who was beautified, meaning made a saint, on the very same day that bin Laden was killed). By choosing these authorities to reference and quote, Clark uses sources that his audience is familiar with, and that are extremely kairotic, since bin Laden was killed on the Divine Mercy Sunday set apart for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Clark’s audience is already thinking about these people, and already respects them, so by quoting them, he appeals to something comfortable and familiar, and audiences are more likely to accept something that they see as comfortable and familiar, rather than completely new information. Another purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that it gives his argument deeper import. If he, a Catholic blogger, says something, there is no real reason to believe it, but if the pope says it, then believing it is essential to eternal salvation. By quoting these authorities, Clark is able to convince his audience that there are important spiritual reasons to believe his ideas. The last purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that these people were well respected, and are held up as saints and examples in Catholic culture and doctrine. As such, Catholics trying to become better look to them, their beliefs and their lives as examples and try to emulate them. By quoting them, Clark implies that if Faustina and John Paul II were still around, they would agree with him and support his argument, and encourages his Catholic audience to follow the example of these venerated saints and agree with him as well.

In conclusion, Clark successfully uses rhetorical questions to make his audience think about the moral issues attached to celebrating bin Laden’s death , comparisons to evoke strong emotional responses, and appeals to authority to convince his readers that there should be some sort of moral and religious objection to celebrating bin Laden’s death.