There will never be complete peace and unity with a community.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the same is true for a religious group.\u00a0 There will always be arguments between the more orthodox members of the society and how they interpret scripture, rules, or messages, and the younger generation that was raised in a very different world from their predecessors.\u00a0 In some cases, these arguments lead to forward progress for the religion as a whole, for example with more equality for women or\u00a0more opportunities for all members of the congregation.\u00a0 However, just as often if not more so, this can lead to divides and people leaving the faith altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In many ways Sikhism<\/a> and Hinduism <\/a>are very similar.\u00a0 Both religions believe that shoes should be removed before entering the inner sanctum of the temple, that peace is a necessary force in life, that donations and charity will hold you in higher stead with the god(s), and that life is a journey to learn from.\u00a0 However, when observing the people at the Sikh and Hindu temples I discovered another thing that both religions prize – children.\u00a0 There was a definite sense that the children were learning to respect their religions from a very early age.\u00a0 In the Gurdwara I saw a little girl of about 4 tying a headscarf onto her squirming little brother.\u00a0 Obviously this girl had learned that in her faith, covering your head is necessary inside of the temple.\u00a0 In the Hindu temple, many young children went up to their parents to get change to offer to a particular deity in prayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n The other thing that struck me as interesting was how the Sikhs and Hindus have adapted to being in the United Kingdom.\u00a0 Some changes are quite obvious, the Sikh men cannot carry their defensive swords due to British law.\u00a0 However, it is interesting to consider that some Sikhs have been forced to remove their head-covering or trim their facial hair due to the parameters of their jobs.\u00a0 The changes for the Hindus are not as obvious.\u00a0 It is, of course, possible that some Hindus have rejected the idea of obstaining from meat and fish since entering the UK, but that doesn’t seem to have the same direct correlation as with the Sikhs and their changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although this blog post is supposed to focus mainly on the Sikh and Hindu religions, I would find it amiss if I did not mention problems and arguments within my own faith.\u00a0 I stated at the beginning of the post that all religions have problems, but sometimes the butting-of-heads between the younger generations and those who are more set in their ways can end in forward progress.\u00a0 I’m a practicing Roman Catholic and I know that my religion is not perfect.\u00a0 However, I think that the stubbornness of those people who are high up in the Catholic hierarchy on the issues of married priests, female priests, homosexuality, etc.\u00a0are going to cause the faith I believe in to crash and burn in the future.\u00a0 (Can you tell I’m liberal?)\u00a0<\/p>\n In many ways, this links directly to the Sikhs and the Hindus.\u00a0\u00a0Both are being forced to adapt to their surroundings, both religiously and culturally,\u00a0in Britain; some as second-generation immigrants who believe in their religion to a degree\u00a0and others as die-hard orthodox followers.\u00a0 In order for their religion continue to have forward progress, these people need to sort out their differences\u00a0long enough to\u00a0come to a consensus.\u00a0 I hope my Church will do that too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There will never be complete peace and unity with a community.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the same is true for a religious group.\u00a0 There will always be arguments between the more orthodox members of the society and how they interpret scripture, rules, or messages, and the younger generation that was raised in a very different world from their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[744],"tags":[1181,1164,1130,1123,1165,1122,1124],"class_list":["post-1494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kelley","tag-children","tag-community","tag-gurdwara","tag-hinduism","tag-progress","tag-sikhism","tag-temple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}