Religious Studies

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1) Discuss the nature of early relations between the Native Americans and the Euro-Americans. What were the religious factors that contributed to these relations and how did they do so?
Habitually the discussion of race in early American history has relied upon a sequence of interweaved dichotomies of ethnicity, culture, and inherent. Legacy of these twofold remain with us today, principally in the teaching today. It has been clear than in halting and incomplete incorporation of Native American became one of many minorities in American state. Many Native American tribes inhabited the territory that became the State of Illinois. As most Native Americans relied upon a mixture of hunting, agriculture and gathering for their subsistence. They embrace the religious beliefs quite unlike the European settlers who were embracing Christianity they brought to North American. The Indians organized their spiritual lives around no central creed or dogma and rather, entity tribes developed rites and practices based upon a communitarian spiritual sense and reverence for nature. Among most tribes everyday acts assumed a ceremonial significance. Western visitors, conquerors and interpreters have struggled to grasp Native American religion and culture to this day.
In this circumstance, European and Native American cultures mingled and Europeans and Native Americans reached understandings of one another, often built upon primary misconceptions, that facilitated good relations and trade thus many French trappers and traders married Indian women, beginning a pattern of cross-cultural kinship ties and realization.
The wobbly, though usually peaceful and prosperous, relations of the Middle Ground characterized life in Illinois until the French and Indian War of the mid-eighteenth century thus in this conflict Native American tribes united themselves with the French and suffered a influential defeat at the hands of the British Empire.
Even though their opposing roles in the disagreement, the British proved a temporary ally for Native Americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and in the period after the French and Indian War the British had declared the northwestern region surrounding today's Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana to be off-limits to settlement by English settlers thus the outcome of the American revolution devastated this promising arrangement for the Indian tribes and sent American settlers pouring westward.
Although Americans' claim to the Northwest Territories, the British remained a key presence there for several decades and joined forces with Indian forces led by the Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh to battle Americans in the unsuccessful War of 1812 and the United States tenable its Northwest Territories in the War of 1812, and crushed Tecumseh's dream of a powerful new Indian confederacy able to stem white settlement in the West.
2) Discuss how African-American religious traditions, both indigenous and acquired, interacted with the institution of slavery. What were the positive and the negative effects of these interactions?
The story of African-American religion is a anecdote of variety and creative fusion as enslaved Africans transported to the New World beginning in the 15th century brought with them a wide range of local religious beliefs and practices thus this diversity reflected the many cultures and linguistic groups from which they had come from. A quite number came from the West Coast of Africa but even within this area religious traditions varied greatly and Islam had also exerted a powerful presence in Africa for several centuries before the start of the slave trade thus an estimated 20% of enslaved people were practicing Muslims and some retained elements of their practices and beliefs well into the 19th century, on the other hand Catholicism had even established a presence in areas of Africa by the 16th century.
Preserving African religions in North America proved to be very difficult and the harsh conditions under which most slaves live resulted tohigh death rates, the separation of families and tribal groups, and the concerted effort of white owners to eradicate heathen customs rendered the safeguarding of religious traditions not easy and often unsuccessful thus lead to isolated songs, rhythms, movements, and beliefs in the remedial powers of roots and the efficacy of a world of spirits and ancestors did survive well into the 19th century. But these more and more were combined in imaginative ways with the various forms of Christianity to which Europeans and Americans introduced African slaves. Perhaps, in Latin America, where Catholicism was most widespread, slaves mixed African beliefs and practices with Catholic rituals and theology, resulting in the creation of entirely new religions. But in North America, slaves came into get in touch with the growing number of Protestant evangelical preachers,
After the American Revolution, northern states steadily began to abolish slavery and thus sharper differences emerged in the following years between the experiences of enslaved peoples and those who were now relatively free and by 1810 the slave trade to the United States also came to an end and the slave population began to increase naturally, making way for the preservation and transmission of religious practices that were, by this time, truly "African-American."
This changeover coincided with the period of intense religious revivalism known as "awakenings." In the southern states increasing numbers of slaves transformed to evangelical religions such as the Methodist and Baptist faiths thus many clergy within these denominations aggressively promoted the idea that all Christians were equal in the sight of God, a message that provided hope and sustenance to the slaves and they also encouraged worship i...