Power Point Presentation with recorded voice over, CREATE YOUR OWN RELIGION
Instructions
One of the best ways to understand religion is to be the creator of your own religion. For this final assignment, you will be creating a fictional, but yet believable, religion or religious movement. The assignment will have multiple parts, expanding on the features such as the history, origin, social dynamics, practices, rituals and of course belief system. The goal of this is to synthesize all of the religions you have learned about, and then creatively choose what aspects you liked about those religions and apply them to your new fictional religion.
Your religious movement should be a synthesis of using at least 3 religions. For example, someone might choose to use practices from Hinduism, rituals from Shintoism, and a belief system from Islam. I do ask that you please refrain from creating a presentation that parallels exactly a religion we have covered in this course. For example, don’t create a new religious movement that ends up looking exactly like Judaism and Christianity. You can use Christianity as a foundation for your new religion, but I expect you will be creative in making it look very different by incorporating other religions. The goal here isn’t to show me you can recreate the exact same religion, but instead show me you know how to extrapolate aspects of the world religions into a single religion.
Your religion or religious movement can be contemporary or historic, primarily have followers in only North America, or across the globe in other countries. When you provide the historical narrative of your religion, be sure to support it with context that provides a clear picture and foundation. For example, if this is a brand new religion being introduced into the world, what sparked your religion to come into existence? If this is a religion that started back in the 1800’s, why did the religion develop then?
You are welcome and encouraged to make up completely new practices for your religion. For example, your religion has a ritual practice of “hugging another human being for 5 minutes” to be cleansed from sin.
I expect that you will incorporate at least 9 ideas/aspects from 3 different religions we covered this semester.
To receive credit:
50 points – Meeting these two requirements: Your presentation will need to have between 12-15 slides with a voice over of you explaining each slide. Note, please exclude from this requirement the two slides it will take for you to create an Introduction slide or a “works cited” slide. /// Your presentation should have a voiceover that takes roughly 15 – 20 minutes to listen to; Proper citations/references, and a clear flow throughout the presentation – This voiceover can be easily done through Microsoft PPT, by clicking the tab “Slide Show” and then click the sub-tab “Record Slide Show”.
25 points – An introduction of who your chosen God/deities and founder or initial leaders in this new religion or religious movement
25 points – An explanation for if this religion has co-founders, disciples, or other leaders who help evangelize or influence this religion?
25 points – An explanation of why this religion is emerging; and social practices and cultural practices in this religion; Please provide some context on the characteristics/biographical that are important to the foundation of this religion.
25 points – An explanation of the core membership of people (i.e. demographics of how many and who practices this religion)
50 points – An explanation of the foundational teachings, practices, and rituals that make this religion unique.
Religions you can use:
Indigenous Religions/ Global Christianity: Eastern Orthodoxy/ Hinduism/ Buddhism/ Jainism/ Sikhism/ Confucianism/ Taoism (Daoism)/ Judaism/ Christianity/ Islam.
