Religious Discrimination Experience

A general overview of the social and psychological literature will prove helpful in my interpretation of a social inequity. Taggart (1994) believes that the evaluation of religious systems and the discernment of cults are subject to projections and stereotyping on the part of the general public, including many mental health professionals as well as many of their clients (p. 123). Such stereotyping and projection of negative attitudes leads to the prejudice which creates an "us" versus "them" mentality. It is interesting to note that religious devoutness has even been linked to insincerity in the psychological literature. Richards (1994) warns mental health and social service professionals against stereotyping religiously devout clients as less congruent or genuine (p. 24). During the past decade, several researchers have hypothesized that religiously devout persons are more likely than less religious persons to be ove

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rking on a project to catalog a large collection of evangelical American, and Eastern religions. Because the collection was somewhat "ragtag," being a motley assemblage of self-published books, pamphlets, flyers, and house organs, the catalogers took a dim view of their task. The collection was not "academic," it was not "scientific," it was not "free-thinking, or liberal," it was not "of importance to the research community," and the complaints went on and on, ad infinitum. The books were donated by a gentleman who had devoted his life to collecting religions, in the same manner that some people collect butterflies. Some were rare, precious, and beautiful, while some were hateful diatribes against some other religious group. The point to be made is that each religion had its own sense of self-justification, or self-worth, and its own subjective reality. The catalogers went about their task with an air of officious intellectual superiority, or smugness. The irony in this scenario is apparent. The catalogers were guilty of the same thing that many of the opposing religions were guilty of--a self-righteous indignation and disrespect for any views which opposed their own. The born-again Christians were the easiest target for
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Approximate Word count = 1852
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)