Essay Sample: Religion Fuels Community Activities: How Belief Systems Guide Actions

Religion and the belief system of any community plays a crucial role in determining ways in which the same community resolve conflict, make decisions, make out events, view their actions, as well as dictating what projects the same community can undertake (Cohen, Wu, and Miller, 2016). What is more, the belief system of the community is also fuel the need for the same activity that the community may undertake? For instance, religious practices that advocate for social services would ensure that social work is driven within the same belief system. Therefore, religion and the belief system of the community can be viewed as the motivator of social work (Garland, Myers and Wolfer, 2008). This has been reflected in specific communities including the Sisters of Social Service who are members of the Catholic Church in Encino, California. This proposal seeks to find out what motivates this community to do social work as they do. Fieldwork on the same topic is carried out in order to answer the research question: How is the community of Sisters of Social Service motivated towards community work?

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Social work is an aspect of religion that is always overlooked. Apparently, most religion - if not all - tend to advocate for social work, even though most people practicing such doctrines do not follow the same. Therefore, exploring what motivates other communities of religion to practice the same virtues is critical to understanding the faith and the community as well. The Sisters of social service is a community of women from the Catholic Church in California, who came together to care for the alienated people in society. They believe that the right of every individual to live in dignity is purely in the hands and heart of other people's work and religious faith. The sisters are located in Los Angeles, Lanai Road, and are always available for people with immediate needs. Therefore, accessing the same place and carrying out the fieldwork is less logistically complicated as only an identity card is needed to have full access to the community.

In the fieldwork, a few (preferably three) sisters would be asked of what motivates them to dedicate themselves to this noble task. What is more, aspects of their religion that ensures that they follow the same philosophies would be questioned in order to understand both the community and the Christian religion? In doing so, how the community is motivated towards social work shall be understood. However, several challenges before and during this fieldwork can be encountered. For instance, it will be quite difficult to understand whether the answers developed by the sisters are religious or personal in nature. What is more, due to the fact that certain aspects of the Christian religion can be understood differently, it can be difficult to understand the sister's view of the same verses in the bible. Therefore, it would be prudent to collect data without immediate processing in order to capture all the reasons without bias. This can also affect later processing of the same data.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is evident that religion determines how a community generally behaves. This is evident by the acts adopted by the Sisters of Social Services of Los Angeles. Therefore, this proposal advocates for fieldwork of the same community while seeking to identify and elaborate on how the community is motivated to do community work. Despite the challenges projected, the fieldwork would be pretty much straight forward and would ensure a deep understanding of the Catholic Church and the community of the sisters at large.

References

Cohen, A. B., Wu, M. S., & Miller, J. (2016). Religion and culture: Individualism and collectivism in the East and West. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(9), 1236-1249.

Garland, D. R., Myers, D. M., &Wolfer, T. A. (2008). Social work with religious volunteers: Activating and sustaining community involvement. Social work, 53(3), 255-265.