Week 5, Day 4

Today (Thursday, Sept. 18th) we continued to watch the documentary that we started on Tuesday. Because of the Bill of Rights, suggested by Thomas Jefferson and other Democratic Republicans, Americans gained religious freedom. Although there were many advantages to those who had religious freedoms, some people began to rethink the religion that they been brought up practicing, and considered changing religions. Others questioned religion altogether, and considered not practicing a religion at all. One man, named James Finley, who had been raised Protestant, began to question why he should pray. He assumed that if he was going to be in the elect, God already decided that, and if he wasn't, there was nothing he could do to change God's mind.

There were some cases like James Finley when the freedom of religion was given to the people, but there were also many just the opposite. Large gatherings of people formed a "revival" where preachers would passionately preach the word of God. The masses were so awestruck by the word of the Lord and consumed by his spirit, that they would fall on their knees to pray. Finley finally decided to attend a revival, without much hope to understand why everyone there was so passionate about religion and God, but was completely overtaken by the spirit of the Lord. He became fiercely religious, to make up for all the times in his life when he had let God down, like when he stopped praying and practicing his faith. Finley also went on to become a preacher.

Also in this documentary, there was an issue in public schooling in America. Many lessons taught to the students encouraged the religion of Protestantism. Catholic parents were furious about this that they took their children out of the schools. John "Dagger" Hughes was so passionate about this issue, that he appealed to the court to get money from the state to fund exclusively Catholic schools. Although he lost, he still spread awareness about what these public schools were teaching to their students.

After the movie ended, we discussed the project on Wikispaces that is due next Thursday. Those that had not chosen partners or topics did so and the rest of us worked on the project, and decided what we wanted to accomplish on each project workday.