.... who see themselves as alienated from the rest of society, and give these people the sense of conformity that they desire. A common method of recruiters, to obtain new members, is through chat lines on the internet. A recorded conversation between a member of the Divine Light Mission, Fire-Shade, and an 18-year old boy, Jay 18, was obtained off of the site, IRC Teen Chat. Jay18: I am a really great poet, but all of the kids in my class are pretty warped about it. I basically hide it from them because I don't need that hassle. Fire-Shade: My family has a great respect for the artist inside us all. I know you live in Michigan, and our family could always use new operativ ....

.... that his church would not be destroyed and that his church would survive until his return. is the largest religion today. This religion has been seeing a lot of people leaving this religion and joining other churches. But even though many people are changing to other religions, there are also many people leaving their churches and converting to Roman Catholicism. It has been growing rapidly in the last few years. “Today we are seeing more than a hundred and fifty thousand converts enter each year in the United States” (Catholic Answers). From what I can see the Roman Catholic Religion will continue to grow and prosper. It is a well-established religion that ha ....

.... constitution recognized the freedom of religion as an important factor in establishing a democracy. They also recognized a space of freedom between the government and the people, whereby the government could not force an individual or group to do something they did not want to do. The government is not upholding their part of the constitution. They are trying to tell people that saying prayer in public school is unconstitutional. In fact, prayer in public school is legal, so is prayer in church and prayer in stores etc... . The area which is not legal is when students or teachers pray when engaged in school activities or instruction. This means students or tea ....

.... of the Puritan beliefs were both simple and believable. Others would seem outrageous today. Puritanism was founded on the principles and beliefs of John Calvin, and one of the major ideals they focused on was the doctrine of predestination. Calvin believed that the grace of God was the ticket into Heaven and that his grace could not be earned. God's grace was bestowed upon a select few regardless of what they did to earn it. This ‘ doctrine' stated that God determines a mans' destiny, whether it be redemption or condemnation, regardless of any worth or merit on the person's part. It could be compared to the failures of Communism in that no matter how hard a pe ....

.... and reversal of the sun would have been visible worldwide. The idea that people could have witnessed these events without having been amazed by them is, quite simply, ludicrous. Other cultures having witnessed this would certainly have offered their own explanations in keeping with their own cultural and religious beliefs. Surely a society existing at the time would have documented this miraculous event. Yet nowhere have such works been found. In the instance of the resurrection of the saints, Matthew is the only person to mention this occurence in the Bible. Surely other first-century Christians would have used this as further proof of Jesus' divinty. It would fall to re ....

.... with Buddhist saints (Bodhisattvas) who upheld and proclaimed the truths of the Lotus. He endured many hardships because he felt that he had a responsibility to save both Buddhism and Japan, where the doctrine was supposed to be revived spread abroad. Thus he sounded a nationalistic note that was new to Buddhism. More recently in 1930 Tsunesaburo Makiguchi founded the modern sect of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism. Nichiren sects include the politically powerful Soka Gakkai Lay religious organization, but they have a much smaller following than that of the true land sects, which across with Nichiren as pat of the popular Faith movement of the Kamakura era. The people of th ....

.... the Russian nation. Church holidays and fasts enriched and brought meaning to the cycle of seasons and sowing in the subsistence society. Russians possessed a deep religious faith and from it they derived a sense of purpose in the universe and the promise of salvation. The church nourished and preserved the culture of Russia during centuries of internal strife and foreign intervention. Orthodox people feel a strong sense of community and brotherhood towards one another through a shared bond of faith. As a result of this emphasis on community, the rights of the group tend to take precedence over the rights of the individual in Russian culture. The Orthodox and Catholic f ....

.... India by Indo-Aryan invaders. Many people, influenced by the Aryan civilization, began to question the value of life and it's true meaning. Schools were opened because of this curiosity where teachers would discuss the significance of existence and the nature of man and held programs to reconstruct one's spiritual self. (Pardue, page 228) Background Near the town of Kapilavastivu, today known as Nepal, lived King Suddhodhana and Queen Maya of the indigenous tribe known as the Shakyas. (Encyclopedia Americana, page 687) Queen Maya soon became pregnant and had a dream shortly before she gave birth. In this dream a beautiful, white elephant with six tusks entered he ....