The First Amendment: Misinterpreting Freedom of Religion

Deyanira Gonzalez and Sarah Espe Senior Division Group Website

How We Chose Our Topic: As the growing generation, we are observing of how different religions have recently become more and more popular. With this growth, larger and more widely practiced religions have dwindled in their numbers, causing a much noticed controversy on what the First Amendment means when it grants us in terms of freedom of religion. We decided to research this topic in order to clarify how the American society is mistreating the First Amendment, specifically freedom of religion. We were curious to discover the affects of government and society on choice of religion. How We Conducted Our Research: In conducting our research, we focused on finding cases between religious issues and government organizations and policies. The examples and arguments represented in our website best reflect our thesis on the relationship between the United States Government and religious organizations throughout the country. First, we discussed our personal points of view on societys attitude toward the orthodox religions and the lesser known religions. From there, we chose several specific instances where society favored a more popular religion in spite of the law of the land. Spending an exhausting number hours researching our general topic, we successfully narrowed it down to a few cases that were relevant to our thesis. How We Selected Our Category and Created Our Project: We decided that creating a website allows the viewer to freely maneuver across the information we have presented. In relation to the freedom of religion, the webpage allows the viewer the freedom to unreservedly explore the project. Because we have several cases supporting our thesis, a webpage was best to organize our data. We chose the design as a representation of the various religions recognized by modern day society. The rainbow represents a multitude of colors, as there is a multitude of religious organization accepted in our country. The banner coexist represents the suggested peace between religions, but we used it as a suggested peace between church and state. How Our Topic Relates To The Theme: The United States started with a revolution. The Framers of the Constitution reformed the government of the nation to create a fairer law for the land. As generations pass, the ideas that they had for the nation may no longer apply in some cases because of the development of society as it is today. Our nation has reacted to the laws of the State in accordance to how society has developed. Unfortunately, some aspects of certain religions clash with the idea represented in the First Amendment as freedom of religion. Our topic relates to the National History Day theme by addressing the revolution, reforms and reactions mentioned. (458 words)