Kryachkov 2!indd

104
Д. А. Крячков
UNIT III
clashed in recent years, and fresh Muslim-Christian conflicts are __________ (21) in Côte d’Ivoire 
and Kenya. Statistics on civil unrest __________ (22) that once a minority religious group in a 
given country __________ (23) 10–20 percent of the population, it can sufficiently resist policies 
promoting religious harmony and can even sustain struggle for liberation.
Clearly, other factors __________ (24) to such strife besides religion. Yet although many con-
flicts are the result of politics, economics, and governmental mismanagement, religious ideas do 
__________ (25). Collective action depends on how social groups __________ (26) the world in 
which they live and how they __________ (27) their own identities in relation to the identities of 
others. The way religious institutions address literacy, schooling, governance, human rights, and 
interreligious dialogue can support governments’ ability to __________ (28) to crises surrounding 
these issues or exacerbate religious strife.
Ex. 41. 
a) Read the following article and identify its topic and thesis. 
b) Think of a possible title.
c) Comment on the ideas of the article.
The news media continue to stretch the boundaries of religion far beyond the usual parameters 
in the American popular imagination. Is belief in climate change a religion, as Rep. Steve King as-
serts? Did Steve Jobs create a new iReligion with all his visionary iProducts? Has Jerry Garcia from 
the Grateful Dead achieved the status of a spiritual icon?
Look on the pages of HuffPost, follow the religion headlines in Google news, read through the 
posts at Patheos, and you will see that religion is no longer simply a matter of faith in God. Instead, 
it is … anything and everything imaginable. The truth about religion is that there is no one Truth 
but rather multiple versions of many possible truths.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, called religion a neurosis and claimed that it 
was, at bottom, an illusion; Karl Marx, who called for the workers of the world to unite, famously 
stated that religion was the opiate of the masses; William James, American pragmatist and innova-
tive psychologist, defined religion as the feelings, acts, and experiences of individuals in their soli-
tude as it relates to their apprehension of the divine; 20th century theologian Paul Tillich asserted 
that religion is an expression of ultimate concern.
The great religious traditions all provide very different teachings about religious truth: no god 
and impermanence in Buddhism; multiple gods and one underlying cosmic reality in Hinduism; 
one God who created the cosmos and humans in the three monotheistic religions; and among 
indigenous religious cultures throughout the world, an understanding that sacred powers perme-
ate the cosmos with a variety of spiritual truths tied to these powers.
Who is right? Where can one locate the ultimate authority on these matters? Is it the Bible? The 
Koran? The Rig Veda? Science? Fox News? In our increasingly pluralistic and religiously diverse 
world, is there only one arbiter of truth, reality, the meaning of life in these sacred matters?
We have fundamentalist atheists on one side of the spectrum wanting to get rid of religion 
and all of its toxicity; on the other side are religious fundamentalists looking to purify the world 
of all the false religions. The rest of us in the middle — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hin-
dus, Nones — are learning to live with the unavoidable fact that multiple religious perspectives 
and communities must learn to live together if not harmoniously than at least with a minimum 
amount of respect and toleration.

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Английский язык для магистратуры