Religious Freedom Vs. Religious Conformity

• Prompt #2: Your essay will be organized to support a thesis claim related to Americans' (and/or people from other countries') value for religious freedom vs. religious conformity. The early colonies of the USA were populated in part by people who escaped countries where they were not free to practice their religion. When the USA became a country, its Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, as well as freedom of speech. Despite this Constitutional guarantee of freedom, many religious people and groups still expect the rest of the society to agree with their religious values and precepts. In your essay you may assert a claim of value as you explore your own position on the tension between freedom to practice one's own religious/belief system individually and the desire for a society as a whole to embrace a common religious/belief system. Or, as the prompt on page 260 describes, you may defend a claim of fact, arguing what you perceive to be the situation today from your own observations: Is American (or another country's) society as a whole accepting of or intolerant of diversity of religion and beliefs? Whatever you claim, you must cite at least three examples of literary evidence from Ch 5 to support your claim.

• Prompt #3: Compose a claim based on your reflection on the degree to which the literature in Chapter 5 explores the question of the degree to which mainstream society depends on and absorbs non-conformists. Is this an inevitable aspect of social progress? Should the mainstream resist fringe movements? Why? or, Why not? Your claim will most likely be a claim of value, but it is conceivable that you could present and defend a claim of fact (e.g., arguing that based on history, some trends are inevitable).