Discussion

22. Revise all the articles of this Unit and get ready to discuss the following points.

1. How important is religion in the modern world?

2. How can you explain the fact that church attendance in the western world is falling?

3. Do you think there is a certain correlation between religiosity and affluence of society?

4. Do you think it’s true that most people remember God when they are in trouble and forget Him when everything is fine?

5. There is a wide-spread opinion that it isn’t important that we all are sinful, the point is that we don’t repent. Don’t you think that, by following this idea, if we sin and do repent later we can justify anything?

6. Do you think Christian Church should accept the modern changes in society and culture? Should it itself change and adapt to modernity?

7. The clergy, especially within the Russian Orthodox Church generally believe that church must struggle for purity of its religion and keep to its tenets. The developments in the Catholic and Anglican Church show the idea must be correct. So don’t you think that the Roman Catholic Church was, at least to a certain extent, right when it fought heretics in the Dark Ages?

8. What happens when Church becomes a political force?

9. How can you explain the fact that many believers try to find solace “elsewhere”: Christians accept elements from Buddhism and Hinduism or convert to Islam; some Buddhists turn to Christianity?

10. There is a tendency to visit old cathedrals like we visit museums. Do you think it’s right?

Writing

23. Revise the articles of this Unit and write an essay (about 250 words): “Religion in the modern world.”

Follow the procedure suggested in the previous Units. While writing the essay use different emphatic constructions.

Newspaper Style

Newspapers use a lot of expressive vocabulary. They prefer words that are shorter and more dramatic than the words used in everyday English. Here are some examples:

Aid (help), axe (cut, remove), back (support), bar (exclude, forbid), bid (attempt), blast (explosion), blaze (fire), boost (encourage), clash (dispute), curb (restrict, limit), drama (tense situation), drive (campaign, effort), go-ahead (approval), hit (affect badly), key (essential, vital), ordeal (painful experience), oust (push out), plea (request), pledge (promise), ploy (clever activity), poll (election, public opinion survey), probe (investigation), strife (conflict), threat (danger), vow (promise).

Besides, the headline language is quite specific:

1). Articles and auxiliaries are often left out.

E.g. OLYMPIC STADUIM COST LIKELY TO DOUBLE

2). A simple form of the verbs is used.

E.g. MINISTRY SENDS WORKERS TO US FOR FIRST TIME

3). Participles are preferable.

E.g. TEENAGER JAILED FOR UNRELATED MURDERS

4) Some journalists prefer witty headlines.

E.g. THE TIMES BOMB

24. A) Look through some English newspapers and find headlines illustrating the points given above.

B) What headline would you give to the following article?

???

Generations of children have been saying this for years but finally it is official: Shakespeare is boring, unlikely and ridiculous.

At least that is the view of a committee of teachers appointed by the education department of South Africa’s most important province, Gauteng, which wants to ban some of the Bard’s works from state school reading lists because they have unhappy endings, lack cultural diversity and fail to promote the South African constitution’s rejection of racism and sexism.

Julius Caesar never had a chance of making it past the sexism criteria, with the committee condemning the work because it “elevates men”. Anthony and Cleopatra and The Taming of the Shrew fared little better, both being described as undemocratic and racist.

Hamlet was declared persona non grata on the grounds that the play is “not optimistic or uplifting”. But it was the “too despairing” King Lear that fared the worst. “The play lacks power to excite readers and is full of violence and despair. The plot is rather unlikely and ridiculous,” the committee concluded.

Those that slipped through included Romeo and Juliet (presumably not for its happy ending), The Merchant of Venice (anti-semitism not being considered racism?) and Macbeth.

Shakespeare was not alone. Gulliver’s Travels is to be pulled because its humor is deemed foreign to South Africans. Even the country’s Nobel laureate and Booker prize winner, Nadine Gordimer, is to be removed from school libraries as her writing is allegedly “deeply racist,” even though three of her books were also banned by the apartheid regime.

The Gauteng education department, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, is ready to ban Mrs Gordimer’s July’s People, which has been set reading in schools for seven years, because it is “deeply racist, superior and patronizing. The novel seems one-sided and outdated.”

“To be called a racist as a white South African and as someone who stayed here through all of the worst time and as someone who identified closely with the struggle – that is just very insulting,” Mrs Gordimer said.

Some of Africa’s most prominent writers and artists plan to send a letter of protest to the ruling African National Congress accusing it of “political correctness gone mad”.

(From ‘The Guardian’ April 18, 2001)