This week in class we presented different articles that we were assigned to read. On Monday, many of the articles that were assigned focused on the effects of gender and sexuality in religion, and how they can affect personal religious beliefs. The article that my group read was called “Queering the Dragonfest” and it focused on the relationship between sexuality and religious beliefs. The author of this article noticed that throughout her study, her viewpoint changed, and she started looking at the way sexuality and gender are connected with religion, rather than focusing on feminism in religion. The second article I read on Wednesday was “At East With Our Own Kind” and it was about the relationship between social class and religion. This article really intrigued me because I previously assumed that religion was very separate from social class, but I realized how influential it actually is when deciding upon a religious organization to join. While both of these articles seem to be very different in topic, they both focus on the many outside factors that affect religion and religious beliefs, such as gender and social class. I found these articles to be very interesting because they both shed light on the outside factors that influence religion that I never gave much thought to previously.