The duration of the first week of class was spent introducing the subject of what religion is and the factors that play into how an individual views religion. Our experience in a certain culture, affects the image we perceive causing an effect on our story/memories that is connected to the community that surrounded or is surrounding ourselves currently. This chain reaction is explained further in the first section of assigned reading in McGuire’s text.  

McGuire describes a conversation that someone may have when visiting San Antonio, Texas. The conversation is most likely to start off with “What church do you go to?”. I was shocked by this being a popular topic of conversation during the first few minutes of being a conversation with a stranger. In San Diego California, where I grew up the conversation of what church someone may belong to or what religion they are affiliated with was hardly ever brought up in any conversation that I have been in. Even conversations with my own family members that was never discussed. A factor affecting this may have been that my family members and friends had various ideas of religion and who they were affiliated with and what religion meant to them or didn’t mean. When comparing this to McGuire’s description of San Antonio there is a vast difference. Religion can be from a certain perspective this unspoken factor in the world. Either people talk about it and won’t stop talking about it or hardly ever discuss their beliefs to others and stay to themselves. Therefore, when I read McGuire’s text and when other individual’s stories were shared in class, I found it interesting that even though many had not shared their experience before with their religion or past experiences to others before many of our stories were similar.