Identity - Academic Writing

In parsing through an faith identity as a Christian believer, I have found it important to reflect on the route and process that the Vatican Council II took in reviewing their dialogue and practices internally and externally. In addition to this, I believe it is important for me to look to my own faith to understand the direction all dialogue and space for interfaith hospitality and am juxtaposed between the liberal environment that I live in and scripture from the 2 Corinthians 6:14 where the New Standard Version of the Holy Bible states, 

"14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.”(Biblegateway.com, 2 Cor. 6:14-17), 

which leaves one to ask, how do you bridge pluralistic gaps in faith to ones own community? How do you reconcile yourself to being open to people and not just their religious identity that they port with them?

Mahmoud Ayoub (2007) talks about colonialism and the power dynamics that marginalize “other” faith backgrounds and the Western educational pedagogies that have side lined other religious communities in North America for decades. Yet with the influx of immigration and emigration across geographical and political boundaries, colonialism has lost its lustre and usefulness in the community building process in places like Canada, United States and England. Moreover, if communities are jostling with their own personal and social identities as separate groups, where does the struggle internally take their respective community identity? Whose citizenship in the community has or carries more value, the overt religious personal philosophy or the pluralistic spaces these democratic communities now enjoy without religious institutions politicizing who they ought to be?.

The photographs below form part of the cultural and religious identity of my family has been rooted in for many decades and for which I have inherited the building blocks of my faith. The stories of my family's personal and social identity are tied around their connections to the church and many transitions in generations who follow the Christian path. 

Source: Martyr Shrine, 2014. http://www.martyrs-shrine.com/index.php

 Martyr Shrine in Midland, Ontario, is apart of my maternal family legacy with my Great Grandfather, David Beriot, being one of the many builders who invested in the family's faith community.

Source: Personal Photograph of Donna Graves

St. Peter's Anglican Church, Minesing, Ontario, is apart of my paternal family's legacy in the rural farm community of Minesing Ontario, formerly known as Vespra, Township. As of my last visit through the community, the church is now up for sale, but its strong colonial settler past is reflected in the roads that outline the church's periphery.