Christian Religion

Master of Religion Final Essay

By Rev. Nancy Rutledge

Thank you, Amy, for all of your hard work at the Universal Life Church and especially to Dr. Herbert Fuchs for writing this course. Each week I received a very valuable message that helped me in my life as a Christian and minister. I became very enlightened on such subjects as bible study, the Trinity, Sacraments and Baptism, worship, tithing, counseling, History of Christianity and so many others subjects. 

I encourage everyone to take this course. Master of Religion opened doors for me from its teachings that lead to opportunities way beyond this course. I found this course to be very interesting and informative.

It covers the bible basics. It talks about the different bible versions; Translations and Paraphrases. Translation is translated closest to the Greek and Hebrew versions. This course talks about the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament in which we had to memorize the Names of each book and the order they were listed. The Old Testament is the oldest and most original part of the bible. It is used by most religious denominations, from Jews, Catholics, Lutherans, and Anglican to the newer Evangelists.

There are over fifty references to the scriptures in the New Testament. Since they are not referring to themselves, they must be referring to the Old Testament. Dr. Fuchs refers to many scriptures in this course.

The Ten Commandment section was extremely interesting to me. It was on the differences between the Book of Exodus and the Book of Deuteronomy versions. Although there is a lot of differences in the amount of words per commandment in each version, what is important is they say different things, which gives different meanings. Some Biblical Scholars believe the Exodus version was written first. There are conflicting arrangements of the Ten Commandments as revealed by a comparison of the Protestant, Catholic and the Hebrew versions.

There are lost scriptures. The Jewish thought they would make the bible smaller and better by taking eleven books out of the Old Testament. They also cut out 5 more books and than at a much later date divided two books, so in the end they had twenty-four books.

Master of Religion did a great job of discussing Priesthood and Missionary duties. It explained the different Priests, where they started out as, salary and what it takes to be a good candidate. This was useful information.

It is okay to be a woman leader in the church. The bible talks of three prophetesses. One, Deborah, was also a judge. In today’s churches it varies, some have women deacons, priests, bishops and the American Anglican (Episcopal) Church just elected the first woman as the Presiding Bishop. This is the first in the four hundred-year history of that church.

So in today’s churches it varies by denomination and where in the world you are located. The Vatican has a policy banning women from the Priesthood.

I also liked the comparison chart of Religious titles.

This course was very knowledgeable and covered the topics very well. I gained a lot of new knowledge and enjoyment from this course.

In Christ Jesus name,

Rev. Nancy Rutledge

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

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