Society and Religion

11 Key excerpts on "Society and Religion"

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  Sociology

  • Anthony Giddens, Philip W. Sutton(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  The sociology of religion places special demands on our sociological imagination as we look to understand the diversity of beliefs and rituals found in human societies. This means we have to be sensitive to the ideals that inspire profound conviction in believers, yet at the same time we must be relatively detached from our personal beliefs. Sociologists confront ideas that seek the eternal, while recognizing that religious groups also pursue very mundane goals, such as acquiring finance or gaining followers. We also need to recognize the diversity of religious beliefs and modes of conduct and to probe into the nature of religion as a general social phenomenon.

  What is religion?

  Defining religion seems to be such a simple task as to merit no deep thought. Religions are commonly defined by a belief in God or gods and perhaps an afterlife, but they also involve worship in religious buildings – temples, churches, synagogues or mosques – and doing ‘religious things’ such as praying and eating or not eating certain foods. For sociologists trying to set limits to their field of study, reaching general agreement on such a basic matter has proved extraordinarily difficult. Indeed, Aldridge (2013: 22) argues that ‘We cannot expect to agree on a definition and then debate matters of substance, since matters of substance are built into any definition. There is not, and never will be, a universally agreed definition of religion.’

  One reason for this is that sociology contains numerous theoretical perspectives, and these differ in how they construe the nature of social reality. As a consequence, they also disagree about how that reality can and should be studied. For example, many macro-level studies adopt a realist view which sees religion as a fundamental social institution that transmits values, a moral code and norms of behaviour across generations. Hence ‘religion’ exists objectively and has real effects on individuals. Alternatively, several other micro-level studies are rooted in a more social constructionist position, which focuses on the ways in which what constitutes ‘religion’ is continually reproduced and changed in everyday interaction processes.

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  An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion

  Classical and Contemporary Perspectives

  • Inger Furseth, Pål Repstad(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  We have already presented some sociological research questions about religious life. It is time to launch a tentative definition of sociology of religion: Sociology of religion is the study of the interplay between religion and other areas in society. In other words, sociologists of religion are interested in how religion influences society and how society influences religion. This is a schematic definition, and it can be misunderstood in the direction that religion is a firm package, clearly set apart from the rest of society. It is not. Religious practices, beliefs, and institutions are closely intertwined with cultural, economic, and many other practices, beliefs, and institutions, so the borders between religion and general society are blurred. We should add that our tentative definition raises another central question, namely: How do we define religion? We will discuss that in the next chapter.

  The sociology of religion does not inherently differ from general sociology. Sociology of religion has as its subject the study of religion in its social context, and it applies the same theories and methods that are used to study economy, politics, and other social phenomena. This book will attempt to demonstrate that there is interdependence between general sociology and the sociology of religion. As already mentioned, there was a tendency for the sociology of religion to become relatively isolated from general sociology. This may in part have been due to the fact that sociology used to give little attention to religion for a period after World War II. In academic circles, religion was largely viewed as a phenomenon of diminishing importance. This was different from sociology’s early years, when giants like Max Weber and Émile Durkheim demonstrated a high degree of interest in religion. Later, general sociology and the sociology of religion developed along separate paths. After World War II, several Western countries experienced a demand for a sociology that could contribute to rebuilding society through economic and political development, which led to a neglect of sociology of culture and religion (Beckford 1989 ).

  In recent decades, many dramatic events have put religion on the agenda in the social sciences. Events like 9/11 and other terror attacks, the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the Russian Orthodox Church’s legitimation of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and more generally the emergence of populist leaders and movements invoking religion have made religion a hot topic, and not least the relation between religion and politics. Sometimes the pendulum may have swung too far, in the sense that media and even sociologists have been too quick to point to religion as an explanation of conflict and violence, ignoring other possible factors, such as socio-economic inequality and marginalization. Being a sociologist of religion does not imply that the more religion is used as an explanatory variable, the better. Weighing religion as a factor against other sociological factors is an important part of analyses in sociology of religion, a challenge to which we will return more specifically in many chapters.

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  Shari`a in the Secular State

  Evolving Meanings of Islamic Jurisprudence in Turkey

  • Russell Powell(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  28 He thus understands religion in a social context (“God is society writ large”). In this view, religion is constructed by society, and its expressions have a number of common forms – e.g., a division of the world into sacred and profane; a belief in souls and the spiritual world; and a faith in some form of divinity, asceticism, or rites/ liturgy. The identification of these forms allowed Durkheim to analyze commonalities across religious traditions in order to make generalizations about “religion.” In addition to characterizing religion as “the social,” Durkheim made a connection between religion and religious community:

  A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.29

  This is arguably the most influential approach to understanding religion in the social sciences.

  Berger provides a description of the dialectical role of religion in mediating between society and individuals.30 He identifies three steps in this process: externalization, objectivation, and internalization.31 Externalization is the physical and mental outpouring of human beings into the world. Objectivation is the phenomenon of these outpourings coalescing around and confronting the original producers (in his terms as a “facticity”).32 Internalization is the reception of this reality by human beings, transforming “the structures of the objective world into structures of the subjective consciousness.”33 This process creates a meaningful order that, when well established, may be described as religion or “the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established.”34 Religion reinforces the power of internalization by legitimating social institutions as sacred.35 However, beyond legitimation there continues to be a reciprocal relationship as individuals continue to impact objectivation through their ongoing externalization.36

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  Supernatural as Natural

  A Biocultural Approach to Religion

  • Michael Winkelman, John R. Baker(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The structural–functional approach of Evans-Pritchard does not fully embrace Durkheim’s view that religion is defined by the sacred, nor does it completely reject the intellectualist view that religion is a belief in supernatural beings. His work shows how religious beliefs are related to the structures of society. He argues that this is the influence of social structure on religion, rather than a social determination of the beliefs and ideas regarding spirits.

  Religion as a Cultural System

  In his classic article “Religion as a Cultural System,” Clifford Geertz (1966) integrates the intellectualist concern over the explanatory role of religion with the functionalist perspective. In doing so, Geertz provides a broad and all-encompassing definition of religion that incorporated the intellectual, emotional, symbolic, and social aspects of religion as part of the total world-view of a culture. Geertz’s definition, which has resonated with many anthropologists, sees religion as “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, persuasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of actuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (Geertz 1966).

  A key aspect of Geertz’s conception of religion is its role as a symbol system—a system of interconnected meanings that function to express the essence of a culture’s worldview and ethos, encompassing such diverse domains as morals, character, values, aesthetics, and cosmology. The principal function of religion is to illustrate the conformance between everyday life and the ideal view of the Universe that is depicted in a culture’s cosmology. Religious rituals provide mechanisms to make this connection emotionally convincing, giving people a certainty that the general principles in which they believe actually operate in the Universe. Religion projects a cosmic order that serves as a general model of the Universe, and then socializes human beings to help to ensure that people’s morals, emotions, and judgments conform to these ideals.

  Symbol System

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  Foundations and Futures in the Sociology of Religion

  • Luke Doggett, Alp Arat(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part IV

  Religious dimensions of social life

  Passage contains an image

  10 Researching the religious dimensions of social life

  The sacred and the social uses of moral meaning in contemporary society

  Gordon Lynch

  As the earlier sections of this book demonstrate, research in the sociology of religion has much to contribute to our understanding of important structures and processes in religious institutions and individual religiosity, as well forms of interaction between religious organisations and other fields of social life. The aim of this chapter is to delineate an area of research within the contemporary sociology of religion that has arguably been less well-developed than this work on the religious lives of individuals and organisations, but which constitutes an important area for future work.

  A central assumption of much work in the sociology of religion over the past forty years is that it most naturally focuses on beliefs, practices, organisations and social structures and processes that relate to human engagement with supra-human beings or forces.1 This substantive understanding of religion under-writes the continued interest in the sociological study of major religious traditions as well, in recent decades, as the discipline’s interest in new religious movements and the ‘new age.’ The emergence of the study of ‘nonreligion’ as an important area for attention more recently has not necessarily troubled this assumption in instances where this work focuses on organisations or forms of living that are defined as being distinct from those oriented towards such supra-human powers.

  The aim of this chapter is not to declaim this centre of gravity for our discipline in any way. This working assumption about its field of study, and the avoidance of protracted debates about disciplinary focus and identity, has provided a valuable basis for researchers to develop our understanding of contemporary religious life across a range of traditions and contexts. The intellectual, ethical and political significance of resourcing more nuanced academic and public understandings of religion cannot be understated.

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  Invitation to the Sociology of Religion

  • Phil Zuckerman(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2002 [1904]). In this classic study, Weber explores the ways in which specific Protestant/Calvinist religious beliefs played a decisive role in the development of modern western capitalism.

  4.  Sociologists study social patterns .

  Do women attend religious services more often than men? Are blacks more likely to believe in the existence of Satan than whites? Do Jews tend to vote more liberal than Christians? Do religious people divorce less frequently than the nonreligious? Sociologists of religion have their work cut out for them in exploring the plethora of patterns that emerge concerning religion in society. The most hotly debated topic within the sociology of religion during the past decade has revolved around a basic question of one particular social pattern: whether or not people are more or less religious today than they were in the past—the matter of secularization (Swatos and Olson 2000; Bruce 1992).

  5.  Sociologists understand that an individual can be truly understood only within his or her sociohistorical context .

  To put it simply, an individual can be a member of a particular religion only if that religion exists when he or she does. Furthermore, geography (where a person exists) is key (Park 1994). An individual born in Sri Lanka is much more likely to be Buddhist than an individual born in Honduras, who will most likely be Catholic (O’Brien and Palmer 1993). My friend Kent describes himself as “nothing” in terms of a religious identity. But he isn’t “nothing” in a sociohistorical vacuum. His parents were also “nothing”; they didn’t raise Kent with any particular religious education or involvement. Furthermore, Kent grew up in a largely secular enclave and attended school in west Los Angeles with few overtly religious kids or teachers. Additionally, Kent lives in a time in history and within a culture in which religion isn’t imperative, lack of religion isn’t illegal or suspect, and being “nothing” is considered quite normal. In short, an individual’s personal religious identity (or lack thereof) is greatly influenced by where, when, and among whom that individual lives.

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  The Sociology of Religion

  A Substantive and Transdisciplinary Approach

  • George Lundskow(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Yet C. Smith and Denton’s (2005) recent empirical analysis of religion among 14- to 25-year-olds in the United States also shows that religious devotion does saliently affect actual behavior. Youth tend to drink alcohol and do drugs less, engage less in risky sexual behavior, study more, and generally develop greater psychological health the more devoutly they subscribe to a religion, whether liberal or conservative (pp. 222–227). As the authors interpret their findings, using both statistical and ethnographic methods, they discover that peers exert the greatest influence on youth, and that if peers are religious, any given 13- to 25-year-old will conform to one’s peer’s religious expectations. If this means no alcohol, then the person won’t drink. However, if the peers drink and blow off school and engage in promiscuous sex, then any given youth will behave similarly, once again according to peer expectations. Their study suggests that religion today has minimal independent power to shape attitudes and behavior. It requires peer reinforcement and integration with school, and especially with leisure activities.

  We may also consider a third perspective, one that acknowledges both the dynamic and the secularization perspectives. Sociologist Douglas Porpora (2001) argues that people will always require religion as the primary means of understanding the supernatural and the transcendent. Whether individual or social, people need to have meaning in life. Of course, meaning becomes strongest when shared. We require other people to recognize and in the process validate our individual existence. How sure can any one person be of his or her beliefs over time if no one else accepts those beliefs as valid? Porpora, as a sociologist, argues that we require social validation, even if the reference group is relatively small. But also as a sociologist, he inquires about social meaning and the loss of collectively shared moral space. That is, there must be a moral space in which all people hold and respect in others the same basic rights and responsibilities, which is necessary for a pluralistic, free, and democratic society. Moral meaning underlies all issues of justice in society.

  To meaningfully guide thought and action, religion must mediate between the individual and society. It must make us into a certain type of person with certain boundaries and privileges both for ourselves and for others, but it must also allow the development of individuality. Moral values must mediate, not dictate. As Porpora (2001) expresses the concept, “it is one thing to believe in God” at an individual level, which the overwhelming majority of people in the world do, but “it is another thing for that belief to be operative in our lives” (pp. 96–97). In order to be operative, it must connect, not in some practical or convenient way, but in a cosmic way. As Porpora sees it, being, meaning, and morality all coincide, and what we most require is a moral vision located in being, in the fact that we exist, and that we exist in an impossibly expansive universe. If science has revealed that the earth is 6–8 billion years old, and that the universe contains billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars and planets, then how do we fit into such vast and timeless proportions? How can our little ideas and petty accomplishments mean anything in that context? Certainly, if science can show us the truth of our littleness surrounded by such bigness, does it not therefore call forth religion ever more strongly?

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  State of Nature, Stages of Society

  Enlightenment Conjectural History and Modern Social Discourse

  • Frank Palmeri(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  Society requires us to become its servants, forgetting our own interests, and compels us to endure all sorts of hardships, privations, and sacrifice without which social life would be impossible” (Elementary Forms, 154). Through religion, society represents itself to its members; it respects its own establishment, power, and highest ideals. Thus, the sociology of religion reveals the organic nature of society, the way that all social functions and actions find their meaning in ideals that distinguish and define the society, providing its identity. 18 Durkheim’s view of the role of religion carries the implication that religious feelings are still at work in modern, secular societies, because such societies also pay tribute to their own highest ideals. For example, although post-Revolutionary France tolerates many forms of religious belief or none at all, it still expects all citizens to honor the ideals of justice, democracy, and free inquiry (Elementary Forms, 161). These constitute French society’s real religion. Those who fight superstitions may assert that superstitious beliefs contradict scientific facts, but such an appeal only has an effect on people if their society has faith in science and respect for it. Durkheim thus adopts a far less critical attitude toward religion than the Enlightenment conjectural historians, especially Hume and Condorcet. Durkheim’s attitude toward religion also diverges from that of the conjectural historians of religion in that he does not ascribe the origin or central impulse of religious sentiment to fear—or to wonder, like the deists. Rather, he finds moral feelings and respect at the foundation of religious beliefs (Elementary Forms, 155, 169). Durkheim seeks to penetrate the mystery of religion, but the meaning he finds does not debunk religion or point to its expendability. Rather, in drawing an equivalence between the social and the divine, he registers the inescapability and benefits of religion

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  Understanding Classical Sociology

  Marx, Weber, Durkheim

  • John A Hughes, Wes Sharrock, Peter J Martin(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Usually the origin of religion is ascribed to feelings of fear or reverence inspired in conscious persons by mysterious and dreaded beings; from this point of view, religion seems merely like the development of individual states of mind and private feelings. But this over-simple explanation has no relation to facts.… The individual would never have risen to the conception of forces which so immeasurably surpass him and all his surroundings had he known nothing but himself and the physical universe.… The power thus imposed on his respect and become the object of his adoration is society, of which the gods were only the hypostatic form. Religion is in a word the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself; it is the characteristic way of thinking of collective existence. (1951: 312)

  The immediately relevant point is the way in which society is encountered by individuals as something which ‘immeasurably’ surpasses their own capacities, as something which is commanding of respect to the point of becoming the object of the greatest adoration, something which is surely capable of gaining the individual’s acceptance of its moral authority.

  The Solidarity of Society

  Although Durkheim’s attentions after his work on suicide transferred to religion, his sociological preoccupations remained constant. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life represents an investigation into the way in which religion serves as a source of society’s moral authority and also provides, through its rituals, a mechanism for the creation of social solidarity. Durkheim also weaves into the book an argument that he was to develop later, namely, that even the constructs by which we think, are given to us by society. The whole book elaborates the remarks in Suicide about the gods being the hypostatic form of society’s power and religion being ‘the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself’.

  The study of religion

  Durkheim starts from the assumption that religion is not to be explained in its own terms, that is, as a response to the presence of supernatural powers in the world. There are no superhuman powers, except those of society. In this respect, Durkheim’s views are comparable to those of Feuerbach, so significant an influence on Marx, who held that to think of God as creating humankind is to get matters the wrong way around. God is a human creation. However, while it may be that there is no God, Durkheim does not want to dismiss religion as simple error or complete delusion, but, like Marx, argues that to understand the hold that religion has upon people one must investigate its social role. The very fact that religion is such a widespread phenomenon testifies, for Durkheim, that there must be something to it. The problem is, therefore, to determine what truth religion represents. In this connection, Durkheim takes a very different direction to that of Marx. The latter supposes that religion is the ideological expression of the inadequate capacity of existing social conditions to realise the full human potential of people, whilst for Durkheim religion expresses some profound truths about the relationship between society and its members. There are two directions in which his search could have gone, one of which we have already seen that Durkheim does not favour, namely, seeing religion as the ‘development of individual states of mind and private feelings’. The other is, of course, to examine religion as the product of collective life.

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  Introducing Religion

  Religious Studies for the Twenty-First Century

  • Robert S. Ellwood(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  11

  traveling together: the sociology of religion

  Figure 11.1 Congregation sitting in a church

  Source: Robert Nicholas/OJO Images Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

  Learning Objectives

  After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • Discuss whether it is true to say that all religion is social.
  • Determine how the nature and structure of a religious group itself gives messages about the meaning and experience of the group, by whether it is close-knit or loose, has authoritarian or democratic leadership, and so forth.
  • Present the various ways in which a religious group can relate to the surrounding society.
  • Discuss the meaning for the sociology of religion of Redfield’s concept of Great and Little Traditions.
  • Distinguish between established and emergent religion. Describe major forms of each: international, national, and denominational for established; intensive and expansive for emergent.
  • Describe the circumstances out of which emergent religion typically derives and some of its fundamental characteristics, such as selection of one central symbol and practice, future orientation, and central, charismatic prophet.
  • Briefly describe major types of religious personality.
  • Define some leading ways in which religion transforms the society around it.
  • Tell how religion interprets history.

  All Religion Is Social

  Think of any religious group of which you have been a part, or have known about, or can imagine being part of. How much does the way others in the group talk about the religion support your own belief in it, and your participation? How much do you find yourself using the same language as they when you are around them and in the religious context? Indeed, can you imagine yourself as having come to this religion totally on your own, without a social context of family or friends, without encountering its words whether spoken or in printed texts?

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  A New Science of Religion

  • Greg Dawes, James Maclaurin(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Myths that create collective identity and define in-group/out-group boundaries. Religions feature stories that solidify and sacralize the history and identity of the people who hold them. Examples include the Hebrew myth of a “chosen” people and the Shinto story of a “divine” race. Yet myths are not only about ethnicity. Merely sharing religious ideas establishes boundaries. Theological distinctions are every bit as effective as social ones.
• Doctrines that instill personal and collective convictions and sacral-ize values worth defending. Religious teachings provide a consortium of ideas that constitute worldviews, what psychologists refer to as “meaning systems.” The role of beliefs in human thought and behaviour is profound. In part, beliefs inform perception and interpretation of external events, color emotional experiences and responses, define social relationships, determine moral judgements, and, importantly, influence behaviour.
• Attitudes that devalue out-group members, heighten prejudice and intolerance, and recalibrate moral judgements. The effect of religiosity on personal attitudes has been a focus of the psychology of religion since the seminal work of Gordon Allport in the 1950s and 60s. This work demonstrates significant links between religiosity and higher levels of prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and intolerance. Summarizing the literature, Ralph Hood, Peter Hill, and Bernard Spilka state: “The research shows that as a broad generalization, the more religious an individual is, the more prejudiced that person is” (2009: 411). Such findings are relevant for clarifying belligerent attitudes and acts in the name of religion and assessing the nature of religious fundamentalism.
• Sacred claims that create scarce resources, such as land, goods, and privileges. Religion often identifies things—real estate, resources, relics, persons—as sacred, thereby prompting conflicting claims and violent competition. Scarce resources can also be intangible but highly valued commodities like divine blessing and salvation (Avalos 2005)