Week 15 Lecture 2 PowerPoint (Religion) Flashcards
Sociology & Religion
Religion impacts all aspects of social life
- shapes individual behaviour
- shapes national policy
- shapes international action
How individuals, cultures construe religious beliefs and how these penetrate public culture and individual lives.
*Implication of religious interpretations for individual, institutional, and societal processes
Defining religion
seperate from other types of knowledge and belief systems and ideoloigies such as liberalism and feminism
*Often sacred vs profane
Sacred - encompasses elements beyond everyday life that inspire respect, awe, and even fear; provides believers with meaning, order, and coherence.
*People interact with belief system with rituals and practices
The Profane – ordinary and commonplace elements of life
*Religion Must move beyond ordinary and into sacred
Four forms of religious organization
- Ecclesia – a religious organization that claims to include most or all of the members of a society and is recognized as the national or official religion.
*Decline in power with introduction to separation between religion and state - Denominations – a large, organized religion not officially linked to the state or government
*Historically, Canadians tend to be Christian, but no christian STATE - Sects – a relatively small religious group that has broken away from some other religious organization to renew what it considers the “original vision” of the faith
*Ex. Normanism, often strict, rigid belief system - Cults or New Religious Movements (NRM) – a small alternative faith community that represents either a new religion or a major innovation in an existing faith
Functionalism & Relogion
Durkheim
- sacred & profane
- gives meaning and purpose to people’s live
- offers ultimate values to hold in common
- Serves to bind people together in times of crisis and confusion
Functionalism & Relogion
Parsons
*Integration is a key societal need
- religion is a key mechanism for integration
- binds people together, regulates relationships, coordinates individual beliefs into broader societal norms
* Emphasized the integrative function of religion
* Integration – the coordination, adjustment, and regulation of relationships among various actors within the social system (a key societal need & pillar that ensures society’s survival)
* Religion performs the function of integration
Conflict Theory & Religion
Marx
*Inhibits social change
- leads people to focus on other concerns rather than their exploitation
*promotes false consciousness (“must have been God’s will”)
- lessens collective political action
- Perpetuate social inequalities: provisions can be taken from the government and put on religious organizations to deal with
- prevents addressing inequalities meaningfully
EX. homeless shelter takes away from real problem (band aide)
Numbing people to their suppressed circumstances
Religion
Weber
Protestant Ethic leads to the spirit of Capitalism
*working hard, avoiding spending
* accumulating wealth for its own sake
Secularization Thesis
Secular = separation of church and state
*Religion is and will continue to decline around the world making states and the world increasingly secular
Argument: modernization - changes to state in economic relations that veer away from church and traditional values
Critiques:
- Religious growth
- Secular states are often still informed by religion in some capacity
5 Assumptions of Western Secularism
W. Brown
- Secularism generates religious neutrality
- Secularism is equally available to all religions
*State doesn’t favour any one religion - Secularism generates tolerance as mutual respect among religions
- Secularism is culturally neutral
- Secularism generates gender freedom and equality
REALITY
- upholds Christian values
- used as rhetoric to promote Islamophobia and control Muslim women’s bodies
Ex. France government burkini ban
- violates religious neutrality
- By taking stand against one religion, state is prioritizing others
