Religion

Religion
O Anchor of identity
O Gives meaning to life
O Provides personal gratification
O Release from frustrations and anxieties

Sociology & Religion
O NOT to criticize
O Goal is to study how
religion is organized
O How it affects the
members of a given
society

The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life
O Two questions
O What is religion?
O What are the functions of religion for
society?
O Study of indigenous Australians

Religion is…
O “A unified system of beliefs and practices
relative to sacred beings, 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”

Cultural Component
O System of beliefs
O Beliefs – states of opinions
O Practices – rights, modes of action
O Beliefs and practices exist within a social
context
O Consistent with the values and norms of the
culture

Social Organizational
Component
O Community or Church
O Collective of persons who share similar
beliefs and practices

Sacred Things
O Profane
O Realm of the every day world
O Sacred
O Objects or ideas that are treated with
reverence and awe
O Existing only in relation to the profane
O Anything can become sacred
O Not a property of the object
O Exists in the mind of the believer

The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life
O Religion developed
out of group
experience
O Performing rituals
results in developing
a sense of awe
O Reinforces the
moral norms of
society

The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life
O Anomie
O When a society is no longer in awe of
moral norms
O Normlessness

Religion has…
O A set of beliefs
O Things considered sacred
O A community of believers
O A set of rituals, ceremonies or behaviors
O A form of organization

Types of Religion
O Animism
O Belief that spirits in habit virtually
everything in nature
O Spirits can be influence by specific rituals

Types of Religion
O Totemism
O Worship of plants, animals
or other natural objects as
gods and ancestors
O Durkheim
O Totems were expressions
of a society’s conceptions
about itself
O True of all societies

Types of Religion
O Shamanism
O Belief that certain
individuals have
special skill or
knowledge in
influencing the spirits
that affect processes
and events in their
environment

Types of Religion
O Polytheism
O Belief in and
worship of more
than one god
O Monotheism
O Belief in and
worship of one
god

Troeltsch’s Categories of
Religion
O Mysticism
O Belief that spiritual or
divine truths come to
us through intuition
and meditation, not
through the use of
reason or the ordinary
range of human
experience and
senses

Troeltsch’s Categories of
Religion
O Church
O An institutionalized organization of people
who share common religious beliefs

Troeltsch’s Categories of
Religion
O Three kinds of Churches
O Ecclesia – an official state religion that
includes all or most members of a society
O Denominations – not officially linked to the
state
O Sects – small groups that have broken away
from a parent church and that call for a
return to old ways
O Follow rigid doctrines & fundamentalist
teachings

Troeltsch’s Categories of
Religion
O Cult
O Directed by a charismatic leader
O Call for a new, unique and frequently
unusual lifestyle

Conflict Theory
O Religion is a tool of the elite to keep the
lower classes in check
O Counsels the masses to accept their
positions and be humble
O “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the sentiment of a heartless
world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
It is the opium of the people.”

Marx on Religion
O Camera obscura
O “inverted world consciousness”
O “Man makes religion; religion does not
make man.”

Marx on Religion
O “The religious world is but the reflex of the real
world.”
O “The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of men is a demand for their
real happiness. The call to abandon their
illusions about their condition is a call to
abandon a condition that requires
illusions.”

Durkheim
O We typically think of religion as another
way of thinking
O True function of religion is to make us act
and help us live our lives
O “The worshiper who has communed with
his god is not only a man who sees new
truths that the unbeliever does not know;
he is a man who is capable of more.”

Durkheim
O All societies have religion
O We perceive society as something greater
than ourselves and give it supernatural
existence
O More complex society, more complex
religion

Durkheim
O “Nearly all great social institutions are
born of religion.”
O “In order for the chief aspects of collective
life to have begun as merely diverse
aspects of religious life, religious life clearly
must have been the pre-eminent form and
abbreviated expression of the whole of
collective life. If religion generated
everything that is essential in society, this
is because the idea of society is the soul of
religion.”

Durkheim
O Religion is an expression of social
cohesion
O “The collective ideal that religion
expresses, then, Is not due to some innate
power of the individual, but rather to the
school of collective life that the individual
has learned to idealize.”
O “A society can neither create nor recreate
itself without at the same time creating the
ideal.”

Functionalism
O Religion is a requirement for group life
O Manifest and latent functions and
dysfunctions
O Manifest functions –
solidarity, control, answers, ceremonies/ritu
als, emotional support
O Latent functions – mate selection, psychic
reward for good deeds
O Dysfunctions – exclusion, division, status
quo

Robert Bellah
O Civil religion

Religion has…
O A set of beliefs
O Things considered sacred
O A community of believers
O A set of rituals, ceremonies or behaviors
O A form of organization