Believing - Introduction Sociology - Lecture Slides, Slides of Introduction to Sociology

Download Believing - Introduction Sociology - Lecture Slides and more Slides Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Chapter 14 BELIEVING docsity.com Defining Religion Religion is connected with those socially shared ways of thinking, feeling and acting that have as their central focus some transcendent otherness. Peter Berger The Social Reality of Religion (1967, pp. 36-7) defines religion as the ‘audacious attempt to conceive of the universe as being humanly significant’. Steve Bruce God is Dead: Secularization in the West (2002, p. 2), religion can be defined as, ’Beliefs, actions and institutions predicated on the existence of entities with powers of agency (that is, god or gods) or impersonal powers or processes possessed of moral purpose (the Hindu notion of karma, for example), which can set the conditions of, or intervene in, human affairs.’ docsity.com Religion - a Social Phenomenon Émile Durkheim Émile Durkheim also saw religion as the product of a collective social effort. ‘Religion is an eminently social thing. Religious representations are collective representations that express collective realities; rites are ways of acting that are born only in the midst of assembled groups and whose purpose is to evoke, maintain, or recreate certain mental states of those groups. But if the categories are of religious origin, then they must participate in what is common to all religion: they, too must be social things, products of collective thought Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: The Totemic System in Australia [1912] 1995, p. 9 docsity.com Religion - a Social Phenomenon Max Weber (1) Max Weber was convinced that ideas developed within religious traditions could influence behaviour. Whereas Marx saw religion as largely a reactionary force, Weber thought that it could be progressive and revolutionary. He argued that Calvinism (an ascetic form of Protestantism) offered an ideological basis for capitalistic development. The Protestant Ethic then can be seen as providing the religious sanction that fostered a spirit of rigorous discipline (spiritually, socially and economically) that encouraged individuals to work toward rationally acquiring wealth (the spirit of capitalism). docsity.com Religion - a Social Phenomenon Max Weber (2) The religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means of asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of . . . the spirit of capitalism. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1946] 1958, p. 172 docsity.com The Secularisation Thesis (3) Nietzsche argued that the belief or presence of Christian belief no longer had any significant social consequences for life in modern society. Jonathan Sacks (The Reith Lectures 1990) argues that religion was increasingly a private rather than a public affair. ‘[N]o longer the vehicle by which all meaning was formulated and expressed it was now seen as a ‘mode of experience, a voice of conscience, a spring to social action or a mystical way of knowing’. docsity.com The Secularisation Thesis (4) However, as Rodney Stark (Sociology of Religion 1999, p. 249) notes, the end of religion has been assured before. ‘For nearly three centuries, social scientist and assorted western intellectuals have been promising the end of religion. Each generation has been confident that within another few decades, or possibly a bit longer, humans will ‘outgrow’ belief in the supernatural.’ docsity.com Religion’s Resurgence: Fundamentalism (1) In the last decades, and particularly after the events of September 11, there has been a substantial increase in sociological works that attempt to make sense of the resurgence of religion, especially as it pertains to fundamentalist orientations. Fundamentalism is not easily amenable to definition. However it is generally characterised by the affirmation of religious authority as holistic and absolute, admitting of neither criticism nor reduction. It is expressed through the collective demand that specific creedal and ethical dictates derived from scripture be publicly recognized and sometimes even legally enforced. docsity.com