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ORGANIZING QUESTIONS
1. What is the functionalist perspective on religion?
2. What is the functionalist model of society?
3. What is the conflict perspective on religion?
4. What is the conflict model of society?
FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE
Emile Durkheim
Durkheim studied Australian aboriginal tribes on the assumption that studying the earliest, least developed form of religion would provide insight into the essential elements of religion
He described the clan organization of these tribes and their sacred totem animal or plant species, which were taboo and treated with great respect.
He argues that the totems were the symbols of both the totemic principle and the clan, of both the gods and of society because the gods and society are one and the same. The god of the clan, the totemic principle, is the clan personified.
The gods are superior to humans who depend upon them and are subject to their will and commandments. Likewise, society is experienced as external to individuals and they are dependent on it.
Society controls individuals through physical and material restraints, but its true power derives from moral authority. Moral authority is experienced as an external force, which takes on a sacred quality because it is experienced as unlike ordinary forces and objects.
The world is thus divided into the sacred and the profane. There is an extraordinary atmosphere surrounding sacred acts; this atmosphere was symbolic of a hidden reality. Contrary to Freud, however, Durkheim argued that the hidden reality was the moral force of the human community. Religion is the idealizations by which society represents itself to its members. The object of religious veneration, therefore, is society itself.
Religion arises out of ritual. It is in religious rituals that society’s moral power is most clearly felt and where moral and social sentiments are strengthened and renewed.
All rituals, irrespective of their substance, operate to sustain common sentiments
Religion reinforces societal integration by legitimating society’s values and norms by providing divine sanctions for normative behavior and through creating rituals that strengthen feelings of collective unity
The integrity of society is the primary requisite for human survival
Functionalist Model of Society
Primary objective of the perspective – Account for how social order is possible and stable
Primary assumption of the perspective – Societies may be understood as systems
All societies have a system of shared symbols in common - a cultural system
Cultural systems provide the basis for shared meaning
Human actors organize their behavior around shared moral standards. Smooth interaction flows from the common pool of
cognitive meanings and expectations.
All societies have a set of social structures
Social structures coordinate activity
Characteristics of Societies as Systems
Interdependent elements (interdependence)
Functioning whole (organic quality)
Stability of the internal environment (equilibrium)
Maintenance of boundaries (bounded)
Problems of the Functionalist Perspective
Emphasizes stability and under-emphasizes conflict and change
Functions are seen as primary and dysfunctions as secondary, which produces a conservative effect
Promotes the assumption that religion is indispensable
The perspective is static as apposed to dynamic
Emphasizes integrative processes over disintegrative processes
Circular reasoning
Functions of Religion
Individual Functions
Providing meaning in life
Explanations for injustice, suffering, death
Explanations for personal success, bounty
Belonging and Identity Functions
Congregations as community centers
Congregations as ethnic group centers
Group affiliation as a source of personal identity
Societal Functions
Cultural – provides transcendent legitimation for moral rules and values
Structural – creates a moral community among people with diverse interests
Dysfunctions of Religion
Prevention of social change
Opposition to science
Conservative effect on political mobilization
Prevention of individual mobility, universalistic standards, ideology free social relations
Emphasis on community over the individual
CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE
Karl Marx
Religion is not an inherent tendency of human beings but the product of specific social circumstances
Religion constitutes a reversal of the true situation. The religious position is that God created humans in his own image. The truth is that humans created God in thbeir own image.
During early human history humans treated the forces of nature as supernatural and as determining their existence. With the emergence of societies based on class divisions, social forces were supernaturalized in this same way.
Economic forces are the principal factors in shaping human behavior. Ideas, values, and beliefs – including religion – are shaped by economic forces.
Because humans are active agents, however, beliefs do propel actions. Beliefs should reflect economically determined realities
Religion is an expression of prevailing economic relationships. In western societies religion and capitalism are intertwined, with religion serving as a rationalization for inequalities created by capitalism
Religion is used to justify current social arrangements by both the bourgeois (ruling class) and the proletariat (subordinate classes).
Religion must be abolished, but it can only be abolished by eliminating the social conditions that give rise to religion
Ruling Class and Religion
The ruling class upholds religion consciously or unconsciously because it is alienated from the truth, just as are the subordinate classes.
In order to maintain its privilege, the ruling class views the social order as not simply the way that humans organize themselves but as “in the nature of things.” The existing social order is the only way that order and stability can be maintained. Inequality, superiority and subordination are inevitable features of human society.
This is not simply rationalization. The ruling class fears social disruption as well as its own dependence upon forces that appear and actually are beyond its control. Members of the ruling class feel that they must do what needs to be done to preserve stability and order.
Subordinate Classes and Religion
For the subordinate classes, religion is a sedative, a narcotic that inhibits an understanding of their plight. It promotes an escape from the harshness of reality
Religion does not provide any real solution to subordinate class problems but rather provides temporary relief to those in the subordinate classes and makes life bearable
Further, religion is used to convince the subordinate classes that would benefit from social transformation that their condition is inevitable and has been ordained by a higher power
Religion can be an expression of protest against oppression and distress in the subordinate classes (as in the case of millennial movements). However, such protest is not effective in changing social conditions.
Conflict Model of Society
Primary objective of the model – Account for how social domination creates social order
Primary assumption of the model – Societies may be understood as power structures
Social norms are the product of conflict among groups promoting their own interests. Norms are not based on societal consensus but upon the interests of groups with the greatest social influence.
The more powerful a group’s position, the less likely the behavior of its members acting in the group’s interests will violate social norms.
The less powerful a group’s position, the more likely that behavior of its members endangering the interests of the more powerful group will violate social norms.
Problems of the Conflict Perspective
Presumes elite solidarity
Presumes all behavior is motivated by self-interest
Presumes all behavior is economically founded
Emphasis on conflict and dissensus over cooperation and consensus
Religion as a Source of Social Conflict
Conflict between groups
Prejudice
Outgroup hostility
Conflict with secular authority
Religion is a source of internal cohesion but not external integration
Conflicts between Religious Groups
Conflict between religious groups is particularly likely when religious loyalties are co-extensive with class, race, ethnic, linguistic, or political loyalties
Jewish expulsion from England (1290), France (1306), and Spain (1492)
Nineteenth century Protestant-Catholic-Jewish conflict in the United States
Protestant-Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland
Hindu-Muslim-Sikh conflict in India
White (Dutch Reformed Church) repression of blacks in South Africa
Israeli (Jewish)-Palestinian (Muslim) conflict in the Middle East
Serbian (Eastern Orthodox)-Bosnian (Muslim) conflict in former Yogoslavia
Roman Catholic-Muslim conflict in East Timor, Indonesia
Anti-semitic “hate crimes” in the United States
Conflicts between Religious Groups and Society in the United States
Mormon
Amish
Quakers and Mennonites
Native Americans
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Branch Davidians
Conflicts within Religious Traditions
Conflicts within religious traditions are likely to emanate from challenges to organizational authority, either in the form of deviant practices or deviant beliefs (heresy)
Waldensians and Albigensians
Indian Hindu use of theology to perpetuate the caste system
White, Christian use of conversion to eradicate black African slaves’ cultures
Roman Catholic condemnation of “Americanism”
Mennonite shunning of deviant members
Mormon expulsion of feminists
Jehovah’s Witnesses expulsion of individuals challenging leaders’ authority
Conservative Christian rejection of homosexuals and individuals afflicted with AIDS
Episcopalian schisms over gay marriage
Liberal-conservative divisions among Southern Baptists
Waldensians and Albigensians
Catholic reform groups in 13th century France
Repression and nearly total extinction by the Catholic Church around the beginning of the 13th century
Pope Innocent III initiated the final military crusade against these heretics
Heretical Beliefs
Laymen and women could preach and administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
The Latin liturgy should be abandoned because practitioners could not understand it
Masses and prayers for the dead were of no effect
Purgatory was not a real place to which souls journeyed after death but was metaphorical for the trials and tribulations of individuals during their lifetimes
Secular Conflicts
There were sectional rivalries between north and south. Northern nobles hoped to reduce the power of the south and expropriate its wealth
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