Term
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Definition
- People's religious faith is often associated with their most intimate and hard-to-articulate thoughts and experiences
- difficult to access, conceptualize, measure, categorize, and compare people's religious sensibilities
- experiential core of religious faith is unique
- the sacred is "wholly other" and non-empirical, and attempts to grasp the nature of encounters with it in the light of other known social processes are destined to be incomplete and misleading |
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Term
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Definition
- "religion": no definitional consensus in sociology
- Substantive definitions: focus on what religion IS
- Taylor (1903): religion is "belief in Spiritual Beings"
- Substantive defintions: focus on what religion DOES
- Yinger: "religion is a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group struggles with the ultimate problems of human life" |
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Term
| The Definitional Dilemma: Substantive Definitions |
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Definition
- too exclusive
- definition suggests that religions are primarily sets of beliefs, yet this is often not the case
- holding certain beliefs is often secondary in some traditions to participating in specific rituals
> Orthopraxis (right practice) may take precedence over orthodoxy (right belief)
- Stress on belief may manifest an ethnocentric bias since it is so characteristic in the great religions of the West
- relies on terms that are themselves in need of definition (eg. What constitutes a spiritual being?) |
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Term
| The Definitional Dilemma: Functional Definitions |
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Definition
- too inclusive
- references tend to be so broad that it is difficult to distinguish true religions from functional equivalents
- too many things become religious when the functionalist perspective is adopted |
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Term
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Definition
- measuring the degree to which people are religious (religiosity) is problematic
- being religious is a multi-dimensional process and it is not measured readily by means of questions on a survey
- being affiliated with a church or attending services regularly may not be very sound indicators of an individual's piety or spirituality
- no way to truly measure the relative religiosity of different groups of people, since the differences detected may often be more reflective of different ways of being religious |
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Term
Marx and Social Control
- religion as a form of social control |
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Definition
- religion acts as a form of social control
- religious beliefs act as a way to keep people in their place and under social control
- a form of constraint
- dominant class in society maintains its cultural dominance |
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Term
Marx and Social Control
- religion as a social compensator |
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Definition
- acts as a form of social compensations, particularly for those who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy
- gives them a way to reconcile themselves to their place
- religious beliefs are promises to the powerless, poor and exploited in society, a better afterlife
- offers them compensation: if they put up with misery, suffering, and powerlessness in this life, then they will be rewarded in the next life |
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Term
Marx and Social Control
- Religion as a human product |
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Definition
- religion is a form of control of constraint over people, limiting what they can do and how they can think, and doing it in a way that serves the interests of the powerful, because of that compensation, reconciling people the conditions that are often wretched and miserable and powerless, we have to recognize here that religion is something in itself a product of human being
- Man creates God - a product of human imagination of human society |
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Term
| Durkheim and Social Solidarity (Structural Functionalist Perspective) |
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Definition
- holds societies together in the face of adversity and of the destructive anti-social impulses of their own members
- belief systems work as the source of social integration (aka social cohesion) |
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Term
Durkheim and Social Solidarity (Structural Functionalist Perspective)
- religion as a form of moral culture |
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Definition
| - induces selflessness on the part of individuals in the interest of the group or community |
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Term
Durkheim and Social Solidarity (Structural Functionalist Perspective)
- Religion represents the power of society over individuals |
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Definition
| - shapes our behaviours and our beliefs |
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Term
Durkheim and Social Solidarity (Structural Functionalist Perspective)
- religion empowers individuals |
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Definition
- Collective effervescence: religious ceremonies and rituals have an effervescence effect on people. Gives people motivation and energy to become livelier. Enables individuals to feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves.
- Empowering effect: gives them the feeling they they have power to act upon the world, to improve the world to make the world a better place. |
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Term
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Definition
- Weber's chief concern was the origin and nature of modernity
- identified modernity with the emergence of capitalism
- interested in world religion because they were one of the original forces behind globalization |
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Term
Weber and Social Change
- Soteriological Relige |
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Definition
- religions that have a concept of salvation
- two different consequences:
- your life in this world is a kind of test
- makes religious values and beliefs more obviously something that has to do with morality. Your life here is a test that will lead into something of either reward or punishment.
- Religion is just something that promises nice things and puts you in a constant test |
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Term
Weber and Social Change
- Martin Luther's concept of the calling |
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Definition
- work was the way in which you demonstrate your devotion to God
- work was the most valued thing you could do because this is how you express your devotion to God
- work was then a stigmatized behaviour so this brought about change
- work is a vocation from God, it is your calling |
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Term
Weber and Social Change
- John Calvin's doctrine of predestination |
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Definition
- the minute you are born, God has already decided whether you will be saved or damned
- the decision is fixed and unchangeable. God will not change his mind.
- must live your life assuming that you have been saved at your duty
- Asceticism:
> idea that your work is everything. It is through your work that you show your devotion to God
> live a life of fidelity: do not spend on material products because they are the temptation of the devil |
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Term
Weber and Social Change
- Protestant Ethic |
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Definition
- as you become more rational and calculated, you are becoming much more individualistic because you are doing this where people are also trying to do the same, therefore it makes you more competitive of other people.
- success in one's calling became an unofficial sign of salvation, while the humility required of true believers helped to further assure that the wealth accured from this success was ascetically reinvested
- you cannot achieve salvation but you can achieve from God is a sign that you are saved
- never positively sure whether they are or are not element of uncertainty
- never positively sure whether or not they are economically successful |
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Term
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Definition
| - values and beliefs that are used to service the interests of powerful groups and the dominant class in society |
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