SOSYOLOJİYE GİRİŞ - Deneme Sınavı - 11

Sociologists define religion as a cultural system of commonly shared beliefs and rituals that provide a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose by creating an idea of reality that is sacred, all encompassing the supernatural. These are three key elements in this definition:

Durkheim believes that religion strengthens the unity of society and promotes solidarity.

According to Emile Durkheim, religion begins with the division of the world into two kinds of phenomena: the profane and the sacred.

Marx saw religious belief as an illusion attempting to justify existing arrangements in society and encouraging people to accept them. He saw religion doing this in two ways. First, religion justifies existing inequalities in income and power in society by explaining the position on the rich and poor as “the will of God”.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism-religion responds to the basic human need to understand the purpose of life. In doing so, religion must give meaning to the social world within which life occurs.

According to Luckmann, the function of religion can be understood to reduce uncertainty and complexity, to determine which seems to be indeterminate, and to make accessible what seems to be inaccessible. The supernatural dimension of religion, therefore, comes in handy because it serves to reduce complexity

According to Webster, the term secular means of   belonging to the world and worldly things as distinguished from the church and religious affair.

On the one hand, the process of  secularization,  a growing disenchantment with the spiritual and the supernatural and a turn to rationality and science, has gained increasing support. Secularization has spread across much of Europe and other Western cultures, with the partial exception of the United States, but remains relatively weak in the rest of the world where traditional religion has a stronger control. On the other hand, the growth of religious fundamentalism, the continuing loyalty of millions to the mainstream religions, alongside the development of many new religious forms, ensure that religion will remain a central element of modern societies.

According to sociological approach, religion should primarily be taken a social rather than theological or psychological phenomenon. Sociology focuses on the social consequences and correlates of religion but no sociological explanations suggest the truth or falsity of any religious belief. When sociologists study religion, they do so as unbiased scientists and not as believers (or disbelievers) in any particular faith. This stance has a number of implications: Sociologists are not concerned with whether religious beliefs are true or false. The sociological perspective regards religions as socially constructed by human beings.

Sociologists define religion as a cultural system of commonly shared beliefs and rituals that provide a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose by creating an idea of reality that is sacred, all encompassing the supernatural. These are three key elements in this definition:

1. Religion is a form of culture which consists of the shared beliefs, values, norms, and material conditions that create a common identity among a group of people. Religion has all these characteristics.

2. Religion involves beliefs that take the form of ritualized practices-special activities in which believers take part and that identify them as members of the religious community.

3. Religion provides a feeling that life is ultimately meaningful. It does so by explaining coherently and compellingly what transcends or overshadows everyday life in ways that other aspects of culture (such as an educational system or a belief in democracy) cannot.

As a functionalist, Durkheim believes that religion promotes social cohesion and conformity by imposing meaning and purpose on life. According to Durkheim, religious ritual is an important part of this social cement. Religion, through its rituals, fulfills a number of social functions such as binding people together physically, promoting social cohesion, reaffirming the group’s beliefs and values. Those functions help maintain norms, mores, and prohibitions. Durkheim is generally considered the first sociologist who analyzed religion in terms of its societal impact. Above all, he believed religion is about community: It binds people together (social cohesion), promotes behavior consistency (social control) and offers strength during life’s transitions and tragedies (meaning and purpose). Social conflict theory has always focused heavily on the differential distribution of resources as reflected in the socioeconomic class structure of society. Unlike functionalist theory, conflict theory sees order and harmony as superficial entities. It claims that underneath a surface of apparent harmony, there is a form of balance of power or oppression. As a result, conflict theory looks at existing social conditions and social institutions with suspicion. Karl Marx believed religion reflects the social stratification of society and maintains inequality and perpetuates the status quo. For him, religion was just an extension of working-class’ (proletariat) economic suffering. He famously argued that religion “is the opium of people”.

The phenomenological approach is particularly associated with the work of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Berger and Luckmann have put forward a phenomenological view of religion: Religion is produced by members of society subjectively interpreting and giving meaning to the world around them. According to Berger and Luckmann, religion helps to build, maintain and legitimate universes of meaning. Throughout human history religion has played a decisive part in the construction and maintenance of universes. According to Luckmann, the function of religion can be understood to reduce uncertainty and complexity. Berger and Luckmann argue that religion is probably the most effective mechanism for the legitimation of universes of meaning. The idea that religion promotes social unity and cohesion belongs to Durkheim, who adopts a functionalist perspective towards religion.

Weber is most famous for arguing that Protestantism produced modern capitalism; later in his comparative studies he attempted to demonstrate that each of the great world religions laid down the tracks along which Europe, the Islamic world, India, and China moved in their distinctive directions. According to Weber-in his classic book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism- religion responds to the basic human need to understand the purpose of life. In doing so, religion must give meaning to the social world within which life occurs. This means creating a worldview that can have social, political, and economic consequences.

When comparing Weber and Durkheim, one might start simply by noting that whereas Durkheim was interested in the generic notion of religion (specifically the classification of the sacred and profane), Weber was concerned with the historical and comparative importance of religions. Durkheim famously observed it to consist of a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things. Weber, by contrast, declared in The Sociology of Religion that defining religion is not possible at the start of a presentation such as this. Definition can be attempted, if at all, only at the conclusion of the study. While Weber examined the consequences of the ‘economic ethics’ of the world religions, Durkheim examined the ‘elementary forms’ of religious classification, the impact of their emotional framing, how these classificatory systems were embedded in ritual practices, and finally how the ‘collective conscience’ was an essential foundation of the social. In short, Weber’s writings on religion differ from those of Durkheim in that they concentrate on the connection between religion and social change, something to which Durkheim gave little attention. They contrast with the work of Marx, because Weber argues that religion is not necessarily a conservative force; on the contrary, religiously inspired movements have often produced dramatic social transformations.

American Sociologists Roger Finke, Rodney Stark and Willams S. Bainbridge have attempted to develop a more comprehensive sociological perspective on religion. Their approach has heavily been influenced by the exchange theory that is based on the principle that all human interactions can be treated as a form of exchange. Their explanation on religion consists of a number of insights into religious organizations, institutions and religious change. Unlike Durkheim, Stark and Bainbridge see religion as meeting the needs of individuals rather than those of society as a whole. Unlike Marx, they see religion as meeting universal human needs rather than those which stem from class inequality and exploitation. Furthermore, they reject the view, shared by classic sociologists of religion that the development of industrial capitalist societies would undermine religion. Stark and Bainbridge, in their rational choice theory, suggest that religion answers universal questions and it offers compensators that meet universal human needs. According to them, religion can neither disappear nor seriously decline.

Stark and Bainbridge with their religious economy approach argue that religions can be understood as organizations which are in competition with one another for followers. On the other hand, the classical theorists, Marx, Durkheim and Weber, assume that religion weakens when it is challenged by different religious or secular viewpoints whereas the religious economists argue that competition increases the overall level of religious involvement in modern society. Religious economists believe this to be true for two reasons. First, competition makes each religious group try that much harder to win followers. Second, the presence of numerous religions means that there is likely to be something for just about everyone. In culturally diverse societies, a single religion will probably appeal to only a limited range of followers while presence of Indian gurus and fundamentalist preachers, in addition to more traditional churches, is likely to encourage a high level of religious participation. Accordingly, religious economy model, that is, rational choice theory argues that the freer religious markets are, the more vital religion will be.

In its earliest formulations by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Marx, Comte, and Spencer, there is little doubt that secularization involved a linear and unstoppable decline of religion to the point of its disappearance. August Comte, pioneering French sociologist as a founder of discipline of sociology, suggests that human history passed through three stages, namely, theological, metaphysical and positive stage. Each stage was characterized by a different set of intellectual beliefs:

The secularization thesis involves three propositions:

1. Differentiation of secular spheres from religious institutions and norms. Various secular spheres such as politics, economics, law, science, art, etc., could come fully into their own and become differentiated from each other.

2. General decline of religious beliefs and practices. Evidence from European societies showed that the closer people were involved in industrial production, the less religious they became.

3. Privatization or marginalization of religion to a private sphere. This refers to the process of religious individuation based on the freedom of conscience.

Sociologists define religion as a cultural system of commonly shared beliefs and rituals that provide
a sense of ultimate meaning and purpose by creating an idea of reality that is sacred, all encompassing the supernatural. The answer is D.

The sacred refers to all objects and aspects of life set apart from the ordinary, regarded as holy and related to the supernatural. The answer is C.