Social Groups And Religion

8 Key excerpts on "Social Groups And Religion"

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  eBook - ePub

  Religion in Society

  A Sociology of Religion

  • Ronald Johnstone(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Religion as a Group Phenomenon

  DOI: 10.4324/9781315662916-3

  Religion is embodied in groups.

  In Chapter 1 we made the point that, as a social phenomenon, religion exhibits patterns of interaction and process that duplicate many, if not all, patterns that all other social groups exhibit, and we emphasized explicitly that religion is a group phenomenon. We will now pick up on these fundamental sociological observations and expand them, as we look more specifically at the social organization of religion. That is, we want to see how religious ideas, regardless of their real or supposed source, become embodied in groups and how, in turn, these groups proceed to function, manifest similarities among themselves and with other groups, but also distinguish themselves both from one another and from other kinds of groups in society.

  Religion and the Characteristics of a Group

  In Chapter 1 we briefly defined group as two or more interacting people who

  1. share common goals or aims that stem from common problems and a desire to resolve them;
  2. agree upon a set of norms that they hope will help them to achieve their common goals;
  3. combine certain norms into roles that they expect persons within the group to fill and carry out in the interests of the group;
  4. agree (often only implicitly) on certain status dimensions and distinctions, on the basis of which they rate one another; and
  5. identify with the group and express or exhibit some degree of commitment to the group, what it proposes to do, and how it proposes to do it.

  Clearly, religious organizations meet all of these criteria. Religious groups are concerned with problems and with expressing aspirations, hopes, and goals. They all want to know why certain things happen (cognitive understanding of accidents, death, thunder, and so forth); some may want to express their dependency relationship with a deity (proper worship and ritual activity); some may want to devise methods of gaining rewards from the deities (techniques of prayer or magic); some may want to provide emotional support and encouragement for people in illness, disappointment, and other difficulties and inevitabilities of human existence; or some may want to achieve a proper existence after this present life (salvation). In each case we are observing goals and the process of establishing goals that will, of course, vary considerably from group to group.

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  Theology and Religious Studies in Higher Education

  Global Perspectives

  • D.L. Bird, Simon G. Smith(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  I regard this way of referring to religion as one side of a two-pronged definition. The other, based on the work of the French sociologist, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, situates religious communities in his-torical, social and cultural contexts by insisting that religion transmits an authoritative tradition, or what Hervieu-Léger calls ‘a chain of memory’ (1999: 89). This two-sided approach, at once focusing on what adherents themselves postulate, while at the same time emphasizing patterns of com-munity authority, provides a definition of religion freed from theological associations. Part one of the definition: focus on the community’s beliefs and experiences The first part of my definition of religion restricts the study of religion to ‘identifiable communities’, which means that religion is always, in the words of Jeppe Jensen (2003: 117) a ‘social fact’. Theories about religion, of course, as Jensen (2003: 118–21) argues further, are also social facts, which means that scholars of religion must always conduct their research in a self-critical, reflexive and transparent manner. Nonetheless, when we speak about religion, we are describing and interpreting that which is observable and testable as part of identifiable social systems. The scholar of religion cannot study individual experiences as religion, unless the experiences are 102 Theology and Religious Studies in Higher Education somehow embedded in shared social constructs that are codified, symbol-ized and institutionalized in communities. In the case of individuals who testify to intense experiences of an extramundane reality, these can be treated as religion only if the individual incorporates the experiences into the life of an already existing identifiable community, or, as in the case of many charismatic leaders or prophets, forges the experience into a new religious movement comprising a definite group.

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  Introducing Religion

  Religious Studies for the Twenty-First Century

  • Robert S. Ellwood(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  11

  traveling together: the sociology of religion

  Figure 11.1 Congregation sitting in a church

  Source: Robert Nicholas/OJO Images Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

  Learning Objectives

  After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • Discuss whether it is true to say that all religion is social.
  • Determine how the nature and structure of a religious group itself gives messages about the meaning and experience of the group, by whether it is close-knit or loose, has authoritarian or democratic leadership, and so forth.
  • Present the various ways in which a religious group can relate to the surrounding society.
  • Discuss the meaning for the sociology of religion of Redfield’s concept of Great and Little Traditions.
  • Distinguish between established and emergent religion. Describe major forms of each: international, national, and denominational for established; intensive and expansive for emergent.
  • Describe the circumstances out of which emergent religion typically derives and some of its fundamental characteristics, such as selection of one central symbol and practice, future orientation, and central, charismatic prophet.
  • Briefly describe major types of religious personality.
  • Define some leading ways in which religion transforms the society around it.
  • Tell how religion interprets history.

  All Religion Is Social

  Think of any religious group of which you have been a part, or have known about, or can imagine being part of. How much does the way others in the group talk about the religion support your own belief in it, and your participation? How much do you find yourself using the same language as they when you are around them and in the religious context? Indeed, can you imagine yourself as having come to this religion totally on your own, without a social context of family or friends, without encountering its words whether spoken or in printed texts?

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  Supernatural as Natural

  A Biocultural Approach to Religion

  • Michael Winkelman, John R. Baker(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Geertz’s understanding of religion emphasizes its capacity to provide a framework for integrating and giving meaning to many aspects of human experience. The role of religious systems in socialization includes its ability to shape personal development. A key aspect of religion’s ability to produce this structuring of indigenous psychology is its use of ritual to produce powerful emotional experiences and to associate particular meanings with these moods and motivations. Ritual makes these interpretations particularly “real” by associating them with powerful transcendent experiences.

  Religion and Social Control

  All societies must teach their members about acceptable and unacceptable behavior and exert some degree of control over the deviants who undermine the social order. Tensions are inevitable within any society, and people need ways to settle disputes, determine guilt or innocence, and punish transgressors. In small-scale societies, when problems arose, people looked to the group’s elders, who provided answers on the basis of their own judgment in the matter, or to religious functionaries, who provided answers after consultation with the spirits.

  The simplest principle that humans use to organize their societies is kinship. Unilineal kinship systems make it clear to whom a person is related and whom they can marry. Such kinship groups also regulate inheritance and provide a structure for dealing with conflict. Problems that arise between members of the same lineage are handled within the lineage, usually by the elders. Problems that occur between members of different lineages involve each lineage in its corporate or group form. If a member of one lineage kills a member of another, the offending lineage may be required to rectify the damage caused by providing a payment. If this payment is considered insufficient, if the harm is too grievous, or if the two lineages do not enjoy an otherwise peaceful relationship, a feud

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  Invitation to the Sociology of Religion

  • Phil Zuckerman(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  How could it be otherwise? Well, there you have it: my explanation of what sociology is all about. Now I’ll discuss how the above aspects of sociology relate specifically to religion.

  1.  Sociologists study social groups .

  Religions are, if nothing else, social groups. Whether it be college students who meet in their dorm rooms once a week for Bible study or established congregations, a handful of pagans who gather in the woods at summer solstice or million-member denominations, religious bodies are quite obviously social collectives. When one is studying the dynamics of group affiliation and the formation of social confederacy, religious groups clearly provide excellent samples.

  2.  Sociologists study social interaction .

  Religion may entail interaction with the divine, but it also entails interaction among humans. Circumcisions, pilgrimages, christenings, bar mitzvahs, confessions, peyote ceremonies, church picnics—religion is dripping with social interaction. Ever since Émile Durkheim’s classic treatise The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)— in which Durkheim posited that social interaction was actually the source, the very cause of religion—sociologists have paid careful attention to the rich and dramatic varieties of social interaction that compose religious phenomena.

  3.  Sociologists study social institutions and social structures .

  Religion—by definition—is a social institution. And in many parts of the world, religion is one of the most powerful, all-pervasive social institutions out there. It thus makes sense that many of the founding sociologists such as Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, George Simmel, W.E.B.Du Bois, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Friedrich Engels wrote and theorized extensively about religion. Sociologists of religion are interested not only in analyzing religion as a social institution in its own right, but also in understanding how religion influences, and is influenced by, other major social institutions. For instance, the single most famous and widely recognized seminal study within the sociological canon is Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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  Readings in the Sociology of Religion

  The Commonwealth and International Library: Readings in Sociology

  • Joan Brothers, A. H. Richmond(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  III. A P P L I C A T I O N T O S O C I O -R E L I G I O U S B E H A V I O U R I t is not our intention to p u t forward overall explanations of the psycho-social significance of religious affiliation. W e h a v e h a d occasion elsewhere to consider these questions a n d indicate in 13 S. Stouffer, An Analysis of Conflicting Social Norms, American Sociological Review 14, 707-17 (1949). THE ROLE OF REFERENCE GROUPS 177 w h a t psycho-sociological context the religious attitudes of a person are formed a n d develop in a specific direction. 12 A t this point we will confine ourselves to illustrating the m e t h o d of analysis proposed above a n d suggesting some possible paths of inquiry. 1 . The Religious Sentiments of the Toung I n the first case let us take the religious attitudes of the child. T h e priest of a not very Christian parish told us h o w the children a t t e n d i n g his catechism classes were invariably punished a n d held u p to ridicule the next d a y by the schoolmaster, a militant C o m m u n i s t . H o w c a n the behaviour of these children b e u n d e r -stood unless we take into account the deep conflicts arising from their desire to participate fully in b o t h the religious g r o u p a n d that of their classmates ? T w o psycho-social systems are d e m a n d -ing the child's allegiance a n d at the same time are dividing h i m within himself. T h e religious instructor c a n only take this y o u n g Christian as a sociologically isolated person. His inner psychology is as t h o u g h it were divided between two reference groups, the one favourable to religion a n d the other hostile. T h e conflict is not only in external facts, b u t is engraved in the child's attitudes. It is by taking into consideration the concrete fellowships into which the behaviour of the y o u n g is placed t h a t we c a n succeed in binding t h e m to the c h u r c h in a lasting way.

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  Readings in the Sociology of Religion

  The Commonwealth and International Library: Readings in Sociology

  • Joan Brothers, A. H. Richmond(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Pergamon

    (Publisher)

  1. Functional Value of the Research Method W e h a v e a t t e m p t e d here to describe a m e t h o d of research w h i c h w o u l d allow systematic examination of collective religious attitudes. T h e theory of reference groups has seemed of particular use to us in this field. W e feel w e m u s t stress the relative n a t u r e of a n y m e t h o d employed in the observation of h u m a n behaviour, particularly religious behaviour. 26 H. L. Zetterberg, The Religious Conversion as a Change of Social Roles, Sociology and Social Research 36, 159-66 (1952). THE ROLE OF REFERENCE GROUPS 187 A n y m e t h o d of research is merely a practical m e a n s of dis-covering a social reality a n d it is this reality itself which should attract the observer's attention. Otherwise there is a d a n g e r t h a t the m e t h o d m a y b e c o m e a futile a n d superficial systematization. W e h a v e tried above to describe the psycho-social references of religious behaviour, b u t w e m i g h t easily r e m a i n o n t h e surface of reality were w e not to m a k e a n effort to site these references of religious conduct in the perspective of our spiritual relations with the church. F o r this w e must realize t h a t psycho-social references to the c h u r c h are themselves of a religious n a t u r e . I n our relations with the Christian c o m m u n i t y there is a reality which comes from faith a n d charity; this dimension should not be disregarded by the sociology of religion. Otherwise religious behaviour m i g h t be confused with secular forms of behaviour. Religion will have lost its specific character. Even non-Catholic a n d non-Christian social psychologists would be willing to recognize this original a n d this specific n a t u r e of religious behaviour.

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  Sociology

  The Essentials

  • Margaret L. Andersen; Howard F. Taylor, Margaret Andersen, Howard Taylor(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Durkheim believed that religion binds individuals to the society in which they live by establishing what he called a collective consciousness , the body of beliefs common to a com-munity or society that gives people a sense of belong-ing. In many societies, religion establishes the collective consciousness and creates in people the feeling that they are part of a common whole. ◆ Table 13.3 Theoretical Perspectives on Religion Functionalism Conflict Theory Symbolic Interaction Religion and the social order Is an integrative force in society Is the basis for intergroup conflict; inequality in society is reflected in religious organizations, which are stratified by factors such as race, class, or gender Is socially constructed and emerges with social and historical change Religious beliefs Provide cohesion in the social order by promoting a sense of collective consciousness Can provide legitimation for oppres-sive social conditions Are socially constructed and subject to interpretations; can also be learned through religious conversion Religious practices and rituals Reinforce a sense of social belonging Define in-groups and out-groups, thereby defining group boundaries Are symbolic activities that provide definitions of group and individual identity © Cengage Learning Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. FAMILIES AND RELIGION 331 Durkheim’s analysis of religion suggests some of the key ideas in symbolic interaction theory, particu-larly in the significance he gave to symbols in religious behavior.

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