The Sociological Challenges to Religious Belief

The Sociological Challenges to Religious Belief

The sociological approach to religious belief looks at how society

behaves on a whole, to answer the question, "Why are people

religious?" Durkheim tried to show that religion, despite its

importance to the religious individual, was a separate social

experience. He defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and

practices related to sacred things." Therefore we must understand

sacred symbols and what they represent. As a Functionalist, religion

maintains social stability by removing tension that can disrupt social

order. Religion is seen in a positive light, promoting harmony in

society.

He studied the Australian Aborigines, where each clan had a symbolic,

usually of nature, totem, to identify itself by and used in sacred

ceremonies. He therefore concluded that since the totem was involved

in scared ritual, it was a symbol of both society and God, so the

Aborigines worshiped both God and society. He suggested that we

worship society because just as sacred things were superior to man, so

was society. In worship, man finds it difficult to direct his feelings

to something, which is superior to him, so he directs his feelings at

a symbol. Individually experienced, religion is then a representation

of the realities and forces of society itself.

Upon the influence of Durkheim, Marx approached religion from Hegel's

evolutionary dialectic of society evolving through the three

principles of; a thesis produces an opposite (antithesis), the two are

then resolved in a synthesis, this a new thesis that can be

challenged. He applied this dialectic to the material, in the form of

diale...

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...This shows that religion

is one of the few things that can stimulate revolt. Recently, Catholic

priests have acted against interests of bourgeoisie, but Weber did

recognise that religious movements could often be important agents of

social change.

Sociology does not give a total explanation to religious belief. In

criticism to Weber, that the first capitalist countries may have been

Protestant, but not all Protestant countries are capitalist. There are

other ways in explaining religious belief, such as from a

psychological approach, where Jung for example said that religion

performs the function of harmonising the psyche and as such it is

beneficial. The removal of religion would lead to psychological

problems, unlike Marx, where the removal of religion would benefit

society, revealing to them their true reality.