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Summary mid-term test Sociology of Religion
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Midterm-Test Sociology of ReligionKarl Marx
- Religion as opium of/for the people false consciousness. Desired hence the end of religion
- There is a relation between social-economic structure and ideas
- religion as the illusionary happiness
Émile Durkheim
- There are no false religions, a human institution cannot rest on an error and a lie, all religions are true in
their own fashion
- Evolutionary perspective: all religions are species of the same class and share permanent elements of
religion in general (basic features, responding to the same needs)
- The real function of religion is to make us act, to aid us live
- To understand religion’s basic features we have to go back to the most primitive and simple form, crude
cults of de Aborigines can help us to understand Christianity. Aborigines: focus on totems which designate
clan collectivity collective consciousness
- Distinction between the sacred and the profane
- The free thinker should confront religion in the same mental state as the believer in order to understand it.
The believer must have openness of mind. But there cannot be a rational explanation of religion; an
irreligious interpretation of religion would be an interpretation which denied the phenomenon it was trying
to explain.
- Religion disappears with increasing differentiation; yet sacred is necessary for social order.
Max Weber
- refused to define religion from the outset; religion instigates particular modes of conduct, a particular
ethos, materializing in and shaping the world over and over
- The Protestant Ethic thesis: the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and
uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism. Spirit of Protestantism: making
money as life purpose. Role of predestination: hard work, sober way of life, systematic mode of conduct,
constant self-observation and fulfilling worldly duties as pleasing God. This idea got separated from
religious roots capitalism
- modern people in an Iron Cage: increased rationalisation inherent in social life, individuals trapped in a
system based purely on teleological efficiency, rational calculation and control
- modes of conduct on individual level. Any system of religious belief can engender forms of action that have
an important impact in everyday life (including the economic sphere).
-Anxiety about disenchantment
Jürgen Habermas
- Post-secular society: adjusts itself to the continued existence of religious communities in an increasingly
secularized environment change in consciousness (own relativity within global horizon, religious
communities gain influence as communities of interpretation and postcolonial immigration and cultural
pluralism)
- after 9/11 continued presence of religion, but public sphere seen as secular. Belief may inform opinion, but
not to be expressed as such in public debate
- religious freedom as a right, tolerance to be practiced in everyday life. Tolerance is not based on respect
but is often mentioned in the same breath as respect (Margriet de Moor).
Charles Taylor
- immanent time frame: the role and place of religion transforms over time, changing conditions of belief
- Modernity: indeed advancing disenchantment and separation of religion and state, but: different patterns
and trajectories in different countries.
- Paleo-Durkheimian: social form in which religion is deeply embedded in the entire social structure so
that it is not a differentiated sphere, or only very partially one.
- Neo-Durkheimian: social form in which religion is partially disembedded from the traditional social
structure of kinship and village life but comes to serve as an expression of a larger social identity, namely
the newly emerging nation stat in the West.
Calhoun, Jurgensmeyer , van Antwerpen
- Secularization: trend/tendency towards a world in which religion matters less and various forms of
secular reason and secular institutions matter more.
- In modern life religion can only be seen in juxtaposition to secularism
- Not same pattern in Europe and other parts of the world.
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