Sociological Imagination: How to Gain Wisdom about the Society in which We All Participate and for Whose Future We Are All Responsible (part 37)

I went to a branch of the City of Westminster College in Maida Vale to do drama, sociology and English literature. I stayed for three or four months.

Ashley Walters

Religion (Part B)

by

 Charles Lamson

Varieties of Religious Belief

Religious sentiments and behavior persist even in highly secularized societies like the United States. As sociologist Robert Wuthnow (1988, Sociology of Religion. In N. J. Smelzer (Ed.), The Handbook of Sociology) points out:

The assumption that religion in modern societies would gradually diminish in importance or else become less capable of influencing public life was once widely accepted. That assumption has now become a matter of dispute. . . . Modern religion is resilient and yet subject to cultural influences; it does not merely survive or decline, but adapts to its environment in complex ways. (p. 474)

Many of the adaptations that religions make to social change become evident when one examines the varieties of religious belief in the world today, and especially when one studies the major world religions.

FIGURE 1   Max Weber

Major World Religions

In a 1913 essay, Max Weber (see Figure 1) commented that "by 'world religions' we understand the five religions or religiously determined systems of life-regulation which have known how to gather multitudes of confessors around them (1958 1913, World Religion. In Gerth & Mills (Trans. and Eds.), From Max Weber, p. 267). Among these Weber included, in addition to Christianity, "the Confucian, Hinduist, Buddhist, and Islamic religious ethics." He added that despite its small population of adherents, Judaism should also be considered a world religion because of its influence on Christianity and Islam as well as on Western ethics and values even outside the religious sphere of life.

In discussing religion, sociologists often refer to the Islamic world of the Middle East, the Roman Catholic World of Latin America and southern Europe, the Hindu world of the Indian subcontinent, and the Buddhist world of the Far East. The United States, Northern Europe, and Australia are among the societies in which Protestantism is strongest. There are also, of course, the nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where until relatively recently communism as a civil religion was the only legitimate belief system (Robertson, 1985, The Sacred and the World System. In P. Hammond (Ed.), The Sacred in a Secular Age).

In many parts of the world, particularly in Asia and Africa, large numbers of people practice other religions. Many are indigenous people whose religious practices may be influenced by the major world religions but continue to be based on beliefs and ways of worship that are unique to that culture (Kornblum, 2003, Sociology in a Changing World, 6th ed.). For example, in her sociological portrait of Mama Lola, a Haitian Priestess, Karen McCarthy Brown notes that many Haitians practice Voodoo, which is derived from African religious beliefs. Some of Mama Lola's followers may worship in Catholic churches yet continue to practice the traditional use of voodoo as well (Brown, 1991, Mama Lola; 1992, April 15, Writing about "the Other." Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A56). 

Classification of Religious Beliefs

The religions practiced throughout the world today vary from belief in magic and supernatural spirits to complicated ideas of God and saints, as well as secular religions in which there is faith but not God (Bowker, 1997, World Religions). With such a wide range of religious beliefs and practices to consider, it is useful to classify them in a systematic way. One often used system classifies religions according to their central belief. In this scheme the multiplicity of religious forms is reduced to a more manageable list consisting of five major types: simple supernaturalism, animism, theism, abstract ideals, and civil religion (2003, p. 522). In this section we describe each type briefly. Be warned, though, that not all religions fit neatly into these basic categories.

FIGURE 2   Simple Supernaturalism

Simple Supernaturalism In less complex and rather isolated societies, people may believe in a great force (see Figure 2) or spirit, but they may not have a well-defined concept of God or a set of rituals involving God. Studies by anthropologists have found that some isolated peoples (e.g., South Pacific island cultures and Eskimo tribes) believe strongly in the power of a supernatural force but do not attempt to embody that for us in a visualized conception of God. In this form of religion called simple supernaturalism, there is no discontinuity between the world of the senses and the supernatural; all natural phenomena are part of a single force.

Animism More common among hunting-and-gathering societies is a form of religion termed animism, in which all forms of life and all aspects of the Earth are inhabited by gods or supernatural powers. Most of the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere were Animists, and so were many of the tribal peoples of Africa before the European conquests.

Theism Religions whose central belief is theism usually conceive of gods as separate from humans and from other living things on the Earth, although these gods are in some way responsible for the creation of humans and for their fate. Many ancient religions were polytheistic, meaning that they included numerous gods, all of whom occupied themselves with some aspect of the universe and of human life. In the religion of the ancient Greeks, warfare was the concern of Ares; music, healing, and prophecy was the domain of Apollo; his sister Artemis was concerned with hunting; Poseidon was the god of seafaring; Athena was the god of handicrafts and intellectual pursuits; and so on. A similar division of concerns and attributes could be found among the gods of the Romans and, later, among the gods of the Celtic tribes of Gaul and Britain.

The ancient Hebrews were among the first of the world's peoples to evolve a monotheistic religion---one centered on belief in a single all-powerful God who determines human fate and can be addressed through prayer. Its belief is expressed in the central creed of the Jews: "Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is one." Jewish monotheism, based on the central idea of a covenant between God and the Jewish people as represented in the written laws of the Ten Commandments, for example, helped stimulate the codification of religious law and ritual, so that the Jews became known as the people of the book. As they traveled and settled throughout the Middle East, the Jews were able to take their religion with them and hold on to the purity of their beliefs and practices (Johnson, 1987, A History of the Jews; Kurt's, 1995, Gods in the Global Village).

Christianity and Islam are also monotheistic religions. The Roman Catholic version of Christianity envisions God as embodied in a Holy Trinity consisting of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God, which has the ability to inspire the human spirit. The fundamental beliefs of Islam are similar in many respects to those of Judaism and Christianity. Islam is a monotheistic religion centering on the worship of one God, Allah, according to the teachings of the Quran as given by Allah to Muhammad, the great prophet of the Muslim faith. In his early teachings, Muhammad appears to have believed that the followers of Jesus and the believers and Judaism would recognize him as God's messenger and realize that Allah was the same as the god they worshiped. The fundamental aim of Islam is to serve God as he demands to be served and the Quran. 

Another basically monotheistic religion, Hinduism, is difficult to categorize. On the one hand, it incorporates the strong idea of an all-powerful God who is everywhere yet is "unsearchable;" on the other hand, it conceives of a God who can be represented variously as the Creator (Brahma), the Preserver (Vishnu), and the Destroyer (Shiva). Each of these personifications takes several forms in Hindu ritual and art. Of all the great world religions, Hinduism teaches most forcefully that all religions are roughly equal "paths to the same summit."

Abstract Ideals In China, Japan, and other societies of the Far East, the dominant religions are centered not on devotion to a god or gods but an abstract ideal of spiritual and human behavior. The central belief of Buddhism, perhaps the most important of these religions, is embodied in these thoughts of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (see Figure 4):

FIGURE 4 The Buddha

Like all the world's major religions, Buddhism has many branches. The ideal that unifies them all, however, is the teaching that worship is not a matter of prayer to God but a quest for the experience of godliness within oneself through meditation and awareness.

Another important religion based on abstract ideals is Confucianism, which is derived from the teachings of the philosopher Confucius (551-479 B.C.). The sayings of Confucius are still revered throughout much of the Far East, especially among the Chinese, although the formal study of Confucius's thoughts has been banned since the Communist Revolution of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The central belief of Confucianism is that one must learn and practice the wisdom of the ancients. "He that is really good," Confucius taught, "can never be unhappy. He that is really wise can never be perplexed. He that is really brave can never be afraid" (quoted in McNeill, 1963, The Rise of the West, p. 231).

In Confucianism the central goal of the individual is to become a good ruler or a good and loyal follower and thus to carry out the tao of his or her position. Tao is an untranslatable word that refers to the practice of virtues that make a person excellent in his or her discipline. As is evident in this brief description, Confucianism is a set of ideals and sayings that tend toward conservatism and acceptance of the status quo, although the wise ruler should be able to improve society for those in lesser positions. Little wonder that under communism this ancient and highly popular set of moral principles and teachings was banned in favor of what sociologists call a civil religion.

 

Civil Religion In the last several decades some social scientists, notably Robert Bellah (1970, Beyond Belief), have expanded the definition of religion to include so-called civil religions. These are collections of beliefs, and rituals for communicating those beliefs, that exist outside religious institutions (Swift, 1998, Religion and the American Experience). Often, as in the former Soviet communist societies, they are attached to the institutions of the state. Marxism-Leninism can be thought of as a civil religion (see Figure 5), symbolized by the reverence once paid to Lenin's tomb. Central to Communism as a civil religion is the idea that private property is evil. But property held in common by all members of the society (be it the work group, the community, or the entire nation) is good. The struggle against private property results in the creation of the Socialist personality, which values all human lives and devalues excessive emphasis on individual success, especially a success measured by the accumulation of property. Although the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have fallen, there are millions of people in those nations and in China who were socialized to believe in these principles.

In the United States, certain aspects of patriotic feelings are sometimes said to amount to a civil religion (see Figure 6): reverence for the flag, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and other symbols of America is cited as an example. Thus most major public events, be they commencements, political rallies, or Super Bowl games, begin with civil religious rituals such as the singing of the national anthem or the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, in which a non-sectarian God is invoked to protect the nation's unity ("one nation under God").

Although there is no doubt that Lennin's image and the American flag may be viewed as sacred in some contexts, neither communism nor American patriotism can compete with the major world religions and the power of their Central ideals and their spirituality. In consequence, sociologists tend to concentrate on religions in the traditional sense---that is, on the enactment of rituals that represent the place of sacred beliefs in human life. In the next few posts we discuss the structure of religious institutions and the processes by which new ones arise. 

*MAIN SOURCE: WILLIAM KORNBLUM, 2003, SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, PP. 521-526*

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