Functionalism
Durkheim
· Collective conscience
· Totemism
· Sacred
· Profane
· 'one single moral community called a Church' to unite members
Parsons
· 'Life crises'
· Anomie
Evaluation
· Marxism- religion can be dysfunctional- Northern Ireland (Catholics v Protestants)
· Religion no longer influential to reinforce collective conscience- Western societies- secular
· How can religion integrate people in modern multi-faith societies?
Bellah (neo-functionalist)
· Civil religion- US Americanism
· Religious images/phrases promote and reinforce national identity
· Promotes social solidarity
· Evidence- e.g. coins inscribed 'God bless America'
· American flag- sacred
· Congress outlawed its 'desecration'- only sacred things can be desecrated
Marxism
Marx
· Including Engels- tool of social control- keep masses in their place
· 'Social opium' and 'Spiritual gin' (Lenin)
· Deal with pain and suffering- belief in Heaven, blame God for lowly position and responsibility for 'ordering their estate'
Engels
· 'the people must be kept in order by moral means, and the first and foremost of all moral means of action upon the masses is and remains- religion' (quoted by Turner 1991: 75)
Althusser
· Ideological apparatus
· False consciousness
Neo-marxism
Gramsci
· Didn't believe economic forces alone could maintain ruling classes' dominance
· Have to persuade existing system is good and fair
· Hegemony
· Religious belief and ideas used for control aren't inevitable
· If Church joined working-class forces- free selves from oppression by challenging status quo
Evaluation
· Maxism ignores secularisation
· How can ruling class impose its ideology on masses if majority doesn't attend church?
· Church doesn't always support ruling class- 1980s Catholic church in Poland- brought about downfall of communist regime
· No evidence to support false consciousness
· Phenomenologists- people will always want comfort religion provides
· Functionalists- social integration function- always essential
Feminism
-
- Women subordinate
- Disagree cause of it
Liberal
-
- Differences between men and women- socialised differently, reinforced by sexist laws and rules
- Solution: Non-gendered socialisation- ensuring sexual equality
- Hold office in religious organisation- important step to gain total sexual equality
Radical
-
- Men- directly responsible for women's oppression
- They benefit from women's low social status
- Daly
- Religion infused with patriarchal ideology- specific rules women must follow
- Catholic women- cover heads in church
- Some muslims put greater restirctions on how women should appear in public
- Identified extensive ways religion helps men maintain dominance over women
Marxist-feminist
-
- Weight to role of capitalism- reinforces inferior social status
- Capitalism benefits from free domestic labour
- Church reinforces traditional gender roles- serves interests of capitalist class
Evaluation
- Situation has improved
- E.g. 1992+ women can ordain as Anlican ministers- 1st in Bristol March 1994
- Ethnocentric
- Hijab may liberate women- frees them from being objectified
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