Beliefs Flashcards

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  • Created by: R09131
  • Created on: 10-12-20 10:39
Weber
Defines religion as belief in a superior or supernatural power that is above nature and can’t be scientifically explained.
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Durkheim
Defines religion in terms of the contribution it makes to social integration.
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Yinger
Identifies functions that religion performs for individuals, such as answering ‘ultimate questions’ about the meaning of life ad what happens when we die.
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Aldridge
For it’s followers Scientology is a religion, whereas several governments have denied it legal status as a religion and sought to ban it.
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Malinowski
Religion promotes social solidarity, it does so by performing psychological functionals and helping people cope with emotional stress.
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Parsons
Religion helps individuals to cope with unforeseen events and uncontrollable outcomes.
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Bellah
How religion unifies society, especially in multi-faith societies. What unifies multi-faith is civil religion- a belief system that attaches sacred qualities to society itself
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Lenin
Describes religion as ‘spiritual gin’- an intoxicant doled out to the masses by ruing class to confuse them and keep them in their places.
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Althusser
Reject the concept of alienation as unscientific and based on a romantic idea that human beings have a ‘true self’.
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Abercrombie, Hill and Turner
In pre-capitalist society, while Christianity was a major element of ruling-class ideology, it had only limited impact on the peasantry.
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Armstrong
Exclusion form the priesthood is evidence of women’s marginalization.
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Holm
Segregating women in places of worship is devaluation of women in religion.
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Woodhead
The exclusion of women from Catholic priesthood is evidence of the Church’s deep unease about the emancipation of women generally.
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Saadawi
While religion is used to oppress women, it is not the direct cause of their subordination.
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Gilliat-Ray
Some young British Muslim women choose to wear a hijab in order to gain parental approval to enter further education and especially employment, with Muslim women this is traditionally problematic.
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Brusco
In Columbia belonging to a Pentecostal group can be empowering for some women.
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Crockett
Crockett estimates that in 1851, 40% or more of the adult population of Britain attended church on Sundays. This is a much higher figure than today. Been major changes in religion:
increase in the average age of churchgoers
Fewer baptisms and church wedd
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Wilson
Wilson argued that Western societies had been undergoing a long-term process of secularization. He defined secularization as ‘the process whereby religious beliefs, practices and institutions lose social significance’. For example, church attendance in En
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Bruce
Bruce argues that the growth of a technological worldview has largely replaced religious or supernatural explanations of why things happen. Bruce concludes that although scientific explanations do not challenge religion directly, they have greatly reduced
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Parsons
Parsons defines structural differentiation as a process of specialization that occurs with the development of industrial society. Separate,
specialized institutions develop to carry out functions that were previously performed by a single institution. Pa
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Aldridge
Aldridge points out that a community does not have to be in a particular area:
Religion can be a source of identity on a
worldwide scale. This is true of Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim communities, for example.
Some religious communities are imagined communit
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Berger
According to Berger, another cause of secularisation is the trend towards religious diversity where instead of there being only one religious organisation and only one interpretation of the faith, there are many.
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Beckford
Beckford agrees with the idea that religious diversity will lead some to question or even abandon their religious beliefs, but this is not inevitable. Opposing views can have the effect of strengthening a religious group’s commitment to its existing belie
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Troeltsch
Distinguishes between two main types- the church and the sect. He sees sects as a small, exclusive group, hostile to wider society with high commitment from the poor and oppressed. Churches as large organizations with a bureaucratic hierarchy.
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Niebuhr
Denominations are midway between sects and churches. Membership is less exclusive and doesn’t appeal to the whole of society. Broadly accept society’s values with only minor restrictions.
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Bruce
Argues with Troeltsch’s view that a church has the monopoly of the truth and say that only applies to the Catholic Church before the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Sees the growth of sects and cults as a response to the social changes involved in m
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Wallis
Categorizes these new religious movements into three groups based on their relationship to the outside world- whether they reject the world, accommodate it or affirm it. World-affirming NRMs are the most successful according to Wallis.
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Stark and Bainbridge
Reject the idea of constructing such typologies altogether. Instead they argue we should distinguish between religious organizations by using one criterion- the degree of conflict or tension between the religious group and wider society. Identify two kind
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Weber
Sects tend to arise in groups who are marginal to society. Such groups may feel they are deprivileged and sects offer a solution to this problem by offering their members a theodicy of deprivilege.
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Wilson
Argues that periods of rapid social change disrupt and undermine established norms and values, producing anomie and normlessness. In response to the uncertainty and insecurity that this creates, those who are the most affected by the disruption may turn t
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Heelas
In the New Age there is around 2,000 activities and an estimated 146,000 practitioners in the UK. They are loosely organized and extremely diverse. According to Heelas there are two common themes that characterize the New Age: Self-spirituality and Detrad
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Drane
Argues that the appeal of NRMs are a shift towards postmodern society. There has been a loss in faith in metanarrative and ‘the truth’. Science promised to bring progress and instead brought wars, genocide, climate change, they are disillusioned with chur
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Davie
Notes there are gender differences in terms of religious practice, belief, self-identification, private prayer etc, for example: most churchgoers are female, more women then men say they have religion, fewer women then men are atheists.
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Ferguson and Hussey
In all major faiths in the UK except for Sikhs, women are more likely than men to practice their religion.
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Miller and Hoffman
Women express greater interest in religion and have a stronger personal commitment to it.
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Voas
Many fewer women then men are atheists or agnostics. Even among atheists, men are nearly twice as likely to say they definitely don’t believe in life after death.
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Brown
‘the decline in female piety’- many women had also taken on secular, masculinized roles in the public sphere of paid work: women too were withdrawing from religion.
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Woodhead
Men’s withdrawal from religion in the last 2 centuries meant that the church gradually became feminised spaces that emphasize ‘women’s concerns’ such and caring and relationships, this makes religion more attractive to women.
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Martin
Pentecostalism is usually regarded as a patriarchal form of religion, men are heads of the household and church. Despite this it seems attractive to women. It is described as a ‘Pentecostal gender paradox’.
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Brusco
Studied Pentecostals in Colombia, the answer lies in the fact that Pentecostalism demands that its followers adopt an ascetic (self-denying) lifestyle.
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Drogus
Notes that although official Pentecostal doctrine is that men should have authority over women, church magazines and educational materials often encourage more equal relations in marriage.
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Bird
Religion among minorities can be a basis for community solidarity, a means of preserving one’s culture and language, and a way of coping with oppression in a racist society.
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Herberg
Religion can ease the transition into a new culture by providing support and a sense of community for minority groups in their new environment, this is why there are high levels of religious participation among first-generation immigrants in the USA.
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Pryce
Studies African Caribbean community in Bristol and it shows both cultural defense and cultural
transition have been important. Argues that Pentecostalism is a highly adaptive ‘religion of the oppressed’ that provided migrants with values appropriate to t
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

Defines religion in terms of the contribution it makes to social integration.

Back

Durkheim

Card 3

Front

Identifies functions that religion performs for individuals, such as answering ‘ultimate questions’ about the meaning of life ad what happens when we die.

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

For it’s followers Scientology is a religion, whereas several governments have denied it legal status as a religion and sought to ban it.

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

Religion promotes social solidarity, it does so by performing psychological functionals and helping people cope with emotional stress.

Back

Preview of the back of card 5
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