Social Stability & Religion
Sociology: AQA A Level, topic 7.1.3
Functionalism and Religion
Functionalists believe that religion creates social stability.
Secondary socialisation
- Durkheim believed that religion creates a collective conscience through secondary socialisation.
- Religion acts as part of secondary socialisation, it teaches its followers the norms and values of society.
- By performing this function, religion reinforces the value consensus creating social order.
Australian Aborigines
- Durkheim conducted a study on Australian Aborigines.
- He found that their religion was based on totemism.
- To a community, their chosen sacred symbol represents themselves as a society along with a higher power that protects them.
Collective conscience
- Therefore, by worshiping their god, they are also celebrating their own society.
- He argued that by worshipping together, religion provides the community with a collective conscience.
- This means they had a shared understanding of the norms, values and beliefs that held their community together.
Psychological functions
- Malinowski claimed that religion also provides society with psychological functions.
- He argued that when faced with a life crisis religion can help you overcome this.
- He referred to this as a rite of passage.
- A rite of passage, such as a funeral, helps the community return to normality as quickly as possible therefore maintaining social order.
Bellah
- Neo-functionalist Bellah argued that America has its own civil religion known as ‘Americanism’.
- In order to avoid conflict and promote integration, the worship of the American culture unites its citizens better than any other religion.
Americanism
- For example, Americanism can be said to ‘worship’ the American flag.
- A civil religion is a faith in Americanism or ‘the American way of life’ rather than one almighty God.
Marxism and Religion
Marxists believe that religion creates social stability.
‘Opium of the masses’
- Marx said religion was the ‘opium of the masses’ as it dulls the pain of oppression by giving its followers a temporary ‘high’ through promises of a better afterlife in order to distract them from their exploitation.
- Lenin agreed, comparing religion to ‘spiritual gin’, an intoxicant that numbs the pain of oppression.
An ideology
- Marx believed that religion's main function was to benefit capitalism through its power as an ideology.
- He claimed that it maintained capitalism in two ways.
Maintaining capitalism
- Firstly religion suggests that inequality is God-given and therefore unchangeable.
- Secondly, it teaches the poor that their poverty is a test from God that will be compensated in the afterlife.
Accepting inequality
- By convincing the proletariat to accept inequality, religion is succeeding in its purpose to maintain the false class consciousness.
- The proletariat remain unaware of the true extent of their exploitation and as a result will never revolt against the bourgeoisie.
Feminism and Religion
Feminists believe that religion creates social stability.
Religion and patriarchy
- Feminists argue that religion reproduces patriarchy as it is male dominated.
- For example in monotheistic religions:
- God is a man.
- Sacred texts portray women negatively.
Simone de Beauvoir
- Simone de Beauvoir believes that religion successfully maintains gender inequality by tricking women into thinking that they are equal to men in the eyes of their God and that they will be compensated for any hardship in the afterlife.
Armstrong
- Armstrong studies how women are often blocked from positions in the top of the mainstream churches.
- She studied the Church of England.
- Women in the church have not been able to progress to the top religious positions.
- This issue is not only confined to the Church of England as many other religions face the same issue.