Bowman M, Herbert D and Mumm S (2003) Course Introduction, Milton Keynes: Open University

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2 Religion Today: Themes and Issues

15 Themes

Continuity and change - continuity often stressed or implied by appeal to tradition. Glassie notes tradition is the creation of the future out of the past.... (history) is an artful assembly of materials from the past, designed for usefulness in the future. But concept of tradition as constant and changeless is important to many believers.

Representation is a complex idea, very important in religion. Questions - who is representing what, to whom, etc. Note diversity within as well as between religions. Note importance of representation: Jews represented as monsters in middle ages; contemporary Muslims represented as fundamentalists; 17 TV series of Ramayana had profound effect on popular devotion and on right wing Hindu political organisations.

Differing perspectives Closely related to representation. Religions provide world views - e.g. cancer cure - miracle or spontaneous remission? Gender an obvious facet.

Sources of authority Useful way to gain insight into a religion - scriptures, specialists, tradition, personal experience, etc. 21 Language frequently a knotty problem - exclusion e.g. by male oriented language; issues of translation. Also problematic in study of religion.

Polysemy - existence of several meanings in a single word. E.g. "religion" itself and "spirituality".

Community and identity often interpreted as longing for good old days. Involves ideas of belonging, but also creates insiders and outsiders.

Morris suggests two different types - communities of assent and communities of descent, and notes that new commmunities of both types are always being formed. Personal, national and religious identity also often intertwined. 26 Stark and Glock suggest all religions expect some display of - belief, practice, experience, knowledge, consequences.

27 one primary aim of course is to encourage students to view religion from perspectives other than their own. "Making strange".

Insider and outsider perspectives outsider known as etic and insider as emic. A central distinction in the study of religion. p101 Body Ritual among the Nacirema.

34ff tensions and arguments at St Mungo Museum - video 1.

38 Theological, reductionist and phenomenological perspectives.

Theological - starts from assumption that the divine is real. Material mostly traditional and authoritative - mostly an insider view.

40 Reductionist - rational, scientific e.g. Freud confident human race could outgrow religion. Sociologists began to study function of religion, e.g. Marx as pain reliever, Durkheim as integrating and legitimating force.

42 Phenomenological (very polysemic) Thorpe and Woodcock - focusses on people's consciousness of their experience and their own interpretations and meanings.

Death of Diana

"Outpouring" seen as unBritish, despite historical evidence of similar public outbursts.

117 Woodhead C of E bishops saw it as implicit religion. Diana defined herself as religion of the Heart. Connection with Mother Teresa - showing people one loved them. But D centred inwardly on the person ; MT upwardly on God; on Christ in the poor. Selfless love - agape.

D's ambivalence towards institutional religion - ditto Charles, though differently. D saw religion as something instinctive, not a matter for instruction.

127-8 Diana never accepted MT's discourse of the poor portrayed here as being one-way, but I don't think it was. Diana humanitarian discourse, universalist.

131 Norman described Diana's religion as a religion of empty sentiment, without doctrine and devoid of intellectual content. A lot of Christians reacted angrily. Authors comment it is interesting to note how many... commentators... share his assumption that "authentic" religion must be conservative, dogmatic and demanding.

133 Humanitarianism as unquestioned and unquestionable discourse.

134-5 Ammerman study of "Golden Rule" Christians - do as you would be done by.

135 religion of the Heart.. superbly adapted to late modernity - market, consumerist democratic, empowering, fits well into social differentiation - public/private but doesn't cope well with public.

68 Diana case illustrates how religious studies are polymethodic - anthropology, sociology, politics, theology, economics, psychology, history.

4 Religion Today: Religion and Society

Globalisation theory effect on cultural identities and manifestations. Idea of spiritual supermarket; customised religion. Simultaneous access to beliefs, practices, traditions, artefacts.

Secularisation theory 73 Wilson that process by which religious institutions, actions and consciousness lose their social significance... religion ceases to be meaningful in the working of the social system. The point of comparison is usually the previous period of total dominance of religion. But note that there are still theocracies.

To me that's off the point. Secularisation must refer to the condition of modern capitalist industrial (probably post-industrial and post-capitalist, societies, and refers to the fact that religion is privatised and that people think in a secular way. Even so I think it's not a very clever theory. It doesn't take account of how much religion people have buried in them, and also of the different forms it takes, e.g. astrology, fate. And to pick up Wilson's point about it ceasing to be meaningful in the workings of the social system, there's a difference between it becoming less visible and it becoming less meaningful. It has been privatised and dis-organised a lot, but that doesn't mean it has lost social significance. Of course Wilson may appreciate the difference and still say religion has lost its significance, but I think he'd have a hard time defending that.

75 Piatigorsky Both Weber and Durkheim were so preoccupied with the problem of how modern societies could manage without religion that they simply overlooked the fact that they could not.

75 Davie believing witihout belonging. Casanova points to "deprivatisation" of religion outside W Europe - e.g. liberation theology in Brazil. USA is good example as well, where church going has strengthened in recent years, and it is not possible to be president without an active practice. Also, I didn't realise sociologists "wanted" religion to disappear.

76 Stark and Bainbridge see seculariation as process found in all societies and all religions, but something dynamic, involving religious revival and innovation.

Rational choice theory Berger argued religious pluralism undermined plausibility (an "emic" view?) , but rational choice theorists argue that choice makes for healthy competition and allows individuals to find a match for their preferences. A research student told me of his project in which he chose congregations of Anglicans, Methodists, Christadelphians and Jehovah's Witnesses and got the members of each congregation to fill in a personality questionnaire. He used half the questionnaires from each congregation to develop a personality profile of the typical member, then used the other half to ask his computer to predict which congregation each person belonged to. The computer got it right in 80% of cases, and in 16% confused Christadelphinas with JWs or Anglicans with Methodists.

77 variety of religious responses to modernisation aross the world. UK and Europe, p78, decline in formal religion - marriages, christenings in church, decline in belief in personal god, but slight increase in belief in god as spirit and steady belief in astrology and reincarnation. But difficult to genrealise e.g. early 12990s chruchgoing in Ireland was 88%, in Sweden 10%. Catholic countries higher than Protestant. In some cases practice rises e.g. Poland 1970-1990. Egypt as case example where religion retains its popularity and power.

81 Secularisation theory three kinds of evidence

Secularisation theory is primarily concerned with the public sphere. Wilson popular commitment does not indicate what significance religion has for the operation of the social system. Religion declines as a result of modernisation - meaning industrialisation, urbanisation, occupational spceialisation, mass education. Beyer defined globalisation as the spread of modernisation. But effects on religious beliefs and practices very varied. It works in response to social differentiation, societalisation and rationalisation.

Differentiation - different systems become disconnected, and relgiion loses its universal grip.

Societalisation - break up of small communities because of rural-urban migration and changing work patterns. Religion was integral part of village life. Modern societies integrated by different means - state, nationalism, production processes and consumer markets. Religion dependent on kinship networks for transmission. Religion as conservative?? and therefore slow to catch up with new methods of transmission - have now caught up with e.g. internet. But there is more to this - how much did religion ever rely on kinship - wasn't it often social and hierarchical pressure? Also, the evangelical churches have found a way round this by insisting on individual salvation - everyone ahs to have their own coming to Jesus moment - and they are expanding pretty successfully with it

Rationalisation - process by which in everyday life natural physical explanations displace supernatural. 85 spread of science etc doesn't always drive out superstition. Latin America quoted as example but also look at USA TV and film output - Buffy, Dark Angel, Blade for fusions of tech and supernatural. And in these modern versions the church rarely figures, which is another issue. Also examples from India and Egypt - two forms of practical thinking coexist.

Rationalisation increasingly functionalises religious discourse. Rao says many believers try to find hidden rationality. Probably the intellectualised western form of religion underestimates the extent of functionalism in religion generally. Stress on cognitive and verbal and neglect of symbolic and sensual may explain relative weakening of Protestantism vis a vis Catholicism.

137 Weber on the light cloak of care for external possessions becoming an iron cage, with the possibility of mechanised petrification embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance

140 Wilson Functions of religion:

Completely ignores function of religion in dissent

141 Rerligion has lost presidency it once exercised in public affairs. Democracy legitimises, bureaucracy enforces, science explains. Then defines secularisation 142 as process in which religion has lost significance in the operation of the social system which is a much bigger claim than saying it has lost ground in the public sphere.

143 Differentiation - leads to role performance and loss of control - little chance of shared consciousness. Lack of social cohesion. Old dependence on cohesion replaced by dependence on rational techniques maybe postmodernism is taking us beyond that now, though not universally. Role playing requires co-ordination. Social integration has replaced social cohesion.

144 Religion liberated from old commitments is now free to be voice of dissent. Can link like minded people into a larger whole. No sense of history. Religion has always been voice of dissent, as well as instrument of power. Pilgrim Fathers left for America because they dissented. There were priests who vocally dissented from the Spanish exploitation of native Americans in the sixteenth century. In the rebellion we call the Indian Mutiny religion was a key factor for the dissenters. Trade unions and religion. Buddhists in Vietnam under the French. Etc etc.

147 describes religious org with widely distributed national face which may funciton as intermediate system of relationship which stands between individual and totality of state. Also religions can be international. Has always been function of religion to canvass charity.

146 today no one religion can claim to be the spiritual counterpart of the political entity that is the state, nor the social entity that is the public at large. Not many ever could. C of E is the state religion and was very powerful, but the British have not been united in fatih since the Reformation, and probably not before that.

148 Before secularisation occurred, the functions of religion were central to the very constitution of society. That is no longer the case.... But religion has not died just because its significance for the social system has diminished. It persists, and its persistence is assured as long as men continue to seek the experience of community, brotherhood, fellow-feeling and association... Although, from the persepctive of society at large, religion functions only at the margins, those margins are not without their importance. This encapsulates the problem. People seeking community and association are what he calls marginal - to me they're central. Religion has lost its place as an enforcer for the state - in some places - but its place in people's lives is in many ways undiminished and still very central. You can't equate losing a role for the state with losing social significance. Another issue is the example of the right wing churches in the USA. The church has never been connected to the state in the way the C of E, for instance, has, so you can't look back to a time when church and state were interwoven - and yet they are still crucial to the political process. It is not possible for anyone to be president without a visible practice of religion. And it is not possible for right wing presidents to govern without the consent of the churches. Another issue to consider is that the sta te itself has lost power. Religion has rather cleverly moved into arenas where it can still affect people's lives through consumerism etc.

92 define postmodernism as changed economics, politics, culture and society. Also distinguished by an eclectic mixing of styles, and fragmentation or breakdown of "grand narrative".

Secularisation might say Jesus in Disneyland is "internal secularisation" that is lots of people still going to church but religion becoming like the rest of the world - entertainment rather than obedience becoming its dynamic.

151/2 Lyon But might also be seen as example of transformation of religion or possibly its deregulation. Beckford sees religion as cultural resource. Can convey symbolism of newly perceived social realities. Secularisation has little space for spiritual or supra-rational quests (seen as peripheral), so the late twentieth century sacralisation of the Self comes as a surprise. Postmodernism has two major trends - rise of consumerism and spread of ICTs - religions have adapted well to these.