Introduction
The sociological perspective studies religion in the context of society. Sociologists are interested in the significance of faith and the variety of forms it takes. It considers religion a social truth that can be seen empirically and yield empirical proof. The sociology of religion is an enlightenment product, with a predisposition to denigrate religious practice as incompatible with logic (Fisa, 2020). This repudiation has had a significant impact on people’s attitudes toward religion, and it is the foundation for secularization, the central paradigm in the field’s history. According to the secularization theory, religion is on the decline in society. The idea that sociology is a concept governed by and tries to produce views explains secularization. Because it is difficult to analyze a topic without first describing it, theories involve analysis and generalization (Alles, 2018). This essay will show how a comparative historical method of examining religions can help people understand how religions arose and were perceived by members from a sociological standpoint.
Relating Religion to Globalization
Globalization has brought up a pluralistic culture where religions with similar but unique ethics and values engage. Human dignity, equality, freedom, peace, and solidarity are fundamental ideals taught by the globe’s major religious ethnicities. Different religious communities participate in global concerns in addition to political organizations. Religions follow the Golden Rule, which states that one should not do to others what one would not want to be done to oneself (Chesnavage, 2021). As a result of such religious beliefs, globalization fosters increased spiritual patience in sectors such as political affairs, economy, and civilization.
In economic positions, as the economies of the world’s major countries have increased, so have the economies of the world’s major religions, offering more economical means for beliefs to disseminate their teachings. Missionary work, for example, is prominent in many developing nations where spiritual leaders transform the inhabitants. However, it may appear to be an old-fashioned approach in light of globalization. As a consequence, the world’s major religions have dispersed, with Christianity becoming “southern” and “black,” Islam becoming “Asian,” and Buddhism becoming “white” and “western” (Venter, 2018). Religions are accomplishing their primary objective of disseminating their beliefs to individuals all over the globe while yet retaining their initial territorial territories where their shrines reside. Concerning this, technical improvements have greatly assisted religion. Websites, for instance, offer details about several beliefs to everybody and enable anyone to partake in arguments that support the growth of religious views. Moreover, religious networks on television provide graphic religious teaching and practices. Therefore, religions have merged into one location by leaping onto the world wide web, which issues spiritual instructions to each household and monitors on a global measure.
Relating Religion to Modernity
Studying how modernity relates to religion is significant to human’s understanding of contemporary advancements in faith. Modernity has its critics, but these prisms provide humans insight into the past. They can contribute to making sense of the current religious practice. Modernism is linked with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, when empirical thinking, rationalism, and science-based assertion evacuated belief in spirits, ghosts, and superstition. According to Gidden, Modernity can be defined as both a place and a time (Kuokuei Kao, 2017). Finally, man could explain nature, and by dominating it, we were on our way to greater prosperity through scientific achievement. According to Foucault, such a belief system could be referred to as a truth regime (Buekens, 2021). So, during modernity, which lasted until the 1950s, there was a firm view that reality existed, structures controlled people, progress was unavoidable, and scientific knowledge was the solution for all socio-economic issues.
Despite the occasional industrial upheaval, people were more submissive than they are today, and they often embraced the authenticity or integrity of what people in charge told them. This viewpoint could be backed by citing Max Weber’s work, which regarded the growth of bureaucracy as a hazard to individuality and freedom (Ferreira and Serpa, 2019). In other words, individuals were aware of our position within the hierarchy and in the larger scheme of things. Although Durkheim characterized the industrial era as a period when values and beliefs were less defined, resulting in a greater inclination toward anomie, it was also a period of absolute importance in many aspects (Durkheim, 1965). There was a stronger feeling of good and evil, excellent and terrible, and individuals could tell the difference between reality and fiction due to science. Dictatorship, colonialism, imperialist nation-states, and general environmental plunder were all elements of the modern age. As alternative truth formulations, great explanations such as Liberalism, Socialism, Marxism, Science, and Religion are all present. Supporters of both share the conviction that their metanarrative is infallible, and that their earthly or religious explanation is correct.
One may suggest that the approach of modernity is pragmatic since it has certain persistent qualities that help people understand the past. Still, critics like Giddens are skeptical of this evolutionary process and point out some of the era’s discontinuities. However, Giddens seems to be treading a middle ground in which humans cannot describe history in terms of unique explanations. Moreover, individuals cannot express history in shorthand ideas such as modernity, which attempt to fit the past into a neat set of generalizations (Kuokuei Kao, 2017). As a result, it would be appropriate to put modernity to the test as individuals try to relate it to their understanding of religion. Modernity reveals a lot about how West European societies make meaning of a period of history. Deference and structure appear stronger than agency and self-determination in a passive ontological view. Modernity was also intrinsically tied to a belief in man’s inevitable advancement through science, technology, and logic. During modernity, scientific knowledge was not the only fact framework in operation. Philosophy and religion were both robust belief systems, and communal worship appeared to grow in tandem with scientific progress until the turn of the century.
Science altered religion under modernity, much as inclusion, tolerance, and gender equality have transformed the nature of religious organizations today. Sermons that threatened believers with eternity in hell if they disobeyed fell out of favor, and individuals could believe in science and religion, contrary to Bultmann’s beliefs (Yarbrough, 2018). The secular world was inhabited by science and its advancements, while the sacred world was occupied by faith. However, individuals can be sure that modernity brought a new period in which religion would serve as a sidekick to science. While science’s impact could be experienced by people every day, religious activity became less common as the 20th century advanced.
Relating Religion to Secularization
Secularization is a shift in culture whereby religious values give way to nonreligious values over time. Religious leaders, such as church leaders, lose their power and influence in society due to this process. The term “modernization” is used in sociology to characterize cultures that have become more modernized, which means that aspects of society, including government, business, and education, are becoming more distinct or less affected by religion. Individuals can still practice religion inside a community, but only on a personal level. Spiritual decisions are made by an individual, family, or cultural group, but faith does not significantly affect society.
In the United States, secularization is a contentious issue. America has been regarded as a Christian nation for a long time, with many Christian principles shaping current policies and laws. However, with the rise of other religions and atheism in recent decades, the country is now more secularized. There have been initiatives in the United States to eliminate religious practices from government-funded everyday life, including prayer in schools and religious festivals. Whereas the rest of Europe was quick to accept secularization, the United Kingdom was among the last to do so. The Cultural Revolution in Britain in the 1960s transformed people’s attitudes toward female issues, human rights, and religion. Financing for religious practices and houses of worship began to dwindle over time, lessening religion’s influence on daily life.
While many countries continue to prioritize religion and religious law, there is growing pressure worldwide, particularly from the US and its associates, for governments to secularize. Nonetheless, some places, such as sections of Africa and Asia, have become more religious. Some scholars suggest that religious affiliation is not the most accurate indicator of secularization (Davie, 2013). They argue that a loss of religious authority in certain spheres of life can occur without a commensurate shift in people’s religious identities. However, despite the extensive secularization in Europe, religion continues to influence people’s political attitudes and conduct. Several recent developments have strengthened this impact, notably the growing importance of religious and conservative views among the remaining religious adherents. These recent developments add to religious diversity in European nations.
Relating Religion to the Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation is another fundamental approach to the comprehension of spiritual development. It began when a Catholic monk called Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the entrance of his local church, igniting a theological, societal, economic, and political revolution. Luther believed the Catholic Church required to reform and set out to change it (Chastain, 2021). His 95 Theses were essentially a collection of 95 criticisms of the Catholic Church. Luther believed that redemption was achieved by God’s grace, not by performing the “works” that the church expected and that the Bible, not the church, was the supreme religious authority. Luther’s 95 Theses damaged the Catholic Church’s power and established the philosophical foundation for modernism.
Luther’s 95 Theses spread like wildfire due to the moveable type printing press, which had been invented 80 years before. Ordinary people read Luther’s “radical” allegations against the church in villages and cities all around Germany. The Protestant Reformation influenced nearly every scholarly discipline, particularly the social sciences, such as sociology, philosophy, and history. The Reformation was a societal, political, and economic revolution in the truest sense, and it established the philosophical foundations for the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. The Protestant Reformation arose from modern democracy, rationalism, capitalism, individualism, human rights, and modern principles. The Protestant Reformation also ushered in a religious upheaval that went beyond religion.
Viewing Religion as a Chain of Memory
Léger tackles distinguishing religion from other structures of value in modern Western civilization in sleek and accessible research. The line of memory and tradition, she claims, is what makes the human devotee a part of society (Hervieu-Léger, 2006). Religion, in this view, is the intellectual, symbolic, and social instrument that creates and controls the individual and collective perception of affiliation to a lineage of believers. Leger claims that modern cultures are not more logical than previous societies but suffer from collective amnesia. They are losing their ability to keep a living communal “thread” of memory as a basis for analysis. Nevertheless, as primary religious practices fade, various surrogate memories emerge, allowing collective identities to contract. These small memories foster the growth of ‘social groups’ and the validation of religions across Europe and beyond.
Most sociologists claimed that the fall of faith was due to the impact of industrialization and the subsequent secularization, which appeared to have dissolved religion. According to Leger, sociologists concentrated on why religion declined barely twenty years before her studies (Hervieu-Léger, 2006). Much has changed in those two decades, according to Leger, and religion seems to be far from dead. Religious fundamentalism, in general, appears to be on the rise. As a result of this shifting reality, Leger decided to address the critical question sociologists face when attempting to provide a sociological understanding of contemporary religion. This question entails learning the intellectual method necessary to comprehend both the aspect by which modernity perpetually weakens the plausible frameworks of all religious systems and the dimension through which it enhances new kinds of religion. Leger’s study helps individuals view religion as a developed aspect of the modern world.
Conclusion
A comparative historical method of examining religions can help people understand how religions arose and were perceived by members from a sociological standpoint. Comparing religion to politics, modernity, secularization, and other aspects gives a person a clear illustration of religious advancements. Religion sociology is a good topic despite the predominance of sociological trends that foretell religion’s demise. The history of religion has a vital role in the formation of sociology, and its founders frequently employed religion to examine society.
Reference List
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