Religion might not seem like something a sociologist
can study.
After all, religion is about personal beliefs,
right?
So, sociology won’t give you any answers
about the existence of God, or how many angels
can dance on the head of a pin.
But sociology can help you think about
religion as a social institution.
In the same way that we might study the family
or the government, we can ask questions about
religion’s role in society.
Like, how do different religions influence
social norms in a society?
What’s the function of religion in a society?
Does it improve social cohesiveness or
entrench inequalities?
Before we try to answer those big questions,
let’s start with a simpler one: What is religion?
[Theme Music]
To understand how sociologists think about
religion, we need to go back to the work of our old
friend, French sociologist Emile Durkheim.
Durkheim defined religion not in terms of
gods or supernatural phenomena, but in terms
of the sacred –
things that are set apart from society as
extraordinary, inspiring awe, and deserving
of reverence.
He claimed that in all societies, there’s a
difference between the sacred and the profane,
or the mundane, everyday parts of life.
Religion, then, is a social institution that
involves a unified system of beliefs and
practices that recognizes the sacred.
But this isn’t a set-up between good and evil.
Sacred doesn’t mean good and profane doesn’t
mean bad.
Instead, recognizing something as sacred is
about seeing a certain place, object, or experience
as special and creating markers that separate
it from your day to day life.
It’s natural, then, to think about religion
from the perspective of Symbolic-Interactionism,
which thinks about society in terms of the
symbols that humans construct.
And all religions rely on the use of symbols
to create the Sacred.
Rituals, for example, are a form of symbolic
practice that highlight faith.
Many religions use certain actions during
prayer that symbolize deference to God,
such as Catholics making the sign of the cross before
prayer, or Muslims supplicating themselves and facing
Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Mohammed.
Many religions also practice ritual ablution,
or washing certain parts of the body during
a religious ceremony.
For example, in the religious practice of
baptism, water is a symbol of people’s belief
that faith cleanses the soul.
Objects can also take on Sacred meaning.
Symbols like the Cross or the Star of David
are considered totems, objects that we have
collectively defined as Sacred.
Types of dress or grooming practices, such
as men’s beards in Islam or Orthodox Judaism,
also become sacred indicators of faith because
they’re visible symbols of religious belief.
In this way, Totems confer in-group membership
to those who wear or use these symbols,
because they provide a way for people to demonstrate
their faith and recognize that faith in others.
But the role of religion in society goes beyond
influencing our symbolic practices.
In addition to defining the Sacred and the profane,
Emile Durkheim also looked at religion through the
lens of structural functionalism.
And he identified three major functions of
religion that contribute to the operation of society.
First, religion helps establish social cohesion, by uniting
people around shared symbols, norms, and values.
Durkheim argued that religious thought promotes
norms like morality, fairness, charity, and justice.
Churches act as gathering places, forming
the backbone of social life for many people.
In fact, membership in a church is the most
common community association for Americans.
Second, Durkheim said, societies use religion
as a form of social control.
People behave well, not only out of fear of their
friends and families disapproving, but also out of
a desire to remain in their god’s good graces.
Christianity and Judaism, for example, have the
Ten Commandments, a set of rules for behavior
that they believe were sent directly from God.
But these commandments aren’t just rules
about how to worship –
many of them match up with societal norms, like
respecting your parents or not committing adultery, or
with secular laws, which prohibit murder and theft.
Third, in a functionalist perspective, religion
provides people with a sense of purpose in life.
Sometimes it can feel like our lives are such
tiny blips in the grand scheme of the universe, it
can be hard to imagine why your actions matter.
Religion gives people a reason to see their
lives as meaningful, by framing them within the
greater purpose of their god’s grand plan.
But while Durkheim’s framing demonstrates the
many ways religions promote social unity, religion
can, of course, also be a force of division.
Social Conflict Theory perspectives understand religion in terms of how it entrenches existing inequalities.
Karl Marx saw religion as an agent of
social stratification,
which served those in power by legitimizing
the status quo and framing existing inequality
as part of a divine plan.
Rulers in many societies were believed to
be given their right to rule by divine right.
Chinese emperors were believed to have a mandate
from heaven, and were given the title Son of Heaven
to indicate their divine authority to rule.
In Europe, heads of state were often also the head of
the Church – in fact, to this day, the British monarchs
are the formal heads of the Church of England.
And some Christian religions, such as
Calvinism, espouse predestination,
or the belief that God pre-ordains everything that
comes to pass, including whether you get into heaven.
So, by this logic, having wealth and power
was seen as an indication of God’s favor.
So, for these reasons, Marx saw religion as
a huge barrier to revolutionary change, referring
to it as the ‘opiate of the masses.’
After all, it’s hard to convince people to rise up
against the elites if they believe that the elites have
the power of God behind them!
In addition to entrenching political
and economic inequalities,
Conflict Theory perspectives also explore how
religion contributes to gender and racial inequalities.
Let’s go to the Thought Bubble to look at how feminist
theory and race conflict theory help us understand
religion’s effects on these kinds of inequality.
If you walk around any major museum in the Western
world, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find some art
depicting religious figures from Judaism or Christianity.
And in these paintings, God is pretty much
exclusively an old white man with a beard.
And in fact, divine figures and their prophets
in most religions are male.
Virtually all of the world’s major religions are patriarchal,
with religious texts often explicitly describing men in the
image of God and women in subordinate roles to men.
For example, in Christianity, the first man, Adam, was
created in God’s image whereas the first woman, Eve,
was created from Adam’s rib to serve and obey Adam.
Many religions also position women as
immoral beings in need of male constraint.
In the Bible, Eve committed the original sin
by tempting Adam to eat the forbidden fruit and
got both of them booted from paradise.
Many religions ban women from
positions with the clergy, including Catholicism,
Orthodox Judaism, and Islam.
Religion has also been used as a way to
control women’s behaviors,
requiring them to dress modestly or not
allowing women to speak in church or be
alone with men outside their family.
Religion has also been used to uphold another
type of social inequality: racial inequality.
Slavery in the United States, for example,
was framed as morally justifiable based on
various texts from the Bible,
most prominently the story of Cain and Abel,
in which God ‘marked’ Cain for murdering his brother,
which was interpreted to mean marking
him as sinful with darker skin.
But that’s not to say that religion is always
on the side of oppression.
Quakers, a sect of Christianity, were leaders
in the abolition movement and in the women’s
suffrage movement of the 19th century.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was led
by many with ties to the Black religious community.
Most notably the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference,
a civil rights organization headed up by a
Baptist minister that you might have heard of
named Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thanks Thought Bubble!
So, we’ve talked a lot so far about religion
in theory – but how does religion work in
a practical sense?
Understanding how different religions are organized
and how they integrate with the rest of society
helps us understand which of these theories
make sense in different religious contexts.
We only have to look at the US to see why
understanding the practical importance of
religion might be of interest to sociologists:
In the United States, more than 70% of American
adults claim that religion is important in their lives,
which is more than double the rate of adults in
other high income countries like Norway or Japan.
National surveys show that about 50% of Americans
identify as Protestants, 20% identify as Catholics,
6% identify with a non-Christian faith, and
23% do not identify with a religion at all.
Within the Protestant faith, there are a large number
of denominations, or subgroups of religious practice,
including both mainstream denominations, such
as Presbyterians and Lutherans, and Evangelical
churches, such as Methodists and Baptists.
Evangelical denominations are characterized
by more active attempts to proselytize, or spread
the faith to others outside the faith.
But who identifies as what religion depends a lot
on who you are – in terms of where you live, in terms
of class, and in terms of race and ethnicity.
More well-established religious faiths that
are well-integrated into society are what
sociologists call Churches.
Most major religions are what we would call a
Church – for example, Christianity, Islam, Judaism,
Hinduism, and Buddhism are all ‘Churches’.
Religious sects, meanwhile, are faiths with
belief systems that are less formal and less
integrated into society.
And they tend to attract followers who are
more disadvantaged.
Some examples include Jehovah’s Witnesses,
Pentecostals, or Unitarians.
Not only does class matter when it comes to
your religion – where you live might, too.
Catholicism is more common in Northeastern
and Southwestern states,
whereas the South has high concentrations of Evangelical Protestants, such as Baptists,
and the Midwest has higher concentrations of other
Protestant faiths, such as Methodists and Lutherans.
Many of these regional differences stem from
which racial ethnic groups settled in these regions.
The Midwest, for example, had high numbers
of German and Scandinavian immigrants settle there,
and these ethnic groups are often Lutherans.
Irish and Italian Americans, who were more
likely to be Catholic, settled in New England
and the Mid-Atlantic.
Black Americans – who are heavily
concentrated in Southern states –
are somewhat more likely to be religious than
the US population as a whole, with 87% claiming
an affiliation with some faith.
And the vast majority of Black Americans identify
with a Protestant faith, with evangelical churches
being the most common affiliation.
There’s also a growing number of Black
Americans who identify as Muslim,
with about 40% of all native-born Muslims in the
US identifying themselves as African American.
Overall, however, the importance of religion in
the United States has been on the decline in recent
decades – a process known as secularization.
Younger Americans are much more likely now
to report that they do not believe in any religion
compared to past generations.
Nonetheless, the influence of religion on
society isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
As we learned today – no matter which school
of sociological thought you subscribe to –
religion has ties to the very rules and norms that
shape what our society and culture look like.
Today, we looked at how symbolic interactionism
helps us understand religion’s dichotomy of
the Sacred vs. the Profane.
Then, we compared the perspectives of Structural
Functionalists and Social Conflict Theorists
on whether religion improves social cohesiveness
or increases social stratification.
And we ended with a discussion of how religious
practice in the US differs across race and class lines.
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