Talk:Introduction to Sociology/Religion

What do you mean by the protest orientation of sects? Also, you may want to define sect

Need a section on religious conversion:

from Batson et. al. p. 151 "We have considered four possible facilitators of religious experience - psychedelic drugs, meditation, religious language, and music. We suggested that although none has the power to produce religious experience, each has the power to facilitate it. Moreover, we suggested that each works in its own unique way: Drugs affect both the self-surrender and new vision stages; meditation only the self-surrender stage; religious language the existential crisis, new vision, and new life stages; and various forms of music affect all four stages. Note that if these suggestions are correct, then to facilitate all four stages using drugs, meditation, and religious language, two or more techniques must be combined. To combine drugs with meditation would be largely redundant, and it would still leave two stages uncovered. So we would not expect such a combination to occur. But to combine either drugs or meditation with religious language would cover all four stages. Therefore, we would expect such combinations to occur and to prove effective. We would expect various forms of music, which affect emotional rather than cognitive processes, to be combined with any and all of the other facilitators."

On Durkheim's Account of Religion
Personally, I have a bit of a problem with the author's critique of Durkheim's explaination of Religion. Durkheim, in many ways, does stress that religion is society and/or any social gathering or state of shared conciousnes which is designated as sacred.

It is not what is thought of as the commonly "religious" event (i.e. God, a center of worship, etc) that makes it religious, it is the feeling of sacredness that surrounds the event, mentality or place. Therefore, saying that nationalism is not religion is wrong (as I understand it) by Durkheim - nationalism, if it is a sacred feeling that is expemplified in a gathering or a shared conciousness among many peoples of a territory, it may in fact be "religious." Whether people consider it to be religious or not depends on their conception of religion, not Durkheim's. This is hardly a flaw in Durkheim's logic or reasonable grounds for a critique.

Durkheim at least implies that what we feel during these sacred events and gatherings is the force of society, and that is what makes it a sacred event. Bevcause we are no longer primitive peoples, by Durkheim's account, we no longer attribute every sacred event or feeling to that of a God. He attributes the many different settings in which a feeling of sacredness may come about to different social settings and implies that these many different feelings are the basis of polytheism (totemism).

In sumation, for Durkheim religion is society. I think that point is greatly missed in this short account of his work on Religion.
 * That's a good point. I'll see if I can't give it a fairer treatment in the future.

I don't think the piece really captures Durkeim's contention, i.e., the sacred is the social. For Durkheim, engaging in religious activity reinforces the hierarchy of the colective over the individual. In class I illustrate the idea by reference to Norse mythology on the origins of scoial structure. I can't remember the particular part of the Edda (although it may be the Rigsthulla) but Heimdallr, one of the gods (going be the eke-name 'Rig' I think) manages to enviegle hs way into the beds of three generations of humanity. The offspring of these visits are the progenitors of the three social classes of norse society (thralls, karls and jarls). In retelling and and attending to the story individuals re-inscribed their relationship to an imutable social order a bit like singing the all things bright and beautiful hymn (the bit about the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate). The order is imutable because it has its origins in divine intervention. In short, the function of this instance of the sacred is to re-inforce the priority of a pre-existing social order over the aspirations of the individual, i.e. don't get above yourself.

What about a discussion of civil religion?
There is nothing in here about Bellah's concept of civil religion.

Eileen Barker has written two books in 1984
Which one is this article referring to? 24.132.49.11 18:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Units in Graph of educational level in various religions
This unit is supposed to be a percentage, not dollars.

misspelling under section "religion as supernature"
The word "phenomena" is misspelled "phenomona" as of 4-24-13 1:04 p.m. EST USA.

Can someone with editing rights please correct that? Thank you.