religion and social protest

• where sociologists like Weber argue that religion has the power to influence social change, functionalists like Malinowski and Parsons negate this idea, instead believing that religion serves to stimulate solidarity, and that it does not cause social change, as it is not a function
• Marxists believe that religion inhibits social change, in the way that religious beliefs and values are used to justify social inequality
• Bruce uses the two examples of the American CRM and the NCR as a vehicle to drive his argument that religion can promote social change
• During the civil right movement, Black clergymen, led by Martin Luther King, influenced change by gaining national support from other communities, ultimately undermining the white supremacist racial system that governed the US for centuries
• MLK and the broader Baptist Church’s faith in God was able to serve as a fuel that fed the passionate flame in the fight for freedom
• MLK was able to use religion as an ideological resource in appealing to many christians, regardless of their background, to unify those with common ground based on their christian values. Bruce argues that the success that the movement gained was a result of its peaceful and diplomatic nature, as well as a willingness to negotiate with those with opposing views
• the CRM succeeded in aiding to end racial segregation, alleviate racial tensions between minorities as well as securing more equal political rights for disenfranchised and often marginalised members of society
• The Arab Spring

  • a series of anti-government protests and uprisings that spread throughout the Middle-East in the early 2010s, in retaliation to corruption and economic stagnation
  • Islamic groups were able to shed light on political injustices in places like Tunisia & Egypt through social media
  • the arab spring serves as a more contemporary example of the role of religion in catalysing social change
• some forms of religious fundamentalism have led to massive social changes. this can be seen with the events of 9/11, carried out by extremist group Al-Qaeda, breeding a culture of fear and increased surveillance in the West
• fundamentalists are groups of people who believe that a set of religious beliefs have been ‘watered down’, and so seek to reverse these changes by returning to traditional values
• New Christian Right

  • a protestant fundamentalist group (a coalition of conservative christians) that are radical in their views, often based on their literal interpretations of the bible
  • always advance socially conservative positions on morality issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, drugs, evolution etc.
• despite their mass media attention, the new christian right tend to be heavily criticised by mainstream Americans, as they oppose the liberal values and cosmopolitanism (the intersectional idea that everyone is a member of a community) that the majority of the country share