Beliefs

• Totemism

  people perform rituals to help provide support + ensure feelings of belonging
• Durkheim

  argues that religion helps create + maintain value consensus, social order + solidarity
• Malinowski

  provides a psychological function, helps individuals cope with emotional stress eg through ill health, exams
• Parsons

  answers the big questions in life
• Marxists belief on religion

  creates a false consciousness - "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the need than for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven" + hindu caste system
• feminist theory on religion

  religion promotes patriarchy, no women imams or priests in the Catholic Church

  menstruation huts

  crocodile backs
• force for change

  liberation theology, MLK
• Conservative force

  functionalists - maintains social solidarity

  marxists - capitalism prevents social change by creating a false consciousness

  feminists - maintains subordination(patriarchy) in society and within the family
• secularisation 


  decline in the importance of religion
• globalisation

  the process by which economies and cultures have been drawn together and become more interconnected
• post-modernism

  modern society is a fragmented stable media saturated global village
• post-modernism consists of 3 things....

  choice, consumerism and individualism
• spiritual shopping

  people have more choice and can choose the bits that best suit peoples lives
• Believing without belonging

  davie argues that religion is not declining but simply taking a different form - people still believe however less attendance at church
• Lyon

  agrees with believing without belonging however argues that traditional religion is taking new forms due to an increase in globalisation
• online religion

  allows individual to create non-hierarchical relationship and create sense of community
• religion online

  religious organisation uses internet to address members, electronic traditional, hierarchal communication
• meta- narratives


  big stories
• Kendal project

  Heelas + Woodhead found a decline in traditional religion

  traditional = 7.9% attendance

  holistic milieu = 1.6% attendance
• New age

  focuses on individualism
• Religious market theory 


  Stark + Bainbridge see secularisation as very Eurocentric

  propose a new idea:

  people naturally need religion - the demand remains consistent

  people seek rewards
• religious monopoly

  one church with no competition
• how do we know the world in becoming more secular?

  parents not passing on religious teaching to their children allowing them to make their own decisions

  fewer people identifying as religious

  less people attending religious services

  no social stigma around not being religious
• Existential security theory 


  Norris and Inglehart argue poor societies where people with life threatening risks are more religious

  rich societies have lower levels of religiosity as they are more secure
• Statistics for church attendance

  5% go to church however 42% say they believe in life after death
• State welfare + religiosity

  Gill + Lundegaarde expects that religion will never fully disappear completely as it provides answers for the ultimate questions in life
• fundamentalism 


  they like tradition and often look back to the past, they seek to return to the basics of their faith
• the key features of fundamentalism

  sacred texts - taken literal

  us + them mentality - separate themselves from the rest of the world

  aggressive reaction - reactions tend to be aggressive

  they like using technology to televangelism

  patriarchy - control over women
• Secular fundamentalism 


  Davie argues that recent decades have been emergence of secular forms of fundamentalism - she distinguishes two forms
• Churches

  a large organisations, attracting to the higher classes
• Sects

  small exclusive groups - hostile to wider society and attracts poor oppressed people
• denomination 


  they don't appeal to the whole of society - broadly accept society's values but are not liked with the state + they impose minor restrictions upon members eg no alcohol
• Cult 


  loose-knit small group with shared themes or interests - they claim to have special knowledge and do not demand strong commitment from followers - claim to improve the world
• gender statistics

  women 84% believe in god compared to 75% men
• Ethnicity statistics 


  white anglicans 11% rate religion as important in their lives 74% muslims
• relative deprivation 


  subjective sense of being deprived - mc are spiritually deprived leading to them lacking in moral value
• Sectarian cycle 


  tension between privileged and deprived members of the church break away to form a world rejecting sect
• why are women more likely to be religious

  due to socialisation - women are socialised into be less risk averse, this means they don't want to risk not being religious as they don't know what happens when we die

  they have more time - more likely to work part time
• Women and the new age

  80% found to take part in holistic milieu in the kendal project

  it gives women a higher status and sense of self-worth
• class differences between women + new age

  mc have the belief that they are able to control their own destiny

  wc have a fatalistic belief - god controls them