Religion theorists

• McGuire suggests defining religion is hard because it is a "dual character".
• McGuire: "Dual character".
• McGuire: Religion can be both:

  • Individual
  • Social
• Durkheim: Religion can be carried out two functions:

  • Social solidarity
  • Social integration
• Maguire: defines sacred as something utterly and mysteriously precious in our experience.
• Cornwall: There are three dimensions to religion.
• According to Cornwall, the three dimensions of religion are:

  • Knowing; the belief that there is a higher being.
  • Doing; practicing the religion in the form of prayer.
  • Feeling; being committed to the faith and being apart of the community.
• Hughes and Church: "Proxy indicator"
• A proxy indicator is when you ask people if they believe in a higher being. If they do, this means that they are probably religious.
• Hadaway and Marler: US opinion poll data about religious attendance showed significant differences between the number of people claiming to attend church services and the number of people who actually attend.
• The National Secular Society: In the UK, people tended to over-claim when asked about good moral.
• Hewitt: He reported that around 1.3 million Catholics claimed to attend church services, but only 850,000 people attended church (with even fewer people attending regularly).
• Abrams suggested that the best way to measure religiosity is to measure commitment.
• • Disposition: Philosophical dimension to religiosity.
  • Orthodox belief: The extent to which people believe in a God.
  • Moral values: How religion influences this.
  • Institutional attachment: To what extent do they feel part of the religious community?
• Kelly: New religious movements are started and populated by people from the middle and ruling class.
• Adler: In the USA, members of witch covens are usually from the middle class.
• Bruce: he stated that NRMs are more appealing to middle-class people because they have to do with self-growth/improvement, and this usually appeals to people who don't have much to worry about.
• Weber: Theodicy of disprivilege.
• Theodicy of disprivilege refers to the fact that working-class people are told that their suffering in this life is "worth it" or "justified" by a better life after death.
• Theodicy of disprivilege helps the working-class cope with their lives and keep them submissive to class inequalities.
• Cook: He warned that collecting data on ethnicity is difficult because there is no consensus on what constitutes ethnicity.
• Berthoud: Found that the Pakistani (92%) and Bangladeshi (92%) are the poorest ethnic minorities in the UK.
• Auguste Comte: He stated that there are three stages to a human's understanding of the world.
• The three stages are:

  • Theological stage: explaining things through supernatural means.
  • Metaphysical stage: explaining things through forces of nature.
  • Scientific stage: explaining things through scientific means.
• Max Weber: The world has become "disenchanted" and the world ceases to become and "enchanted garden".
• Postmodernists see the scientific explanation as a metanarrative in a world where all other metanarratives have been discredited.
• Durkheim (under religion and social order): He stated that "There can not be one society that doesn't feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and ideas held by the society".
• (Under religion and social order) Durkheim claims that "The key to understanding religion is not to look at the content, but the effects it has on an individual. The power of society over an individual transcends an individual's existence so much so that people give it shared significance.".
• Durkheim also stated that by worshiping God, the people are worshiping the society.
• Durkheim claimed that religious symbols distinguish between the profane (everyday thing) and the sacred.