This week in class we talked about religion and social change. These things are connected in some important ways. Religion can both help cause social change and prevent it. (McGuire, Pg. 245) Religion can also be affected by social change as well. (McGuire, Pg. 280) One of the best examples is the Civil Rights movement. During the Civil Rights movement, churches were places where people could rally together as a community during those challenging times. (McGuire, Pg. 273) Churches also had extensive networks of resources and connections that were also useful to the Civil Rights cause. (McGuire, Pg. 273) In these ways and many others, religion and the church helped social change. However, after the Civil Rights era, things changed. As we saw in a film in class, the social changes from the Civil Rights movement ended up having some bad effects on churches in the African-American community. Churches were no longer needed as bases of support for people in the community. Therefore, churches lost the power and influence they had had in the community. Also, more African-Americans became middle-class and successful, and this lead to a number of them moving to the suburbs and out of the inner-cities. The people left behind in the inner-cities then became more isolated as a result, and there were less people going to these churches. However, the film did also show how certain churches were still trying to be helpful and influential in their communities by offering different services and outreach to people in the inner-cities. Therefore, it isn’t fair to say that they lost completely. In the end, this is a perfect example of how religion and social change influence each other and the effects it can have on both, for better or for worse.
Changing Religious Landscape
It seems with our current president, many people talk about the “good old days” and about “making America great again.” This makes me think if America isn’t great now, and what made it great before. In the religious sense, these people seem to long for a time when everyone went to church and had the same ideas about the world around them. This has become more difficult to do due to mass media and the internet. The whole world of information is available with the internet and news, so people see many different views from around the world. In the “good old days” people only focused on their lives and their community because there wasn’t much else from the outside. Today, people can see pictures and get differing opinions first hand from people all around the world. People feel threatened by the pluralism because they feel it calls their beliefs into question. I would also argue that the times that these people are dreaming of, were not all that they promise to be. Many people and churches didn’t accept gay marriage or women’s rights.So, it was great to be a white heterosexual man, but other then that, you were considered less of a person. Personally, I do not want to go back to a time were rational thinking did not prevail and patriarchy ruled. Religion in the United States is shifting not dissappering, and people should embrace the change. I’m not saying that they should stop believing in their faith, but they should open themselves up to pluralism and accept others faiths.
Looking at Other Religions
Religion and spirituality are a huge part of human existence. Many people feel that each individual person should be allowed to choose what they want to believe and how they worship. What if, however, part of the religion was say eating a cooked bit of human brain? Reza Aslan, host of “Believer” on CNN did just that. Aslan goes around the world and studies different religious practices from many different people. Aslan meets up with a sect of Indian religious nomads outside the city of Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The Aghori, as they are known, reject the Hindu caste system and continue to bathe in Ganges, a river that Hindus considers sacred. An Aghori guru smears the ashes of cremated humans on his face and then invites Aslan to drink alcohol from a human skull and eats what was a bit of human brain. Aslan got lots of backlash from the premier of this episode from both Indians and Americans. “With multiple reports of hate-fueled attacks against people of Indian origin from across the U.S., the show characterizes Hinduism as cannibalistic, which is a bizarre way of looking at the third largest religion in the world,” lobbyist group U.S Indian Political Action Committees. From one Americans point of view is, “It is unbelievably callous and reckless of CNN to be pushing sensational and grotesque images of bearded brown men and their morbid and deathly religion at a time when the United States is living through a period of unprecedented concern and fear,” Vamsee Juluri, a media studies professor at the University of San Francisco. Do we accept another religion even if it involves things that make us feel uncomfortable?
Religion and Social Change
Chapter 7 introduced a few elements that are key factors when it comes to social change. A religion sets a worldview and a way of life for many people. This way of life affects people and create social change when its viewed on a larger scale. The changes may be consequential to society, intentional or not. I agree that it will be more beneficial to examine religion as an element of culture that can promote change and no longer ask how “does religion promote social change?” but rather, “in what ways and under what conditions does it promote rather than inhibit change?”.
I think it’s very important for sociologists in todays generation to view religion and its social change with the perspective of the second question in mind. It will be important to answer how religion either promotes or inhibits change and under what conditions because we are at such a diverging time in history when it comes to the falling of religion in America. Many people are questioning religious beliefs when it comes to rules on “abortion, homosexuality, divorce and contraception. Other groups maybe focused on issues such as social justice, poverty, corporate responsibility, ethics of public policy, and war. Both groups may result in efforts for social change”. It’s important to know what is important to the people and what their changing beliefs and practices are in order to analyze the social change and affects it will lead to. What religious beliefs will be intact 25 years from now? Will religion still be a large influential factor in peoples lives?
Social control? Yikes!
Certain concepts presented in McGuire’s seventh chapter honestly make me feel uncertain and a little paranoid. Religious legitimation is one of these ideas in which I can think of many harmful modern examples: conservative political stances fighting against abortion due to the belief that every person is a “gift of God”, extreme and radical terrorists who believe in “holy” wars, oppressive caste system societies in which awful living conditions are allowed due to a religious legitimation, etc. The idea that religion can be forced onto people and create oppression is frankly unsettling. It is disheartening that religion, which can be such a positive and beautiful light in people’s lives, is also being used to manipulate and oppress. The next concept that has the potential to cripple individuals is religious socialization. This is the idea that religions can reinforce roles that may be extremely harmful to some but are justified by the supposed religious content. This has the power to keep people “in line” and following a system without contemplating whether or not their prescribed social role or moral guidelines has their best interest in mind or not. It is apparent that this concept is a useful strategy for establishing conformity and a peaceful society, but it inhibits change and awareness that can be vital for the happiness and freedom of the people. Last but not least, social control is frightening in the sense that when religious socialization dominates a society, people become like minded and the fire is fueled by group-think. This can be harmful to people who exist in the society but have aspects of their life or lifestyle are deemed “deviant” by the religious group and are thus excluded, oppressed, or even targeted by that society. This has the potential to be possible in America where seventy percent of the people are Christian and thus, have the same set of ethics and ideas of what is “bad” and what is “good”. I am aware that these concepts are all inevitable results of religious life joining with greater society, it is frankly a little scary to think of how powerful religion can be in a negative way.
Religion on Social Change
Chapter 7 depicts the way in which religion influences social change. McGuire starts by stating “a religious idea or movement may become transformed into something very different from what it’s originators intended, and the influence of religion is often indirect” (237). This idea interested me. She used Quakers as an example, but it reminded me of the Nazi movement and the effects that “religious” movement had on the world. While some consider this movement strictly political, I would argue that it is an example of a civil religious movement. It continues as a trend throughout history as well as the world that religious movements don’t always continue to preach what they did in the beginning.
McGuire continues her chapter with a small section on how religion supports the status quo. This section grabbed my attention as well because my religion has always been counter cultural. I have grown up being told “you are in this world, but not of this world.” This idea of religion is that it goes against the status quo and while the world continues to change, Orthodoxy stays the same. However, as we learned from the presentations, not all religions or Christian denominations believe this. Religion can be a way to incorporate modern ideas and promote them even more than they usually would be. Religion can release propaganda that can further a cause.
Like McGuire said “change itself is neither necessarily good nor bad” (237).
Religion’s Impact on Social Change
My experience with religion has been one that rather than promote social change and modernity, it centered around traditional, I would call “outdated” values. I’m a person that has always wanted to create social change to better people’s lives, specifically those who have been marginalized. In our current day, we need people from all sides to unite under common ground to resist a fascist president. Ch. 7 of the “Social Context” delves into the impact of religion on social change and how while it has been used to maintain the status quo, it could also be an enormous vehicle to promote change.
Earlier in the book we learned the historical construct of religion and the power it gave some, while purposely denying power to others. McGuire speaks of one way that religion has been used to simply maintain traditional values is by reactionary movements that typically fight “modernity” and urge the cultural return to values and norms of an earlier, more “pure” era. This goal translates into crusades against equal rights for women, abortion, sex education in schools, gay rights, and other nontraditional family lifestyles (240). Simultaneously though, religion is a promoter of social change through its vision of how things might or ought to be (245). This is due to religion’s history in uniting people’s beliefs with their actions and their ideas with their social lives.
If more religions now a days could unite its people to fight against a common enemy, then social change could be a real possibility. People can have different political ideologies, but have the same faith and with that, we can find similarities amongst a multitude of differences.
Religion and the “Vested Interests of the Dominant Social Classes”
It was very interesting reading McGuire’s chapter on the correlation between religion and the “vested interests of the dominant social classes” after hearing all the different case studies presented before Spring Break (McGuire 280). During this chapter, McGuire writes in detail about the connection between religion and social change. Some of the key factors that stood out to me in this discussion was differentiating between religion promoting or inhibiting social change (either way, they’re typically occurring simultaneously.) McGuire spoke in particular of African-American religious groups and their relationship with society and social change.
While reading this chapter, I was often reminded of the case study presentations given by my classmates the week prior, and in particular those who read Goldman and Marti’s books. I related them to the two kinds of distinction we typically find within religious groups and society. The Rajneeshpuram group discussed in Goldman’s book reminded me of the friction and segregation between the religious group and society whereas the Mosaics Church seemed to have an opposite effect, directly pulling in and incorporating aspects from the LA community that surrounded it in order to make it more appealing and relatable to the younger generations. After hearing both of these presentations, I felt quite differently about both groups. The Mosaics church drew me in and made me feel more connected to their message of embracing diversity of multi-ethnic communities coming together as one. And on the other hand, I felt detached and unsympathetic towards the Rajneeshpuram community. I can’t shake that there is probably a correlation between my liking of the group that tries to assimilate to society versus my reproachfulness of the group that isolates itself from society.
Religious Legitimation
I have always viewed religion, in general, as a way to find comfort, love, and meaning in all things. Regardless of name or following, religion, in my eyes, has been something positive and powerful enough to change bad things to good. Religion has the power to legitimize even things that are not related to it and that amount of power could become dangerous. Religious legitimation of the status quo, as written in McGuire’s, “Religion: The Social Context”, is sometimes, “the result of direct collusion between the dominant classes and the dominant religious organizations” (McGuire 241). Whether a ruler enforces a national religion or a separation between church and state, religion can set certain standards as to how a nation is governed. By choosing to govern a nation under a religion, the unity within that community will grow. It is easier to legitimize wars and new rulers when everyone lives their lives by the same set of moral codes and standards. The idea of Divine Right allowed monarchs to maintain their power, regardless of the decisions they made, while simultaneously preventing others from reaching the same level of power. Religion has legitimized, “slavery and racial segregation, industrialization and anti unionism, warfare and international policy” (242). Although we have the separation of church and state, recent debates about Planned Parenthood have made the separation feel smaller and smaller. It is daunting to see how much influence religion has had in history and it is even more intimidating to think of how our future in America could be affected by the same thing.
Marxism and Religion
To compare religion as an institution like that of an economic system seemed odd to me at first, but in reading chapter 7 of McGuire, especially in regards to Marxist theories, I came to understand it from a new perspective I had not thought about. In explaining aspects of social change, or lack thereof in religious settings, McGuire expands on the idea of Marxist interpretations of religion and how it naturally halts change by “support[ing] the status quo”(pg. 237). McGuire writes, “Another concept explaining the change-inhibiting aspects of religion is the idea of alienation, which is central to the Marxian definition of religion.”(pg. 239). Thinking in Marxist terms, the idea–or if one is to truly believe–the illusion of religion is merely a tool to keep society functioning smoothly. Marxist theory follows that like the way capitalism profits off of the products of labor while alienating a laborer from their finished work, religion takes the most sacred of beliefs and ideals and separates them from an individual while placing them on an unknowable deity. Thinking in these terms really does make religion appear as an institution, which in itself seems to contradict itself. Although I have not thought of myself as being particularly religious, this class has made me rethink what I previously thought of myself. If individuals are supposed to surrender themselves to a belief system and devote and sacrifice their divine beliefs–whatever they may be–for the sake of following what Marx has presented as an illusion and just another social system, how has it persisted throughout history while undergoing relatively few drastic changes in beliefs despite the evolution and creation of new religions.