Three Sociological Perspectives on Religion PDF

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Conflict Theory, Structural Functionalism, and Symbolic Interactionism...

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Running head: SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AND RELIGION

Three Sociological Perspectives on Religion

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SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AND RELIGION

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Abstract In a short summary I am going to be discussing on how a conflict theorist, structural functionalist and symbolic interactionist, which are the three main sociological perspectives, view religion. Religion is something that goes on in some peoples everyday lives and how it works for them in certain perspectives. Religion is something that is everywhere in the world and it’s pretty common for people to have a specific religion or God they believe in. When you think about religion you think about all these different types of ways people interpret religion, well in this paper you are going to see how only three specific groups are going to be shown and what they think about religion. Keywords: Religion, Conflict Theory, Structural Functionalism, and Symbolic Interactionism

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AND RELIGION

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Three Sociological Perspectives on Religion

Introduction The social institution that I am writing about is religion and the reason why I chose this topic is because I am not biased towards which religion is better than the other one. The definition of social institutions is something that helps support what our society lives by and the way they do certain things in their everyday lives. The definition of religion is a set of beliefs, mainly caused by nature and socially by ritual observances. Religion plays a big part everywhere, but since we live where religion is the biggest key factor for us, not many people would agree with the fact that you don’t believe in a God. Religion is something that could start a discussion based on what type of beliefs people have or based on the way they were brought up in their home, some people bring up their kids by showing them that you don’t have to go to church everyday in order to prove that you do believe in God and some other people show and tell their kids that yes you do have to go to church everyday in order to prove you believe in a God. the three sociological perspectives you are going to be reading about religion are structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. Structural functionalism Robert Merton and Herbert Spencer are two sociologists who brought up the theory and it has been used to direct a great amount of different materials such as social institutions. Structural functionalism is profusely explained the way society functions, some examples would have to be our government, education, our laws as well as the religion we practice, the science of structural functionalism is somewhat similar, however it does have its differences. The differences of the science portion from the theory of structural functionalism is the social order we hold ourselves

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in the media such as what we choose to watch and the things we choose to like,\. These concepts are also seen and used as assumptions for the structural functionalism theory, since the concepts fall under the social system and is prior to reality, this in fact makes all of the different system parts function all together. On page 103, it states “Religious authorities of theocratic – communities would not be able to have complete political or legal autonomy…”. In the 1960’s structural functionalism went through criticism because it didn’t hold any accountability for changing people’s social differences. During this time, it was also noticed to ignore the different social class, gender bias, even race. Conflict Theory Conflict theory is based on a philosopher who focuses on the way life works, for example how they see the unfairness of what humanity has done for society. A conflict theorist would see religion a different way a structural functionalist or symbolic interactionist would see it. Religion through the conflict theorist would view religion almost as unfair because of the way they treat women and what they due to people in the religion. One example of them seeing religion as something problematic would be the case of where the priest would take advantage of the children during the time when their parents weren’t around, the priest would give the children some sort of jewelry or something they wear all the time to church and when they would go to other churches the priest would identify them and do non-religious things. In religion men are always the one to have the upper hand around things because they are the ones that make things possible and women were always given the role of taking care of the children and most importantly having the children that way they can help around, but they always hoped that they would have a boy because then they would be able to help the dad do the daily things like get food, herd the sheep, or maybe even take care of their mothers when they were away.

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Symbolic Interactionism Symbolic interactionism is the way people are able to communicate with each other based on the way they interpret the symbols. This type of theorist go really well with religion because the cross is identified as one way throughout the world and almost everyone knows the it means religion. Many people know that you should never disrespect the cross because it has a lot of meaning towards and it cam cause many peoples if you were to talk wrongly about it. The cross is something that can be in a home because that’s how some people are taught, they are told that it is good to have many things that symbolize God. One way people know that you are treating the cross wrong is that when you flip the cross upside down that means that you are trying to summon the devil which can cause many bad things to happen and the only people who do that on purpose are the ones that don’t think that the cross has any meaning or they just don’t care about. It’s kind of how we pray on our knees and have our hands together and we know that we can’t talk to anyone, but in other countries you have to do a bow on the floor and have complete silence, almost everyone knows how this goes because it symbolizes something in our religion and we know not to do certain things. Conclusion In conclusion religion is everywhere and people interpret religion in many different ways in different parts of the world and these types of things help these theorists see how each religion is different and how they can write articles about what’s happening in these different types of religions and show their own way of expressing their writing about it.

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AND RELIGION References Last Name, F. M. (Year). Article Title. Journal Title, Pages From - To. Last Name, F. M. (Year). Book Title. City Name: Publisher Name

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