In brief, from the lecture and tutorial the main thing I took away from it was how religion influences culture and vice-versa. It was interesting for me to see how two scholars can have such a polar opposite opinion from each other. Max Webber believed that religion was an agent of social change, in short he thought that everyone should believe in religion and that it was essential for culture. However Karl Marx believed that religion caused social problems and that religious people were ‘deluded’. This was interesting for me to learn as this was not something I had ever thought about. I also gained more of an insight into spiritualism and the phrase ‘unchurched spirituality’. I learned some characteristics of unchurched spirituality such as; autonomy and individualism, and I was also made aware of possible criticisms.
I feel like I do understand the main concepts spoke about today, however I was more confused than last week. Last week I understood everything a lot more and this week as I feel like there was more concepts and new terms to understand. I understand spirituality and as I had a real interest in learning about this I feel like I have grasped the idea of it more than the other topics discussed. For example I need to do more work and background reading on the impact of religion and culture. I understand the basics of the topic although a lot more work is needed, in particular reading up on the scholars discussed (Matt Waggoner (2001)) will help my understanding grow.
From last week I knew that religion could impact social problems positively, today this was made more clear to me and we looked at them more in depth. This has increased my prior knowledge of this topic and I know feel confident that this is something I know well.
Overall as I said previously to this post I do need to work more and continue to learn about the topics that we have discussed. I will do this by visiting the library, using online resources and visiting or emailing my lecture if any problems arise. I have truly enjoyed learning about religion and society as it is not something that I had a lot of knowledge in. I will continue to use information learnt from this module in my future career as a teaching in the hope that the children will have a greater insight and understanding of religion in the modern day world.
