This week we were introduced to the ways in which religion and culture are interlinked, before moving onto an in depth look at “Unchurched Spirituality”. I found this very interesting and despite my previously mentioned shortcomings regarding religion I felt this was broached in a very forward and factual way without any prejudice or strong bias.

The issue of how religion impacts on culture and social issues is one that has both interested and irritated me in my own life. I have had a lot of my own thoughts on the subject and felt that some of these were echoed in the lecture; for example religion’s advertisement of their own altruistic tendencies in order to entice people in or the villainisation of religious people based on the acts of extremists. It was very interesting to look at such beliefs and stances from an objective educational standpoint and it is something I look forward to investigating further.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Marxism and felt that I resonated with a lot of what he believed so am planning on looking more into him and his theories in my spare time. And whilst I may not agree with the theories and beliefs of Weber,  Lincoln or others it is important to develop our bank of academics for backing up of points in an exam.

The final topic we looked at today was Unchurched Spiritualisation. This was interesting as I had noticed a lot of what was mentioned in the content, e.g. the uprising of fad new age spiritualities or the start up of new ‘modern’ religions, in day to day life but wasn’t aware there was a name for this movement. While some of these seem slightly extreme it does seem in the whole a positive step in the right direction to modernise the traditional (and possibly outdated) customs of religion.

Religion has never been something I have interacted with throughout my life. I am non-religious and none of my immediate family members follow any religion so I have lived quite a sheltered life in regards to this. Up until recently I would have said that I disliked religion as a concept due to its negative connotations and, to me, seemingly outdated stances on a lot of subject matter. However, I realised in the past year or so that this is a very close-minded view of mine and that I should be more open. and although I myself don’t follow a religion it doesn’t mean I can’t look at it from the outside and at least attempt to understand where those who follow religion are coming from. Upon today’s lecture I discovered that this is known as the “scholarly approach” to religion, and this resonates with me. I also feel that a knowledge, even if only broad, and an understanding of a variety of different religions and cultures will be very positive for my future career.

I felt that today I looked at the place of religion in a society and the motivations behind those who are religious. I found this interesting and am keen to look more into this. We were also introduced to various theorists (Bourdillon, Durkheim, Malinowksi etc.) who write on religious culture, these will be very important moving forward when justifying viewpoints. I think I had a vague understanding of what we were looking at but will absolutely need to investigate further- and I look forward to this as I want to broaden my knowledge base. My hope is that by the end of this module I will be able to approach the variety of religions in my future classroom with a knowledgable and open mind.