From the lecture I learned that religion shapes culture and culture shapes religion within society. Religious culture can be recognised as a form of identity through things such as the music people listen to and what they choose to eat. There are many claims within religion, culture and social issues such as material claims whereby over time communities within religion have helped people in need with material resources and supporting those in need. There are also spiritual claims within religion which provides a ‘spiritual community’ for its followers. Also from the lecture I learned about ‘unchurched’ spirituality which are ways of spirituality that are unrelated with religions that are organised and is not based on spirituality within the churches.
From the tutorial I learned more about the criticisms of religion as culture and looked at various different theorists such as Karl Marx who limited religion to socio-economic causes. He referred to religion as the ‘opium of the people’. An argument strongly supported by Karl Marx was that religion is not important due to God being ‘man made’.
I understand most of the issues and concepts discussed, however could have a greater, more in depth knowledge which I can improve by doing further reading. I can evidence this knowledge by referring to theorists who have various arguments against or for religion to help me back up what I am writing about when it comes to answering exam questions.
There are a few concepts and issues that I am struggling to understand such as the different religion, culture and social issues as I feel they are quite complex and will take me a while to get my head around. However, I do think my understanding of this could be improved by reading the information over and over again which will give me the chance to put all of the information together.
My knowledge and understanding in this area has developed by having an insight into theorists work and how they would describe religion in their own way. I learned that secularisation contributed to the event of ‘unchurched’ spirituality which resulted in a decline in religiousness and a declining church membership. I could address areas that may need improvement such as the characteristics of unchurched spirituality and the criticisms of unchurched spirituality by studying and doing further reading out with lecture and tutorial notes.
What I have learnt relates to my general understanding of how using religion as an example impacts on people’s lifestyle because religion is part of your life and values and can affect the way an individual may behave due to their opinions. Possible career opportunities as a future primary school teacher on the things I have learnt could be helped by my understanding and knowing background knowledge based on religion to contribute to class lessons which may involve learning about religion. This would be invaluable to have this knowledge when children may struggle and ask questions about the way in which different religious celebrate things such as Easter and Christmas or when doing a nativity play or anything else related to this subject.
