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.

From the lecture on Religion, Society and Diversity I learned that when studying religion in a social context it can be complex due to religion being a very complex aspect. We looked at the various ways in which certain people would describe ‘religion’ such as Anthropologists, Sociologists, Historians and Theologians which provided me with an insight into the many different ways ‘religion’ can be approached. I also learned that religion from the ‘inside’ which is referred to as the ‘believer’s approach’ relates to the study and practise of one’s own religion, this approach guesses that the faith or belief in question is correct and immutable. From the lecture, I also learned that religion from the ‘outside’ which can be referred to as the ‘scholarly approach’ relies on a neutral view of religion and points out the outward and visible aspects of religion.

From the tutorial I researched Emile Durkheim, from this I learned that he was a French psychologist and Philosopher who was born in April 1858 in France and died in November 1917 age 59. I learned that much of Durkheim’s work was concerned with how societies could continue their integrity and coherence in modernity. From the tutorial I also learned that he believed that there was something real in religion and he wanted to understand how religion comes to be what it is and also what it does.

 I understand most of the main concepts and issues of the topics and areas I have learnt today and I could back these up with evidence of knowledge from Anthropologists looking at the works of M.C.F Bourdillon, A.R. Radcliffe- Brown and also Bronislaw Malinowski to develop further my knowledge and understanding. However, there are some concepts and issues that I am still slightly confused with as to how you would include these in a religion question in the exam and what aspects of religion to specifically target. I could research and read into further reading to help myself understand aspects that may be more important and relate to questions better. I also believe that understanding the impacts all aspects of religion has on society and putting that all together would help me to further understand this better.

I already had an understanding about some religions, and knowledge about some from studying it as a subject in High school. I didn’t have to relate to any Anthropologists it was more different religions viewpoints so the lecture and tutorial gave me better knowledge on the different things each individual Anthropologist and various others thought about religion and their views towards it. At school I studied Christianity and Sikhism and it was interesting to see the different religion’s ways of life and how they contributed to society. I also had to back up my knowledge with quotes and evidence from Humanists, Roman Catholics, Christians and Sikhs. I could improve on trying to find a link between all the different information regarding religion so when it comes to the exam it’s clear in my head what I would write when that question comes up and that it isn’t fuzzy which could lead to confusion and not knowing how to approach the question.

What I have learned from the lecture and the tutorial relates to my general understanding of how using religion as an example, society impacts on lifestyle as religion can create massive religious diversity in society such as within the work place. This could result in changes being made to working schedules to suit temporal and different holiday patterns of people belonging to religious groups which could create conflict between workers as they may feel that is unfair. There are also many other aspects of religious diversity in society today that brings in competition and disputes between groups such as a disagreement in religion or not knowing enough and making a viewpoint which is open to controversy. From the things I have learned from the lecture and tutorial,  I could in the future or on placements integrate this into a class lessons with children in a Primary School when learning about religion and culture, religious diversity and religion and social issues as a whole.

Overall, I think I can improve by reading notes over again to allow myself to understand it all a bit better and make links between the different concepts and issues discussed to come to an overall and good level of understanding.