Tag Archives: Culture

Religion, Culture and Unchurched Spirituality

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In this weeks lecture, I learned about unchurched spirituality, religion and culture and how they influenced each other. Unchurched spirituality is simply spirituality outside the churches and beliefs not necessarily associated with organised religion. Although there are many debates over the true meanings of the terms “religion” and “spirituality”, I learned that spirituality is understood as having a more expansive meaning than religion. We were also introduced to three theorists, Max Weber, Karl Marx and Bruce Lincoln.

In the tutorials we discussed these theorists in further detail. Max Weber was a German philosopher, he argued that one religion, Christianity (Protestantism), contributed to formation and success of socio- economic issues in the Western world such as capitalism. According to Weber, Protestantism enabled the ideological atmosphere in which capitalism could thrive in Europe. Weber called this this idea the “Protestant Ethic”. In Weber’s eyes, religion was an agent of social change.

Karl Marx was also a German philosopher who developed the theory of international communism and was critical of religion. His ideas later developed into a political philosophy called Marxism and its followers being Marxists. He argued that religion gave false consciousness in people and that it is an unnecessary part of today’s society. He believed that God is “man made”, a human creation, therefore, religion was not necessary to him.

Bruce Lincoln agrees with Karl Marx to an extent. He believes that people should believe that religious claims and ideas are there, however not to accept them all. After reading in to these theorists, it has shown me that each of their views and ideas towards religion are slightly different. However, they all agree that religion has greatly impacted culture.

Overall, I found both the lecture and tutorial really interesting. After being brought up and attending both Catholic primary and secondary schools, this weeks lecture and tutorial group opened more area for thought upon religion. I find it a really interesting topic and I intend to do further reading on the topic of unchurched spirituality and the ways in which religion affects culture.

Religion, Society and Diversity

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In our first week of society and lifestyles we were introduced to the topic of religion and society. This involved studying religion in social context. In our first week we discussed religion from both the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. Religion from the ‘inside’ is the believers approach and religion from the ‘outside’ is the scholarly approach. There are also different types of religion. A established religion is a religion that has established roots and been around for a long time. A sect is a group which depends on voluntary membership and personal commitment. A cult is a group with more radical ideas and practices and usually has deviant and novel beliefs and is known for mind- control and manipulation of its members. We also discussed the functions of religion such as; life crisis, social relations, peace in the community and basic needs.

The independent study task included me researching the anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski. I found that Malinowski believed that there were scientific laws of culture that could also be applied to religion.  He said that magic was useful because it brought one individual into a leadership position during times of crisis in society. For Malinowski, religion was an institution that fulfils people’s biological and psychological needs.

In the tutorial, we discussed different aspects of religious diversity in groups. Again, my group was asked to focus on Bronislaw Malinowski. I felt that working in groups for this task was very beneficial, as everyone could share their ideas and views on the topic. Religious diversity is an area that I am still unsure of and I intend to do further reading on this area to improve my knowledge.

I now have a better understanding of the different functions of religion. However, I feel like I need to do further research on the other scholars such as Emile Durkheim as most of my research in today’s tasks was based on Bronislaw Malinowski.

This lecture and tutorial group was a great introduction to religion. It has left me keen to look in to the topics of religious diversity, scholars and the different ways that culture influences religion. I intend to do further reading in all of these areas.