Religion and Society - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages United States where on one hand enjoy a multicultural society with religious pluralism; on the other hand it feels as if a threat has been developed in the name of secularization. However this must not be the case in a country where liberal secularization remains in the eye of the scholarly beholder and where the observer possesses the right to decide if a symbol or form has been transformed or not. In American society where religious institutions play an extensive role in the economic regulation, denominational organizations, churches, and religiously affiliated institutions at the same time they contribute substantially to the growth of the domestic and international economy. On one hand we consider America as a multi-religious society, while on the other we take into account those facts that create a link between religion and economy. In order to understand the connection between the two, one can first consider those developments that occur outside this domain i.e., economy in a ‘non-religious’ environment. As with all socially significant categories, the reflection of religion upon any economy (stabilizing or destabilizing) depends to some extent on the difference between what counts as religion and what does not. For example, American society at the time of Reformation enjoyed a double compatibility in the name of religion. On the one hand, the visibility, power, and clearly religious identity of the Roman Catholic Church provided a concrete institutional model served the religion positively. On the other hand, however, early America witnessed a time when there was gradual development of other institutional domains that increasingly, over subsequent centuries, established themselves as independent of religious support and eventually even of religious legitimation (Dillon, 2003, p. 43).
The development, which America has witnessed throughout centuries, resulted in a capitalist economy in which the sovereign political state emerged inclusive of the administrative and military arms. Such development was the result of multicultural spectrum, which was influenced by religiously, shaped society cultural and racial values, therefore the related domain of positive law, modern science, and later also academic education, medicalized health, art, mass media, and sport all developed. In this scenario the rise of two individual systems 'religious' and 'nonreligious' were critical for developing and treating religion as something distinct and different, therefore there was no option for a growing economy other than to include 'religion' on a broad spectrum in everyday lives of Americans. Not only did religion in this context appeared in contrast to other nonreligious social values, but it modelled itself to some extent in order to cover up all economic threats, therefore religion also helped in institutional reconstruction.
Now that the time has come religion in America has moulded itself in many social forms, it would not be wrong to acknowledge that the way religion has modernized American economy, has never happened in the past. An example is when decades ago, early American religious missionaries worked hard to retain their religious consensus and the moral values of the earlier world out of which they came. At the same time they were enthusiastic about new improvements in transportation and communication along with their entrepreneurial business mindedness in manufacturing and industrialization (Porterfield, 2001, p. 48).
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